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The Game of Kings (Lymond Chronicles, 1) Paperback – April 29, 1997
| Dorothy Dunnett (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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It is 1547 and Scotland has been humiliated by an English invasion and is threatened by machinations elsewhere beyond its borders, but it is still free. Paradoxically, her freedom may depend on a man who stands accused of treason. He is Francis Crawford of Lymond, a scapegrace nobleman of crooked felicities and murderous talents, posessed of a scholar's erudition and a tongue as wicked as a rapier. In The Game of Kings, this extraordinary antihero returns to the country that has outlawed him to redeem his reputations even at the risk of his life.
- Print length543 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateApril 29, 1997
- Dimensions5.17 x 0.97 x 7.98 inches
- ISBN-100679777431
- ISBN-13978-0679777434
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Review
—The Guardian
“Vivid, engaging, densely plotted. . . . Dunnett is a master of suspense and misdirection.”
—The New York Times
“Exciting, dangerous, fascinating.”
—The Boston Globe
“A masterpiece of historical fiction.”
—The Washington Post
“First-rate . . . suspenseful. . . . Her hero, in his rococo fashion, is as polished and perceptive as Lord Peter Wimsey and as resourceful as James Bond.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Dorothy Dunnett is one of the greatest talespinners since Dumas . . . breathlessly exciting.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Dunnett is a name to conjure with. Her work exemplifies the best the genre can offer.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Ingenious and exceptional . . . its effect brilliant, its pace swift and colorful and its multi-linear plot spirited and absorbing.”
—Boston Herald
“Dunnett evokes the sixteenth century with an amazing richness of allusion and scholarship, while keeping a firm control on an intricately twisting narrative. She has another more unusual quality . . . an ability to check her imagination with irony, to mix high romance with wit.”
—Sunday Times (London)
“A very stylish blend of high romance and high camp. Her hero, the enigmatic Lymond, [is] Byron crossed with Lawrence of Arabia. . . . He moves in an aura of intrigue, hidden menace and sheer physical daring.”
—Times Literary Supplement (London)
“With shrewd psychological insight and a rare gift of narrative and descriptive power, Dorothy Dunnett reveals the color, wit, lushness . . . and turbulent intensity of one of Europe’s greatest eras.”
—Raleigh News and Observer
From the Inside Flap
The first book in the legendary "Lymond Chronicles, Game of Kings takes place in 1547. Scotland has been humiliated by an English invasion and is threatened by machinations elsewhere beyond its borders, but it is still free. Paradoxically, her freedom may depend on a man who stands accused of treason: Francis Crawford of Lymond.
About the Author
Dunnett started writing in the late 1950s. Her first novel, The Game of Kings, was published in the United States in 1961, and in the United Kingdom the year after. She published 22 books in total, including the six-part Lymond Chronicles and the eight-part Niccolo Series, and co-authored another volume with her husband. Also an accomplished professional portrait painter, Dunnett exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy on many occasions and had portraits commissioned by a number of prominent public figures in Scotland.
She also led a busy life in public service, as a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, a Trustee of the Scottish National War Memorial, and Director of the Edinburgh Book Festival. She served on numerous cultural committees, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1992 she was awarded the Office of the British Empire for services to literature. She died on November 9, 2001, at the age of 78.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
First of ye chekker sail be mecioune maid
And syne efter of ye proper moving
Of every man in ordour to his king
And as the chekker schawis us yis forne
Richt so it maye the kinrik and the crowne,
The warld and all that is therein suthlye,
The chekker may in figour signifye.
"Lymond is back."
It was. known soon after the Sea-Catte reached Scotland from Campvere with an illicit cargo and a man she should not have carried.
"Lymond is in Scotland."
It was said by busy men preparing for war against England, with contempt, with disgust; with a side-slipping look at one of their number. "I hear the Lord Culter's young brother is back." Only sometimes a woman's voice would say it with a different note, and then laugh a little.
Lymond's own men had known he was coming. Waiting for him in Edinburgh they wondered briefly, without concern, how he proposed to penetrate a walled city to reach them.
When the Sea-Catte came in, Mungo Tennant, citizen and smuggler of Edinburgh, knew nothing of these things or of its passenger. He made his regular private adjustment from douce gentility to illegal trading; and soon a boatload of taxless weapons, bales of velvet and Bordeaux wine was being rowed on a warm August night over the Nor' Loch which guarded the north flank of Edinburgh, and toward the double cellar beneath Mungo's house.
