Gemini (The House of Niccolo, 8) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A marvel of storytelling and historical imagination, Gemini just may be Dorothy Dunnett's pièce de résistance. This culminating installment of the House of Niccolò series is set in Scotland in 1477--and more specifically, in the world of international trade and commerce, which can deal fatal blows to those unfamiliar with its intricacies. When Nicholas de Fleury returns to Edinburgh after a four-year absence, speculation runs rampant about why he closed all his ventures in Scotland and deserted his friends. Struggling to fend off various assassination attempts, Nicholas rejoins the fledgling court of young King James III. Yet he soon discovers that the squabbles between the monarch and his double-dealing siblings are no less dangerous than the intrigues he has left behind. Dunnett recounts the whole story with typically ornate and pungent prose, and delineates her massive cast of characters with a Holbein-like attention to physical detail.

Nicholas in particular is a splendidly rounded creation. And by placing him at the center of her sprawling narrative, Dunnett helps us to navigate the many convolutions of the plot. Her female characters, too, are distinctive. However, it is the sheer breadth of Dunnett's ambitions that takes the breath away, along with her exhilarating set pieces:

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.

En garde, Dunnett fans! Those who have made the long trek with our sword-brandishing hero will find this a perfectly orchestrated finale. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Few literary projects these days rival in scope Dunnett's dazzling House of Niccol , a series of well-researched historical novels (each running over 500 pages) that propels its 15th-century hero across Turkey, Poland, Italy, France, Flanders, the Sahara desert and Scotland in search of gold, legitimacy, glory and family. This eighth and final installment finds the former banker Nicholas de Fleury back in Edinburgh, grappling with a whirlwind of royal machinations, business deals, family vendettas and empire-building challenges. Despite an absence of four years, the charming, shrewd Nicholas quickly insinuates himself back into the court of King James Stewart III, striking up a friendship with James's rebellious brother Sandy and spying for the king's coterie of advisors. Meanwhile, Nicholas must keep watchful eye on the wealthy St. Pol family, which has long hated him for claiming to be Simon de St. Pol's son. (The family insists he's the bastard child of Simon's promiscuous ex-wife.) Will the tempestuous adolescent Henry de St. Pol discover that he is Nicholas's child, not Simon's? Will France help Sandy topple the weak King James? Will the nefarious David de Salmeton, a religious procurator, be able to assassinate Nicholas? Can Nicholas and his wife, Gelis, maintain their hard-won happiness? These are just a few of the questions that underlie this intrigue-ridden epic. Considering the vast cast of characters (a list of them runs 13 tightly spaced pages), it's remarkably easy for the neophyte to enter Dunnett's adventurous world, for the author does an outstanding job of keeping each personality distinct and each of the innumerable subplots coherent. But despite the bounty of suspenseful sword fights, feasts, battles and closed-door negotiations, the real pleasure here lies in the reams of artful repartee, which can rival Jane Austen's for wit and subtlety. Despite a few minor flaws (the wives are too good, the peasant girls too compliant, a few historical distortions), Dunnett's work sits triumphantly at the top of a crowded field: it is a sensational, emotionally resonant epic. Introduction by Judith Wilt. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 702 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (May 8, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375708561
• ISBN-13: 978-0375708565
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #303,416 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 8 in The House of Niccolo Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Culmination of the House of Niccolo, July 11, 2000

By	Nancy J. Silberstein (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Gemini (The House of Niccolo, 8) (Hardcover)

"Gemini" is the long-awaited finale to Dorothy Dunnett's blockbuster series, The House of Niccolo. Nicholas de Fleury - banker, world traveler, former owner of a small private army - returns to Scotland to make reparations for the economic damage he did in the course of his revenge on the St. Pol family. With a wrench, he leaves his wife, Gelis, and son, Jordan, behind in Bruges in safety because he fears that Jordan St. Pol, his presumed grandfather, and David de Salmeton, an adversary in trade, may take revenge on him through attacks on his family.

