Book Log 53/2009 - A Game of Kings (including questions for other writer/readers).

[jacey]

Dorothy Dunnett – A Game of Kings – Lymond Saga #1
1962

At last - I've managed to read my first Dorothy Dunnett - and something of Lymond, much recommended - including by some of the folks on my flist. Frankly I haven't quite decided whether I like it or not because although there are many things to recommend it (and I can see why people love it so much and why Dorothy Dunnett is so revered as a writer) there are also things about it that irritate me intensely as both a writer and a reader.

I've been trying to work out why, and I suspect that this book is a slow-burn and I haven't digested it properly yet. It may, indeed, be a book that needs to be read twice, the second time with hindsight, because Dunnett plays it as close to the chest as Lymond does - often with the deliberate and sole intention of confounding the reader. I'll give you an example later, but first an overview. Warning - SPOILERS AHEAD. (In other words I will be giving away more than Dunnett does, so if you haven't read it and you want to unravel the mystery inch by inch stop reading this right now.)

Francis Crawford of Lymond, scholar, soldier, musician, minor nobleman, accused traitor and outlaw - returns to 16th century Scotland after five years in exile. He assembles a band of rough mercenaries and proceeds to hire out his services whilst pursuing his own agenda - an agenda largely kept hidden from the reader, but obviously to do with something in his past. It's a very slow reveal - almost too slow at times. Dunnett keeps Lymond's intentions hidden from her readers - at times with little subtlety - avoiding showing us much of Lymond's point of view and instead having us rely on unreliable witnesses, particularly Will Scott and Lymond's brother, Richard, the blind Lady Christian and some of Lymond's enemies. We see his emotions secondhand, but we don't live through them with him except at a distance.

We gradually come to realise that Lymond's apparently erratic actions are not random, though we are kept guessing as to whether he's actually guilty of the treason and murder he's accused of, particularly of the death of his own sister, Eloise. Dunnett doesn't present Lymond as very likeable, especially at first. He may be charismatic, but he’s often his own worst enemy, stubborn and uncommunicative (sometimes to the point of stupidity). He has an appalling habit of speaking in quotations from classical literature - often in French or Latin. Occasionally he lapses into Spanish or broad Scots. The prose is convoluted and flowery - almost chewy, and had this not been highly recommended to me I might not have continued beyond the first few pages. I’m glad I did, but at the moment I’m ambivalent about tackling the rest of the (six book) Lymond saga.

This is a novel of convoluted politics and the setting is the tumultuous border between Scotland and England as - following Henry VIII's death - England has a boy king while Scotland has a four year old girl (Mary) as queen with the dowager queen (her mother) in charge of the court. As with many historical novels, there's a good range of real people and real politics, but Lymond and his family are completely fictional. I'm not well up on Scottish history, so I'm not sure what restrictions have been placed on the story by actual historical events (except for the very obvious ones).

As a writer studying a much greater writer I find myself wondering if I could get away with doing to my readers what Dunnett has done to hers and I fear the answer is no. There's no real reason for Lymond's motives to remain hidden except that the author refuses to show them to us for the sake of creating a mystery... sometimes writing round them so deliberately that it's obvious she's playing with our heads.

For instance at one point we are in Will Scott's point of view when he goes into a skirmish, is hit on the head and sinks into oblivion. In the next scene we are at Boghall where the Lady Christian, blind from birth, but competent, sensible and totally admirable, takes custody of an anonymous, insensible, injured man, apparently hit on the head. She's blind so we don't get a description of the man and her servant, Sym, who finds him, gives a very cursory description. Lymond has striking fair hair, Will Scott is a red-head, but we're not sure whether that red is gold or auburn so from Sym's description to Christian, the unconscious man with a bump on his head could well be Scott. At first the injured man is amnesiac, but as he recovers he regains his memory, though he refuses to tell Christian his name. He's charming, educated and erudite and - since we don't know Lymond very well yet - still might easily be either Will Scott or Lymond (or might even be a completely new character as we're still fairly early on in the first part of the book). During his whole sojourn at Boghall the man's identity is hidden from the reader regardless of whose viewpoint we are in. Irritatingly we are never told, even when the ex-amnesiac returns to normal life. As the rest of the mystery unfolds we do realise, by implication, that it was Lymond. However this is not absolutely confirmed until a couple of hundred pages later. And then we discover that Christian knew all along it was Lymond because voices are the focus of her sensory world. At that point (and only at that point) we learn that she grew up with Lymond and recognised his voice immediately. This latter fact was deliberately withheld.