Among the reeds of the Nor' Loch, where the snipe and the woodcock lay close and the baillies' swans raised their grey necks, a man quietly stripped to silk shirt and hose and stood listening, before slidding softly into the water.
Across four hundred feet of black lake, friezelike on their ridge, towered the houses of Edinburgh. Tonight the Castle on its pinnacle was fully lit, laying constellations on the water; for within, the Governor of Scotland the Earl of Arran was listening to report after report of the gathering English army about to invade him.
Below the Castle, the house of the Queen Mother also showed lights. The late King's French widow, Mary of Guise, was sleepless too over the feared attack, for the redheaded baby Queen for whom Arran governed was her daughter. And England's purpose was to force a betrothal between the child Queen Mary and the boy King Edward, aged nine, and to abduct the four-year-old fianc?e if chance offered. The burned thatch, the ruined stonework, the blackened face of Holyrood Palace showed where already, in other years, invading armies from England had made their point, but not their capture.
Few civic cares troubled Mungo Tennant, awaiting his cargo, except that the ceaseless renewal of war against England made a watch at the gates much too stringent; and the total defeat by England thirty-four years since at Flodden had caused high walls to be flung around Edinburgh which were damnably inopportune for a smuggler. And for Crawford of Lymond, now parting the flat waters of the Nor' Loch like an oriflamme in the wake of the boat. For where a smuggler's load could pierce a city's defences, so could an outlawed rebel, whose life would be forfeit if caught.
Ahead, the boat scraped on mud and was lifted silently shoreward. The rowers unloaded. Burdened feet trod on grass, crossed a garden, encompassed an obstacle, and were silent within the underground shaft leading to the cellar below the cellar in Mungo's house. The swimmer, collared with duckweed, grounded, shook himself, and unseen followed gently into, and out of the same house. Crawford of Lymond was in Edinburgh.
Once there, it was simple. In a small room in the High Street he changed fast into sober, smothering clothes and was fed two months' news, in voracious detail, by those serving him. ". . . And so the Governor's expecting the English in three weeks and is fair flittering about like a hen with its throat cut. . . . You're gey wet," said the spokesman.
"I," said Lymond, in the voice unmistakably his which honeyed his most lethal thoughts, "I am a narwhal looking for my virgin. I have sucked up the sea like Charybdis and failing other entertainment will spew it three times daily, for a fee. Tell me again, precisely, what you have just said about Mungo Tennant."
They told him, and received their orders, and then he left, pausing on the threshold to pin the dark cloak about his chin. "Shy," said Lymond with simplicity, "as a dogtooth violet." And he was gone.
In his tall house in Gosford Close with the boar's head in chief over the lintel, Mungo Tennant, wealthy and respectable burgher, had invited a neighbour and his friend to call. They sat on carved chairs, with their feet on a Kurdistan carpet, ate their way through capon and quails, chickens, pigeons and strawberries, cherries, apples and warden pears, and noticed none of these things, nor even the hour, being at grips with a noble and irresistible argument.
At ten o'clock, the rest of the household went to bed.
At ten-thirty, Mungo's steward answered a rasp at the door and found Hob Hewat, the water carrier.
The steward asked Hob, in the vernacular, digressing every second or third word, what he wanted.
Hob said he had been told to bring water for the sow.
The steward denied it. Hob insisted. The steward described what instead he might do with the water and Hob described in detail how he had ruined his spine raising the steward's undistinguished water from the well. Mungo, above, thumped on the floor to stop the racket and the steward, cursing, gave in. He led the way to the apartment beneath the stairs where lived Mungo's great sow, the badge of his house, the pet and idiotic pig's apple of his eye, and waited while Hob Hewat filled its water trough. He then sat down suddenly under an annihilating tap on the head.
Hob, who had done all he had been paid to do, disappeared.
The steward slipped to the floor, and stayed there.
The sow approached her water dish, sniffed it with increasing favour, and inserted both her nose and her front trotters therein.
Crawford of Lymond tied up the steward, left the stye, and climbed the stairs to Mungo Tennant's apartments.
