Dorothy Dunnett pt.2

[petronia]

(At some point I will update the current book list. Other than Dunnett, it now contains Ballard, Delany, Bujold, Novik, Iain M. Banks, and more dark elves - I forgot about that part. XD;)

Done with The Game of Kings, a few chapters into book 2. I was talking to charmian - actually, quite a while back I remember telling Charmian that The Scarlet Pimpernel is a far more compelling experience when you're 11 and cannot guess the plot. Dunnett without the benefit of metagaming, on the other hand, strikes one as a recipe for disorder. XD; Primo, you have to know it's a freaking hexology, so you can afford to operate on the assumption (otherwise unsupported for great swathes of initial pagecount) that your protagonist has an actual motive for his actions. Secundo, it's one of those books where ghosts of authors both earlier and later crop up as plot-signposts at every turn, which is fine because there's quite enough plot to go around. It's sort of a picaresque novel scooshed into a spy novel (Le Carre) scooshed into a mystery novel (Christie) scooshed into a family drama scooshed into A YAWNING PIT OF HURT/COMFORT. Which I found pretty funny, because for h/c to work you need minimum theory of the emotional life of the character in question. XD; It's not a high bar and, at the point Dunnett kicks you off the cliff, you've crossed it - if your last name is Holmes or Poirot. I was in the act of craning around to pat myself on the back, proud of having figured out whoactuallydunnit - ahead of time, I foolishly thought - and suddenly Lymond was swooning prettily and getting shot with arrows. It was a change of pace. Mind you, he'd already had amnesia for like 30 seconds at that point.

Some notes:

1) The emotional life of the character... is, I have a horrible feeling, not tremendously different from T.E. Lawrence's. Like if this book were first person POV, which is structurally almost unimaginable; just much, much bitchier.

2) Not that you'd be reading this if you've not finished the book, but the mystery plays fair - if I'd known that I'd've brained harder. Mostly I sped along entertained by the trainwreck of Lymond's relationships with pretty much everyone ever. (Apart from Kristin Christian Stewart, who had an inappropriately Victorian finale.) It's weird because it's not that slashy, but I can't think of anything outside origslash where grown men start as much ridic *DRAMA* with each other as, say, Will Scott does with Lymond. At one point Lymond is like, son, I got 99 problems and you ain't even a... It dawned on me thereafter that he liked the kid. As a person. Much later Richard's all: out of sheer morbid curiosity, does Will Scott have any idea how old you are? And you're like, OH GOD. DON'T TELL ME. THAT ACTUALLY EXPLAINS SO MUCH.

Dunnett, of course, then proceeds not to tell you. All the information flow in the book basically happens like this.

3) That ineffable mid-20th-century style of historical fiction that makes no attempt to restrict its characters to period vocabulary or indeed thought paradigms (Becket, The Lion in Winter...). Lymond has access to all of his period and beyond, so I'm not saying Dunnett didn't research - she must've researched extensively. I'm saying these days she probably would have pitched this directly to HBO or the BBC.

4) And then, Lymond spends a couple of years... bumming around the Culter estate? Getting Mariotta to teach him Irish, apparently. It seems highly awkward. XD

I put a hold on book 4, but investigation of the catalogue indicates that book 3 is the only Dunnett book the library doesn't have, orz.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole Richard bit is exactly what I mean about metagaming Dunnett. Like, at that point sheer narrative logic was A RAGING RIVER sweeping away all in its path, such that I was surprised Tom Erskine didn't see it coming. XD;; If I were him I'd've been like, OK, you know what, Culter, you do your thing, Imma head back to Scotland. Go nuts! I will bet you ten Spanish doubloons this ends in a way that is less astonishing to me than it will be to you! Look for a cave, that would work awesomely. Maybe a log cabin.

I wasn't frustrated, per se, but I did feel like I had to constantly bring the entire toolkit to the table. XD; Lymond's emotions are implicit in his actions, what you can't expect is for other characters or the narrative to relay the analysis. eg. at the beginning of Queen's Play when they're about to get rammed by the other ship, and his first instinct is to unlock the galleys - which is such a huge step out of character that one registers it as such, even subconsciously. (I don't usually try to "figure out" mysteries, because I read faster than I cogitate. XD) It's like an Easter egg game where you keep unlocking secret levels of ALL ANGST.

I don't plan on skipping book 3, although I've stopped reading while I figure out if I genuinely want to order a used copy of book 3 only out of 6 online. >_> I have Consider Phlebas - conversely, out of these writers Banks is the only one I've never read at all.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Sankyuu! This will keep me moving. ;D

[rondaview.livejournal.com]

...Seriously what is it with the smart peoples I am talking to on the Internets about Dunnett, I keep having to look up unfamiliar terms because my vocab has been vastly outpaced by the linguistic inventions of the interwebs since the last time I was involved on LJ in any significant capacity, circa 2006. Eg. I was talking to applegnat (who you should totally talk to about Lymond btw -- I think I've made this user rec before but I feel it is worth being eyeballed askance to do it again. SHE IS THAT AWESOME OKAY!) about Lymond and she kept using the term "fridging" in connection to Christian and I was like WHAT DOES THAT MEAN. But now I know! /irrelevance

Well, after you bring your whole toolkit to PiF, maybe you can explain to me, slowly and at length, why certain characters do the things they do. With Dunnett I am never sure if I failed to get something because it just wasn't there or because I am too much of a numbskull to live. :D

Have you got to the relevations in QP yet? See it coming at all? And yes, I do agree that QP is the slowest Lymond book. I liked the first half because asglaksgjlkag;ag heaping amounts of hurt/comfort (seriously? did not know I dug that stuff until Dunnett introduced this Outrageously Handsome Do Everything hero character and now all I want is to see him suffer), but the latter half, not so much. CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO GET TO DISORDERLY KNIGHTS/PiF HOLY COW.

ahaha sorry for the comment spam. what could be more fitting for a monday morning?

[rondaview.livejournal.com]

PS. have you read Dhalgren??? I hear that is the best Delany book to start (and the best Delany book, period) if you've not read the author before.

Re: ahaha sorry for the comment spam. what could be more fitting for a monday morning?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I haven't! It is never in the library (getting to be a theme). I also more or less started Delany at the top, because the earlier books were way shorter XD and you really do get the impression of watching this boy genius improve his thinking by leaps and bounds. And then I read a bit into his really later stuff. I'm at Stars in Your Pocket Like Grains of Sand.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Christian = ttly fridging, ttly unnecessary :/ (apart from the historical imperative of Tom Erskine marrying someone else I guess)

The thing about Lymond is he encompasses or overlaps several character archetypes, and one of them is the Light/Lelouche type - which I love for the sheer joy and acute hilarity of watching them go off like a windup toy, and no sympathy whatsoever. XD XD XD The sympathy I have for Lymond comes from elsewhere aspects.