Gemini: The House of Niccolo - Hardcover

Dunnett, Dorothy

4.5

1,821 ratings by Goodreads

9780718140830: Gemini: The House of Niccolo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718140834 ISBN 13: 9780718140830

Publisher: Michael Joseph, 2000

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GEMINI represents the final appearance of Nicholas de Fleury, known in the first book of this series as a carefree 18-year-old apprentice in Flanders. Now in his thirties, despite his enemies, his flair for numbers has launched him on a chaotic career: as a mercenary soldier; as a merchant banker; and now as a man who could find a place in almost any of the kingdoms or republics that made up 15th century Europe. But where? First, he has to go back to Scotland, although he knows men wait there to kill him and his beloved family. If he survives, he must make a choice. He does not know that before that can happen, every skill he ever had will be tested.

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Review:

Dorothy Dunnett's pi�ce de r�sistance is the richness and invention of her historical imagination, with every detail seamlessly incorporated, and Gemini has some claims to being her most visionary and distinctive piece yet. The sheer skill of Dunnett as a storyteller has marked her out as one of the most commanding practitioners of the historical novel, with such popular books as , Scales of Gold and To Lie With Lions.

Set in Scotland in 1477, in the international world of trade and commerce, fatal results are suffered by those who do not know the rules of the game. When Nicholas de Fleury returns to Edinburgh after four years' absence, curiosity about why he closed all his ventures in Scotland and deserted his friends is high. Struggling to fend off his enemies' attempts to kill him, Nicholas rejoins the fledgling court of young King James the Third, and finds that the dangerous internecine squabbles of James and his treacherous siblings is every bit as dangerous as the local intrigue he has left behind. Dunnett describes this with the kind of ornate and pungent prose that she has long been mistress of, with her customarily massive cast of characters all delineated with genuine brio.

Nicholas is a splendidly rounded creation, and by placing him at the centre of her sprawling narrative, you are always given the perfect lodestone to draw you inexorably through the convolutions of the plot. Dunnett's female characters are as distinctive as ever, with Kathi Sersanders remaining the most memorable, her relationship with de Fleury adroitly drawn. However, it is the sheer breadth of Dunnett's ambitions that takes the breath away and, as ever, the set pieces are exhilarating:

The sword point bit into his cloak and grated across the cuirass underneath, bringing the swordsman close for a moment, his face blank with surprise. Nicholas kicked him under the chin, so that he blundered back and hit someone else, while Nicholas dragged out his own sword. The horse wasn't his, but it was a powerful beast and alarmed enough to be ready to rear. Nicholas wrapped the reins around one wrist and hauled, using the bit to drag the horse threshing onto its haunches, and then allowing it to plunge forward again.

Those who have followed the House of Niccol� series will find this a perfectly orchestrated finale. --Barry Forshaw

About the Author:

Frequently described as the finest historical fiction writer of her time, Dorothy Dunnett earned worldwide acclaim for her blend of scholarship and imagination. She is best known for her two superb series of historical fiction - The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo - set in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and ranging across Europe and the Mediterranean, and for King Hereafter, the eleventh-century story of Earl Thorfinn of Orkney whom Dorothy believed was also King Macbeth. In 1992, Dorothy Dunnett was awarded the OBE for her services to literature, and in 2014 Dunnett's most enduring hero, Francis Crawford of Lymond, was voted Scotland's favourite literary character - beating the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter and Ivanhoe. Dunnett died 9 November 2001, having sold half a million copies internationally.

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