In the gratified presence of their host, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch and Tom Erskine were still hard at it. Buccleuch, beaked like a macaw, was a baroque and mighty Scots Lowlander with a tough mind, a voice like Saint Columba's, and one of the biggest estates on the Scottish Border. Erskine, much the younger, pink, stocky and vehement, was a son of Lord Erskine, who was head of one of the families nearest the throne, and captain of the Queen's fortress of Stirling.
"Just wait," Buccleuch was roaring. "Just wait, man. Protector Somerset will get his damned English rabble together and march into Scotland up the east coast. And he'll tell off his commander, Lord Wharton, to get his Cumberland English together and invade us at the same time up the west coast. And half the west coast landowners are pensioners of the English already and won't resist 'em. And all the rest of us'll be over here at Edinburgh fighting Ned Somerset-"
"Not all of us," said Erskine neatly.
Buccleuch's whiskers promenaded. "Who'll stay in the west that's worth a docken?"
"Andrew Hunter of Ballaggan?"
"Christ. Andrew's a nice, gentlemanly lad, but his estate's been bled dry; and as for the ill-armed crew he calls followers- Man, they'd lay on a battlefield like dandruff."
"The third Baron Culter?" suggested Tom Erskine, and Buccleuch got the derisive note and turned red at the wattle.
"I know fine the cheeky clack of the court," shouted Buccleuch. "They say Culter's not to be trusted."
Tom Erskine lifted the broad, brocade shoulders. "They say his younger brother's not to be trusted."
"Lymond! We know all about Lymond. Rieving and ruttery and all manner of vice-"
"And treason."
"And treason. But treason's not Lord Culter's dish. There are those that want to take time and men to hunt down Lymond and his band of murderers; and those that demand that Culter should lead them as proof of his loyalty. But if Richard Crawford of Culter won't interfere; says he has better business to attend to and refuses flatly to hound down his brother baying like the Wild Jagd, that still doesn't make him a traitor." And inflating the great chasms of his cheeks, Buccleuch added, "Anyway, Culter's just got married. D'ye blame him for keeping his shield on the hook and his family blunders all tied up at the back of the armory?"
"Damn it," said Tom Erskine, annoyed, "I don't blame him for anything. It isn't my fault. And if it's that black Irish beauty he married, I don't expect he'd notice if the Protector knocked on the front gate at Midculter and asked for a drink of water. But-"
The large red face had calmed down. "You're dead right, of course," said Buccleuch cordially. "In fact you've given me a wee notion or two I can use to the fellow himself. If Culter's going to be in credit at court at all, he'll need to bring himself to capture that honey-faced de'il."
Mungo Tennant, the silent and flattered host, was able to make respectful comment at last. "Crawford of Lymond, Sir Wat?" he said. "Now, he's not in this country, as I heard. He's in the Low Countries, I believe. And when he'll be back, if ever, God knows. . . . Bless us, what's that?"
It was only a sneeze; but a sneeze outside the door of their chamber, which dislimned every shade of their privacy. Tom Erskine got there first, the other two at his heels. The room beyond was empty, but the door of Mungo's bedroom was ajar. Taking a candle like a banner in his fist, Erskine rushed in.
His hair soft as a nestling's, his eyes graceless with malice, Lymond was watching him in a silver mirror. Before Erskine could call, Buccleuch and Mungo Tennant had piled in beside him and Lymond had taken two steps to the far door, there to linger, hand on latch and the blade of his sword held twinkling at breast level as they jumped, weaponless, to face him, and then fell back.
"As my lady of Suffolk saith," said Lymond gently, "God is a marvellous man." Eyes of cornflower blue rested thoughtfully on Sir Wat. "I had fallen behind with the gossip. . . . Nouvelle amour, nouvelle affection; nouvelles fleurs parmi l'herbe nouvelle. Tell Richard his bride has yet to meet her brother-in-law, her Sea-Catte, her Sea-Scorpion, beautiful in the breeding season. What a pity you didn't wear your swords."
Rage mottled Buccleuch's face. "Ye murdering cur. . . . You'll end this night-"
"I know. Flensed, basted and flayed, and off to hang on a six-shilling gibbet-keep your distance-but not tonight. The city is not full great, but it hath good baths within him. And tonight the frogs and mice fight, eh, Mungo?"
"Man's mad," said Buccleuch positively. He had managed to pick up a firedog.