As a reader I want to unravel a mystery alongside my characters, not in spite of them. I don't mind being ignorant of essential facts if my characters are ignorant, but being kept in the dark by the author whenall the characters know more than I do, is something I find offensive. I feel manipulated - headfucked.

We don't get the revelations that tie the whole story together until the very end of the book, Lymond's trial for treason in Edinburgh. When they come they make sense of the rest of the story and are wholly satisfying, but is it too little, too late?

I haven't decided whether I've forgiven Dunnett enough to read the next book in the saga. I suspect I'll be missing out if I don't, but will it be a deliberately manipulative as this one? Is that just her style? Okay flist-folks. You love Lymond. Let rip. Tell me what I missed and why I need to read on.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I have grown more ambivalent about these oer time -- I loved them in my teens, but these days I'm far more aware of how in love she was with Lymond and the ways that impacted the writing. I don't know whether to advise you to persevere or not: the second book is, IMHO, the weakest (though it has some fun stuff) and it repeats the 'who is this' trick. The core of them is Lymond's relationship with the eventual heroine, which is very slow to develop -- doesn't even really begin until the 4th book. See what everyone else says.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

As my online friends overlap considerably with yours, I too thought I was missing out on a treat. Everyone seemed to rave about Lymond, but when I finally succumbed and read one, I hated it for exactly the reasons you give. Perhaps I should have started at the beginning, but I read a much later one and I did indeed feel manipulated emotionally and I hated Lymond as a character.

I suspect these work beautifully if you fall for Lymond and think he's wonderful, but he's just so not my type, it didn't work for me.

I now fully expect rocks and brickbats from all the Lymond fans out there. :)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Sorry. This was intended as a direct response to Jacey so the bit about "my online friends overlap considerably with yours" referred to birdsedge's friends, not la_marquise_de_'s friends. Though having now looked, there is overlap there too. :)

Apologies for any confusion created by not replying in quite the right place.

[slrose.livejournal.com]

I could never get into Dunnett's historical novels, although I did enjoy her mysteries.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's NOT just me, then. Come on, Lymond supporters, let's have it!

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I think there's a type of detective story - the Sherlock Holmes type of story - where the big unveiling at the end works, and in those stories, I don't mind when the detective holds back information ('he opened the letter, nodded, and folded it up again') because that's not why I read them.

In any other kind of story, that kind of behaviour annoys me no end. Not just is it playing mindgames with the reader, but it's also plain wrong. If she grew up with him, she would treat him differently - she'd address him by name, she'd consider whether there is anyone who needs to be told. I'd buy it if she had doubts - he sounded just like a man she had once known, but she had not heard the voice for many years, and in any case the voice she remembered had been a boy's voice... she could not be certain. Add knowledge that the protagonist comes from a large family and/or that someone has taken his voice for someone else - and fine. I can live with it. But outright lies to the reader? Much harder to take.

I don't think you can write like that today. Readers seem to be much less willing to stick with something if they're not sure they like it. I'd say these books belonged to the times when you'd turn on the TV and watch the film and only switch off if it was really lousy - rather than today's channelsurfing habits.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Thaks. Yes, I think you're right. Any new author trying that 'lying to the reader by deliberate omission' trick would get very short shrift from potential publishers. I'm totally in agreement with you that if Lady Christian had thought about the possibility of it being Lymond but had harboured doubts because of the length of time since their last meeting or the fact that his vpoice was roughened with stress or illness or since she last saw him his voice had firmed up from a boy's to a man's, but to wait another couple of hundred pages and then to be told that 'she knew him all along' really sucks. There's really no justification for it. You don't even need it for the sake of the story, to be honest. It would have worked just as well if Christian's knowledge had been revealed to the reader even if she continued to play the game with Lymond and let him think she hadn't a clue.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

la_marquise_de_ has a great point in saying that it's obvious Dunnett is wildly in love with Lymond. Only someone so besotted with him could ignore his faults. I don't mind flawed characters - in fact I love their complexity - but I like to see some of their inner workings, which you don't get with Lymond, or at least not in this first book.

I could perhaps wade thriugh one more Lymond book, but if the eventual heroine doesn't appear until the fourth book, I'm not sure that I have the stamina.

I hope the eventual heroine slaps Lymond upside of the head and tells him not to be such a selfish, arrogant, conceited, stubborn bastard. Please tell me she does and I might read on.

