Customer Reviews

The Unicorn Hunt

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In this book of the Niccolo Series, we are introduced to the race set by Gelis and Nicholas to outsmart eachother. It was started by Gelis, trying to avenge her sister's death, but Nicholas understands he must do this to try and win her heart for good. She claims she is carrying the son of his archrival, Simon de St. Pol. He decides to travel to Scotland to find the truth. At the same time, he finds Scotland a great market to increase his fortune.

Pursuing Gelis, Nicholas has to find out if the child is finally born and what sex it is. Once he finds out, Gelis hides once more from him. They travel to Cairo, the Sinai Desert and end up in Cyprus once more. The book closes on the Carnival in Venice and a new discovery for Nicholas.

In this book we are newly introduced to Dorothy Dunnett's best: Scotland. She can present the atmosphere and living customs of the time with incredible clarity and knowledge. The people, the rulers, the history, the places, everything is depicted with accuracy and made very interesting.

I have also enjoyed and learned a lot by this book. Be it about European history as well as middle eastern.

I am on my way to reading the sixth book...

I enjoyed this book much more than the previous - Scales of Gold. Maybe because Ms. Dunnett went back to her original form of storytelling which combines history, geography, romance and high drama. This is an "edge of your seat" type of book even though it is longer than the others previously in this series. We see Nicholas with a whole new talent to add to his arsenal - that of divining. Yes these books are a bit soap-operaish, but they are exciting nonetheless. In this particular segment we get to see a lot more of Dr. Tobias. He is a treasure, and a great foil for Nicholas' impulsiveness. His Love-Hate relationship with Nicholas continues, but also develops into a trust. I wondered why Nicholas didn't take this earthy doctor into his confidence sooner. Toby is a wonderful character! We also see a confrontation between Nicholas and his erstwhile father, but true to form, it is not resolved, so we know we have to read further. I wouldn't recommend this series to the faint of heart. It takes a lot of effort and emotion to get through it, but it is worth it in the end, if only for the history lesson.

Nicholas has a new talent to add to his already stunning arsenal. The confrontation between father and son finally is realized with both surviving the encounter, but they are forever changed. Ms. Dunnett lets fans have a taste of happiness for Nicholas in the end but don't count the happiness to last. Readers know it never does. True to her form, she mixes politics, commerce and romance with skill and in doing so, weaves a story so deep and complex fans are left begging for more.

This literate and witty historical novel is the fifth volume of Dunnett's epic "The House of Niccolo." It continues to follow the fortunes, machinations and torments of Nicholas vander Poele, the former Flemish apprentice who rose from the troubled circumstances of his birth to become a wealthy banker and knight.

As the story opens it is 1468 and Nicholas is in Scotland, newly married but without his wife. He has renounced claims of kinship with his father and enemy, Simon de St. Pol, and is now calling himself de Fleury, after his mother's family.

His presence in Scotland is puzzling to his partners in his Venetian bank as affairs elsewhere need tending and Nicholas seems to be diverting vast resources to building a new trading empire in Scotland. But Nicholas is plotting.

Having learned on his wedding night that his bride, Gelis van Borselen, is pregnant with Simon de St. Pols' child - probably in revenge for Nicholas' secret siring of Simon's son with Gelis' sister - Nicholas has designed an elaborate scheme for his own revenge.

Amid scenes of royal pageantry, jousting and sumptuous feasting, Nicholas appears a mysterious figure, taking water while others drink wine, remaining on the sidelines while others display their skills, dressing always in black - the world's most expensive dye.

But one winter night he takes advantage of the of the confusion of a royal hunt to have Simon abducted, terrified, humiliated and delivered to him at the salt works - a dark, hot factory of bubbling cauldrons and immense furnaces where an exhausting battle of wills, wit and strength ensues. This deadly and vividly visceral struggle is interrupted before its conclusion and Nicholas is forced to leave Scotland to attend the death of a friend.

All this less than a quarter way into the book. And it's only part 1 of Nicholas' scheme.

Still to come is a trading journey to the east and numerous tests of will with Nicholas' wife as well as the complications of secondary characters, one of the most interesting of which is Katalijne, a 14-year-old, sharp-witted girl of many talents.

All of Dunnett's characters are as complex and fore-sighted as her plot. The dialogue is witty and the atmosphere superlatively described. Although the novel stands alone, some of the motivations may be clearer to those familiar with earlier volumes. A synopsis of these precedes the narrative.

I read the preceeding volumes of the Nicolo series more or less all at once, as I didn't discover the series until Scales of Gold came out; I'd loved the Lymond saga and was thrilled to discover that Dunnett had begun another series.

But although Lymond was also a troubled character capable of outrageous and cruel behavoir, I found both Nicolo and Gelis harder to understand and take to. Then I was so outraged and disgusted by the ending of Scales that I abandoned the series until I think the 7th volume came out, when I decided to give it another try, trusting that Dunnett would come through.

But I still didn't take greatly to the series. In addition to my problems with the main characters, I most dislike the introduction of the "divining", because otherwise (outside of the typical swashbuckling novel ability of a hero to survive incredible injury and illnesses despite the state of 15-16th century medicine) Dunnett's historically detailed and accurate novels are realistic, and the introduction of "divining" - pure fantasy claptrap - was jarring compared to the sight touch of the occult in Lymond (The Dame). The "foresight/vision" ability was more tolerable, since it was less vital to the plots and tied the two series together. But I still wish Dunnett had found some other more realistic device.

That said, I just recently read the entire Lymond and Nicolo sagas again, slowly, carefully, not trying to devour them a book a day like a page turner as I was wont to do when younger, and my faith in Dunnett's artistry in creating memorable complex human characters and intricate plots firmly based in history and geography was confirmed. (Just one small example is her description of the flash flood of a small river tributary in Scotland in the final Nicolo volume Gemini; working in hydrology and fluvial geomorphology for many year I can attest that she got it amazingly accurate.)

So my more mature assessment of both series, as well as the beautiful "King Hereafter", is that they are a marvelous achievement, a feast to savour again and again, rewarding a careful reading with many days of enjoyment.

In this book, set between October 1468 and February 1471, our hero Sir Nicholas De Fleury appears to have designs on the kingdom of Scotland under the reign of King James III. Friends, foes and business rivals alike have different plans for Nicholas. As does his wife Gelis: the one enemy he cannot face directly.

Nicholas is as brilliant and dangerous as ever, but no longer as joyous. Driven by a range of motivations, he undertakes a series of journeys which range across Europe and the Levant. Along the way, he makes a number of discoveries, learns some painful truths and is forced to confront all manner of demons. This richly layered story is told against the backdrop of the complicated politics, religious issues and trade of the times. Underlying it all is the enigma that is Nicholas himself: a complex contradiction of strengths, weaknesses and at times suprahuman brilliance.

This is the fifth in the eight book series: House of Niccolo. I would strongly recommend anyone reading these novels to read the series in order. The plot and character developments build progressively and are interrelated.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Very few books have fascinated me as much as Lady Dunnett's two historical series. She is one of the greatest historical fiction writers of our age.