"Mungo doesn't think so," said Lymond. "His mind is on fleshly lusts and his treasure." And certainly, the jennet fur at his neck warped with sweat, Mungo Tennant was gaping at the intruder.
Lymond smiled back. "Be careful," he said. "Pits are yawning publicly at your feet. O mea cella, vale, you know . . ." And suddenly, it came to Mungo what he was threatening.
"Don't linger, I pray you, cuckoo, while you run away," said the sage. Mungo Tennant said nothing. He rushed toward Lymond, collided with Tom Erskine on the way, and falling, sat on the candle. There was a moment's indescribable hubbub while the three men and the firedog blundered cursing into each other in the dark; then they got to the far door and wrenched it open. The corridor as far as the stairhead was quite empty, and the light feet running downward were already some distance away. They hurled themselves after him.
They were three floors above the ground, and the staircase was spiral. The spilth of Buccleuch's bellow rattled the pewter in the kitchens; Tom Erskine shouted and Mungo piped like a hen-whistle. The servants on their pallets heard and started up; tallows flared and a patter of bare feet began on the rushes below.
Mungo's sow heard it too. Drunk as a bishop, she hurtled stairward as the first of the servants arrived. Great blanket ears flapping and rump arched like a Druid at sunrise, she hurled herself at them as Lymond and his pursuers fled down. She bounced once off the newel post, scrabbled once on the flags, trotters smoking, then shot Mungo Tennant backward, squealing thickly in a liberated passion of ham-handed adoration. Mungo sat down, Buccleuch fell on top of him and Tom Erskine swooped headfirst over them both, landing on the pack of unkempt heads jamming the stair foot like stooks at a threshing. Winnowing through them, utterly unremarked in the uproar, was Lymond.
Screaming, squealing and grunting, the impacted cluster swayed on the stairs, torn and surging like rack where the pig unseen hooked the bare feet from under them. Buccleuch was the first to get free, grey whiskers overhanging the swarm like a Chinese kite at a carnival. "Lymond!" he shrieked. "Where's he got to?"
They scoured the house in the end without a trace of him, although they found Mungo's steward mute and bound in the pighouse. "Damn it!" said Buccleuch furiously. "The windows were barred and the door lockit-he must be here. Where's your cellar?"
Mungo's face was spotty under the pig-spit. "I've looked there. It's empty."
"Well, let's look again," snapped Buccleuch, and, was there before Tennant could stop him. "What's that?"
It was, undoubtedly, a trap door. In bitterest necessity, Mungo Tennant held them up for ten minutes protesting: he claimed it was sealed; it was ornamental; it was locked and unused. In the end Buccleuch stopped listening and went for a crowbar.
It opened with a hissing, fairly oiled ease.
Mungo need not have worried. The lower cellar, the cavern and the long underground tunnel to the Nor' Loch contained no contraband at all. But, because tuns of Bordeaux wine make hard rowing, all the wells of Edinburgh ran with claret next day; and on this, the eve of the English invasion, the commonality of the High Street were for an hour or two as blithe as the Gosford Close sow.
Late, the laminated sheet of the Nor' Loch held a faint chord of laughter.
"There was a lady lov'd a hogge
Honey, quoth she
Won't thou lie with me tonight
Hoogh, quoth he."
And, long since ashore with his men and his booty, Crawford of Lymond, man of wit and crooked felicities, bred to luxury and heir to a fortune, rode off serenely to Midculter to break into his new sister-in-law's castle.
"Won't thou lie with me tonight
Hoogh, quoth he."
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Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; Reprint edition (April 29, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 543 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679777431
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679777434
- Item Weight : 13 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.17 x 0.97 x 7.98 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,063,624 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19,071 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #76,135 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

DOROTHY DUNNETT was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. She is the author of the Francis Crawford of Lymond novels; the House of Niccolò novels; seven mysteries; King Hereafter, an epic novel about Macbeth; and the text of The Scottish Highlands, a book of photographs by David Paterson, on which she collaborated with her husband, Sir Alastair Dunnett. In 1992 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature. Lady Dunnett died in 2001.
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Starting with volume I, you definitely want to be able to flip back to the opening pages, in which the many characters, both historical and fictional, are listed with their full names and titles. Otherwise you may well believe you are reading about three different persons, when it is really only one, or vice-versa. There are also maps in the opening pages of each volume, to help locate where things in the story are happening from time to time. A paperback edition is ideal for handling these things. Besides, the quality of the writing itself rates shelving these volumes in your favorite spot.