[hairmonger.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I have read this book. I read something by Dorothy Dunnett in the late 60s or early 70s, which I may or may not have finished, and which has characters that I picture in late 16th/early17th century clothing. I know the title made me take it off the library shelf, and the first few pages made me check it out, but I spent the rest of the book thinking "Dear me, how dull!" I know I found it annoying as well as dull, but I can't remember any specifics.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

She is pretty clear-sighted with him, and this has already begun, in fact (she's in all the books apart from vol 2).

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I felt the same way after reading this book, but picked up the second one, anyway. She gets clearer, though no less convoluted, in the later books. Yes, Lymond is still annoying, but she lets you see more of his motivations. I wouldn't recommend stopping now, especially since I want to talk to you about it once you're done.

On a somewhat-related note, what did you think of what they did to Jack in "Children of Earth"?

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I do think that the Lymond chronicles were written with the same emotional intent as Star Trek fan fiction.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think the heroine was fantastic. You've already seen her, and she does tell Lymond off, frequently.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

OK, you've convinced me. I'll get the next Lymond book and see where we go from there. I know you were one of the people who recommended it.

Hmm, everyone has been really careful with spoilers.... So... (thinks)... I've seen the eventual heroine but she doesn't come to the fore until the fourth book. That in itself is intriguing.
:-)

I had thought at some point that Lymond had got a thing for Christian, but obviously not since Dunnett killed her off. I doubt it's the doughy heiress with the scratchy voice unless Dunnett is going to pull an ugly duckling on us. It's not Robert's wife is it? Okay, feel free not to answer that. I'd like it to be the big fat madame from the inn on the border, but that doesn't seem likely. I shall be annoyed if it's Mary (Q of S) because a) we'll have to wait for her to grow up and b) Dunnett is going to have to play too much with history.

Do we know how old Lymond is? I'm guessing not much more than 25 or 26 ish. He's spent five years in exile but could have been very young when they set him up.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Had to split the answer because it was too long for one post.

Re Children of Earth. I really enjoyed it and I'm delighted it's earned a fourth season for Torchwood, but there were a couple of things that annoyed me. The Jack Ianto couple thing suddenly coming to the fore was unsubtle and overdone. Maybe they felt they needed to make it obvious because they were hoping to pick up new audience with no clue as to their previous relationship. I liked Ianto coming out to his sister, but his death scene was too melodramatic and I think they could have bumped him off in a different way. I would have preferred for them not to bump him off at all, of course because it just piled misery on to misery for Jack. I also thought that throwing Jack straight into the climax after ianto's death meant that they didn't give him enough time for that grief to sink in before they thre the decision about the grandson at him. I know that in real life the timing of separate griefs is not something you can ever regulate, but this is fiction and the story might have been better served to show Jack already a little bit broken by Ianto's death before making the final decision to sacrifice the child.

Re the sacrificing of the grandson... If they hadn't killed off Ianto they could have had Jack sacrifice the grandson and that act tip the balance of the relationship and drive Ianto away (giving him a loophole to return).

It would have been better if they'd foreshadowed the grandson thing in an earlier series, of course, but a TV series like that doesn't have the liberty to retcon.

Actually I'd have liked it better if the choice had been to sacrifice the grandson or sacrifice Ianto and both Jack and Ianto had chosen Ianto. (They would have had to give Ianto some psychic connection to the message, but it could have been done - maybe Ianto was in the wrong place at the wrong time - i.e. the alien in the tank psyched him or something.)

Jack's now got a huge cloud of gloom hanging over him that's going to be difficult to work round in Season Four (I presume they are bringing him back for season four because Torchwood without Jack would be very dull) unless they a) have Jack in the final Dr Whos and somehow show us what he's been up to off-world or b) have Jack return to Earth sometime (maybe only a year or two) after the birth of Gwen's baby, but possibly centuries for Jack so that other experiences have mitigated what happened.

Unlike the Doctor, who lives with these large scale life and death decisions all the time and would not have hesitated to sacrifice one child (even his own)to save millions, Jack is human, even though he's immortal, and he's got a human psyche. He's currently broken and is going to need something to glue him back together. I just hope they can do it with some subtlety because it's easy to be unsubtle with Jack and the need to be wary of that.

But hey, it's easy to say 'this is what I would have done.' Give ten writers the beginning of a story and you'll have ten different stories. At the end of the day, this isn't the way I would have tackled the ending, but I have no real beef with it and look forward to seeing how the next writing team gets Jack out of the dumps and hopefully returns to usa character with Jack's original bounce.

