Be prepared to have your heart broken

Reading the Lymond chronicles makes me live half in 16th century Europe. Wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, my thoughts turn to the characters and what is going to happen next in this dense plot. I know the books well, yet there is always something new to notice and admire. My son was about two when I first read Pawn in Frankincense and now he has his own baby son of 18 months…it makes the fate of the babies in the book even more unbearable. It is too vivid. You have to have a strong stomach for some of the passages in this work but things do get better before the end of the series. There is so much to enjoy in Dunnett’s writing; stunning descriptive passages, a glorious, flawed hero, a deep mystery running throughout the books, the evilest villain imaginable, a cast of believable and likeable support characters. These books aren’t for everyone. They are intellectually and emotionally demanding and you have to be prepared to concentrate to get what’s going on. But they are so rewarding. It’s the two words of Gaelic that will devastate.

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Fantastic

Dorothy Dinner is a queen of this genre and Audible has not let her down!

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Lymond in the Med

Oh, yes. This one. The one they talk about in hushed whispers. A game played out between two masters from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, one a sadistic genius, the other a man of brilliance and control aware that he is balancing way too many interests to do anything other than manoeuvre with an inhumanly clinical skill until the opportunity comes to act decisively. Chasing a kidnapped child and his mother with a strange motley of friends he'd rather weren't there and a misanthropic pawn broker and horologist and his shocking and incomprehensible assistant, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny embarks on a fearful and harrowing voyage that culminates in one of the most tense, agonising emotionally devastating set-pieces in literature. A truly magnificent novel, and a wrenching turning point for the whole series

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A really good book

As in all of the Lymond Chronicles, this also one really keeps you entertained. As with all of them, the twists and turns in the story keeps you wondering what is going to happen. I never guessed the next twist or turn, but this one did make me hold my breath when it came to the "live chess game". be prepared for the unthinkable. All the books are very very good.

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Just incredible

Once you’ve heard and read DD’s incredible prose no other storyline will every match it.

She’s witty, dynamic and her characters will become the loves of your life.

This is my favourite book by far - maybe because the Turkish setting brings so much vibrancy and a taste for the ruthlessness of the culture in the 16th century.

In a way, these books are too good. I want more. And I’ll never find it.

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Could be the best adventure story ever written

From assassins in Germany to rooftop chases in Algiers; Barbary pirates, Maltese Crusaders, murderous eunuchs, and treachery in the perfumed seraglio of Suleman the Magnificent, the pace never slackens. A cast of complex and fascinating characters engage upon a quest to rescue a child and halt the ambitions of an evil genius. Above all, it is wonderfully well written and the narrator does the book full justice.

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3 people found this helpful

Heart wrenching story set in historical Europe

Exciting story of good versus evil; part of a series. The hero travels all round the Europe of the 16th century, joining in the political intrigue while searching for his son.

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