Nicholas returns to Scotland as the agent of his wife, Gelis, but finds himself working to shore up an unstable Stuart monarchy, threatened from without by England and from within by cadet members of the royal family.

As with all Dunnett books, "Gemini" is packed with marvelous set pieces, lush descriptions, lucid explications of the politics of the day, heart-wrenching deaths, and moments of joyous triumph. Questions raised in earlier books are answered - mostly - we readers need a few things left to argue about, don't we?

Judith Wilt has provided an excellent introduction that synopsizes the seven earlier books ably, but reading them in order is still preferable.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Concentration necessary, November 9, 2000

By	Judith Bradley (Bethesda) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gemini (The House of Niccolo, 8) (Hardcover)

One reason for the delay in reviews from this reader is that I have been engrossed in the latest - and last - of the House of Niccolo novels. To do this absolutely unparalled historical series justice, one must be in a quiet place --read a bit --go away to ruminate on what has been read --and then return for another helping. Exhausting and exhaustive. Dame Dunnett is a walking encyclopedia of every aspect of 15th century life. Our hero (whose name changes throughout the course of the series, and whose unknown parentage is the force that drives him to be what he is) has been everywhere throughout the world in the course of these seven novels, and we have been there with him - from Bruges to France to Germany to Byzantium to Africa to Iceland to Scotland --and places in between. He is the darling - or the scourge - of almost all of the royal houses of Europe. It is necessary every once in awhile to refer back to earlier novels to keep all of the characters and incidences straight, and Dame Dunnett's way with commas doesn't make for easy reading, either. But many readers - myself among them - will be entranced with with the numerous memorable characters along the way. The history, although confusing, is fine - but we read on to discover what will finally happen to Nicholas and those who love him. Hard reading, but worth it. One only hopes that she doesn't really mean to end the series here - there are still questions unanswered, and people whose fate we want to discover. I know that the Lymond Chronicles are supposed to carry us on with the adventures of Nicholas's descendants, but I first need a long rest!

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars more of a whimper than a bang, September 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Gemini (The House of Niccolo, 8) (Hardcover)

I have loved both the Lymond and the Niccolo series, but must say that I think the Niccolo series began unravelling slowly from the 5th volume on. The 7th felt downright incoherent, with N. shooting off to various corners of the 15th cent. world for no very good reasons. People actually stay put in this volume, which fits well with Niccolo's own change of emphasis from adventurer merchant to family man and friend. This change of emphasis unfortunately also led to a book that maintained neither pace nor excitement, and was way too long for the amount of action. If there had been character development left to work out, Dunnett might have held my interest. But Niccolo achieved his maturity by the end of #7, and we all know before opening Gemini that Gelis is a really good guy as well. Henry is the exception, and in the several scenes between him and his unknown father Dunnett did have me eagerly reading. Can the brat be redeemed?

The timespan of this book is twice that of any of the others, which would be fine except that so little in fact happens. Niccolo spends some time being real nice to his friends and trying to tame Henry, but his only real project other than this personal business is chasing after an obnoxious young Scottish prince to try to keep him from causing Scotland trouble. Is this a job for a grown man? Much less our hero of boundless energy and unlimited capacities. There are a couple of token mentions of economic plans in the works, something to do with "coal" and "salmon", and his buddies all gape with astonished admiration at the fabulous scope of his ideas, but Dunnett does nothing with this, although in theory his reason for returning to Scotland was to make reparations for the economic damage he'd done.

If Niccolo does very little, Fat Father Jordan *really* does very little. His conversation is as delightful as ever, but where are this vindictive and clever man's plots and strategems? Surely we had a grand confrontation owing between these two, after 7 volumes? Instead, Niccolo's grand confrontation ends up being, really, with the unlikeliest villian of all!

I got the feeling that Dunnett was more interested in presenting the reader with a detailed tapestry of the Scottish rich and powerful of the period than with giving her story a satisfying finale.