Do we know whether RTD handed Torchwood over to Steven Moffatt along with Doctor Who or does he still have a hand in it? I haven't been able to find that out in web searches.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

We know how old Lymond is, and he tells us himself at one point. I think he's something like 26 in book 4 or 5, which means right now (for you) he's in his very early 20's, like 21 or 22.

You'll be surprised and I hope delighted by the heroine. I was.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I would have renamed "Children of Earth" to be "How Many Ways Can We Torture Jack Harkness?" Come on, the guy was killed several times, had a bomb stuck in his stomach, was blown up, regrew from scratch, was buried in concrete, had the concrete shattered, then through his own stupidity had his lover killed (who in their right mind would let Jack Harkness talk to the aliens?), and only then did he have to sacrifice his adorable grandson? And now his daughter will never talk to him again.

I did like his comment after Gwen's impassioned plea about how he couldn't just run away: "I can." Yes, he's very much not your typical hero.

I'm sorry they killed off Ianto, though I did like his interactions with his family. I wonder why they're killing off everyone but Gwen. I suspect that once she has the baby then Rhys will end up staying at home with it, so it will be Jack, Gwen, and a new team. I really did like the doctor who turned out to be a traitor. I'm sorry he won't be on the team.

I haven't heard anything re:Steven Moffatt, and in fact never heard anything about Torchwood. I was surprised by the mini-series.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

He's much younger than I expected, meaning he must have been sent off to war, accused of treason and consigned to the French galleys at the age of 17. That seems slightly improbable since a 17 year old will hardly have reached adult strength at that age, no matter how precocious - surely at 17 he's a bit young for full-fledged battle and being accused of spying for the English.

I've been reading a lot of Elizabeth Chadwick's historicals (highly recommended) set at the time of the Angevin kings, particularly Henry II and his sons (though she's written stories set between William the Conqueror to King John's reign) and though they train boys from childhood, they consistently manage to keep the squires out of the firing line until they are big enough to be useful - i.e. capable of swinging a sword while wearing full body armour - at which point the lads get knighted and they are on their way to a brilliant career at the tourneys or fighting for real, or a short trip to an early grave.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Didn't you see the first two seasons of Torchwood? Season One is patchy with some good episodes in it. It starts with Gwen's recruitment. Chronologically Jack then hops to Doctor Who (the end of Season three when Martha saves the world from The Master)and returns to Cardiff in time for Torchwood Season Two which steps up the pace and results in some major character deaths leaving Jack, Ianto and Gwen (and Rhys).

Re Jack dying a lot: we're kind of used to that, though the bomb in the belly was a bit gruesome. I wasn't as worried by how cruel they were to him physically - as the emotional cruelties.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Yes, he was 17 when he was sent to the galleys. But remember, he's a romantic hero, so of course that just made him tougher and taught him to be a better fighter.

Elizabeth Chadwick sounds interesting. Do you have a good starter title you'd recommend? I've been reading up on the Angevin kings lately, and find them fascinating.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

All of Elizabeth Chadwick's are standalones, but some do deal with iterrelated historical personages so could bear reading in sequence. For instance I'm currently reading 'The Scarlet Lion' but William Marchall has appeared as a peripheral character in Lords of the White Castle.

I started with 'Shadows and Strongholds' which is chronologically before 'Lords of the White Castle' though written four years later. Each book is complete in itself. I believe one of the ones I haven't yet read is the story of Joscelin de Dinan who was one of the older characters in Shadows & Strongholds, but it won't matter that I saw him in later life in another book when I come to read his story. I really liked him as a character, in fact.

'The Scarlet Lion' is the second half of the life story of William Marshall who was an impressive tourney knight who survived from Henry II's reign to become the regent after the death of King John. It's obviously worth reading the first half first (The Dreatest Knight) but you might also wish to read the one about his father, John Marshall, before that (A Place Beyond Courage) which is set during the strife between Stephen and Mathilda after the death of William II. That's also a good standalone.

If you want a complete standalone as a sample, The Champion' is excellent.

I'm now busy reading my way through all of hers that I can get hold of. If you look at my recent LJ booklog posts there are seven of them, so far, but beware spoilers. Maybe just pick a title at random and go for it.

My least favourite so far is 'Daughters of the Grail' but even that is well worth reading.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks! These sound great. I really like that time period.