Scattered here and there in our winding tale, you will also find occasional poetry, song lyrics, and sayings in Scottish, Latin and early French, which will be more easily understood in context if you also purchase a paperback version of Elspeth Morrison’s "The Dorothy Dunnett Companion," where translations are likely to be found — as well as more detailed descriptions of the many mid-16th-Century characters and events covered in this impressive Chronicle.
Why put yourself through all this? Because, despite the above challenges plus a vocabulary that easily vies with that of Nabokov in complexity and obscurity, the late Dorothy Dunnett was a master story teller who keeps you, the reader, enthralled and constantly surprised at what happens next throughout quite an amazing tale of high adventure taking place in Scotland, England, France, the Levant, and Russia. The education comes extra!
I gather that Dorothy Dunnett’s writings have gained an international following, and I believe it is well deserved. Furthermore, I’m so glad I finally got to reading these books that had been recommended to me by one of my best students many years ago.
The writing style is often opaque and can be hard to understand. You really have to slow down and read every word, because there is so much there in the writing to notice.
The plot is complex and I am sure I missed quite a few things. It is shocking and keeps you guessing the whole way through. Things are slowly revealed as Dunnett pulls back the curtain to explain what has been going on.
So why is this book a five star? For me it was primarily the characters, but also the dialogue. The characters are fascinating. Dunnett has complete understanding of her characters: what they are thinking and feeling and reacting to at all times. The main character, Lymond, is an enigma for most of the book. It was amazing pulling back the layers of his characters and really exploring his internal motivations.
This book works for me because of the history and the atmosphere. It will not work for everyone. The closest I can compare to it are a few historical fiction authors.
Recommended to fans of Sharon Kay Penman, Patrick O'Brian, and Diana Gabaldon.
Top reviews from other countries
Amongst these thrilling raids, labyrinthine political intrigue and daring escapes, the plot is slowly being teased out and we begin to realise there is more to this brutal antihero than is first apparent. The unraveling of this complex character kept me hooked right to the end.
The writing style is unashamedly dense with historical detail, the atmosphere of the period is painstakingly created. The language is complex and difficult, littered with quotations in many languages and references to classical and early European mythology and politics. The writer uses these to a large degree to create a distinctive voice for her main character, It is clear when he is talking, even if not made explicit in the text, by the way he uses language, as a weapon, to confuse and obscure his true purpose as well as to wound. It
often has a similar effect on the reader as on the victim (reading on the kindle is useful as you are only a tap away from a Wikipedia or dictionary definition, although, often, Lymond confounds both of these). I did find the book challenging and infuriating at first, until I got into the rhythm of it, there is no need to understand every reference, just because you can't breathe underwater it doesn’t mean you shouldn't swim. Once you get past this, the writing is mesmeric, it makes you slow down, it demands your focused attention, you cannot skip lightly over the pages. It gets right inside your head.
Don't be misled, though, this book is no dry historical epic, it is thoroughly entertaining. You are never far away from a joke, something shocking, something scurrilous. Lymond's madcap adventures rattle along with breathtaking speed. This book is anything but dull.
This is the best book I have read all year, I have never come across anything like it before. It was exhausting but rewarding to read and I have thought of little else for the past week.
This first book is set in 16th Century Scotland when the infant Mary was queen. The books follow the adventures of Francis Crawford of Lymond on his return to Scotland from exile and imprisonment as a galley slave.
I first read these books when they were first published and have reread them many times over the years. The books visit many European countries and Russia and paint a vivid picture of the French, English, Russian and Scottish courts. Lymond is a mercenary, a leader of men and probably the best flawed heroic character in literature.
I fell in love with him when I was 16 and love him still.
If you haven’t read Dorothy Dunnett what a treat you have in store!
In this book you are also introduced to Philippa aged 10 who as the series progresses becomes my very favourite heroine ever.
And now they're in Kindle format. I'm over the moon! Delighted! I may never leave the house again!
They are not an easy read, not something you can browse through with half a mind. The writing is challenging, awe-inspiring and mesmorising. One runs out of superlatives. Read the series in the correct order, this one being the first, and do not stop until you reach the very last page of "Checkmate." Enter the rarified world of the Lymond Chronicles and you will never want to leave.








