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The King stood still, without answering. Nicholas faced him, and saw again how enchanting he was, and how alone, and how young. He said, ‘Most excellent, brave and glorious prince, may God give you happiness. You and your island.’

— Race of Scorpions, Dorothy Dunnett

#dorothy dunnett #house of niccolo #race of scorpions #nicholas/zacco #saying this quote has had me on a chokehold for the past 2 years would be the understatement of the century

beamorgan

Congrats DLS, that's an objectively insane way to describe your protagonist on the opening page of book 1

#lord peter wimsey #yeah that's bestie (both sayers and peter)

rennybu

a piece i excavated from my 2022? files... it was either redo it from scratch, or post it as is, so here we are... i profoundly love a wizard of earthsea and am due for a re-read

#earthsea #a wizard of earthsea #wow!

mala-taste

I love it when people who have only read Lymond go, "Well, the characters may think that some of them have supernatural powers but this is just a combo of the Barnum effect and those characters having a good information network. The inclusion of magic just accurately reflects the superstitions of the time period the books take place in!" because then I, the enlightened House of Niccolò reader, get to tell them that no actually Lymond's great grandpa point blank knows how to work magic and he uses it for get rich quick schemes, financial fraud, and stalking his estranged wife.

#hon #nikko is just special like that #what would francis have done with those powers i wonder #would they have made his life easier or way more complicated #(it's dunnett so probably the latter)

scorchedhearth

characters who dig themselves out of their graves (whether literal or metaphorical) are at the top of the list. nothing beats a character who should have died but didn't and comes back to haunt their own life and the world around them, benevolent or violent it doesn't matter, it's enthralling either way

#prev #also leo dan brock my beloved

reading Earthsea and having a profound oh my god i get it moment with Le Guin

#reading le guin and thinking ohhhh robin hobb you are Dust and Bones (to me)

chamomile-teabag

WHAT ARE YALL READING RN you must tell me

#soldier of the mist by gene wolfe #which i'm loving and from page 1 i totally understood why i've been hearing nothing but good things about wolfe over the years #and the girl next door by jack ketchum #man why do i always end up reading books in which helpless young characters suffer. please just torture adults #it's really well written but picking it up makes me so sad because oh my god #this girl is in a horrible situation and her entire support system consists of a 12 yo #who doesn't want to believe her because he's scared and her abusers are basically his second family #it will only get better from here i'm sure...

leojurand

absolutely obsessed with this part in the climax of to lie with lions. when nicholas enters the room to confront gelis and finish their game, he thinks he won't tell gelis what he has done, something neither gelis nor the readers know about yet. he wants it to be over; he wants to be with her.

but here, when jordan exposes him, nicholas can't help but throw these jabs, these mocking explanations. he knows what he did is wrong, that's why he doesn't want to tell gelis anything. but like kathi says later, part of him is also proud of everything he's accomplished. it's so fascinating, it's incredible characterization, and dunnett pulls it off brilliantly.

congratulations nicholas de fleury once again on being the character of all time

#god i miss him #nicholas is so kind :)

owww i wish i could find a book series with a big cast of characters that takes its time with their characterization and the relationships between them, but also has many secrets and mysteries that get resolved gradually, and rewards you for paying attention because it's very detailed and consistent and also also isn't afraid to get a bit weird with it.

and you can't say the lymond chronicles or the house of niccolò

#this post brought to you by me watching mike's mic lost s4 recap #like whatever anyone says about that show and not ignoring that it had its flaws for sure #it just did So Much. and regardless of quality it never stopped being crazy which i appreciate a lot #and there was always juicy conflict between the characters YESSS we love conflict!!#atrocious romantic plotlines aside lol my god the amount of hetslop #but that's my show anywayyy it's too nostalgic for me i can't hate #and like i said. i want a book series like that sooo bad

mala-taste

Is it bad that I no longer even have to read the book to know that the author is a Dorothy Dunnett fan, I just need to see 3-5 people reacting to the book to Know It?

mala-taste

This is about the Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson btw. A blogger I follow is reading it and I went into its tag to see if it may be of interest and...

Hmmmmm

HMMMMMMMM

💅💅💅💅

aspocko

lets go girlies. new book to read.

#the raven scholar #i literally bought this book even tho i never buy new hyped fantasy books #because i had a Feeling about it #so this is great newsss i love to see it

in a way the relationship between katelina and nicholas in Race of Scorpions exists as a direct contrast to gelis and nicholas and makes you realize that gelis is the only one nicholas could have fallen in love with, even if katelina had lived ("your sister was a sweet lover and urgent as you are and wilful as you are but never never with the glorious madness that you bring that you brought" and all that)

but i also think the relationship between zacco and nicholas kinda lays the groundwork for nicholas/gelis as well. zacco does have that glorious madness. he gets to nicholas and sees through him in a way that gelis does too, but never katelina. people around them are a bit horrified by what zacco does, and therefore nicholas too because he works for him, just like they're horrified by gelis and nicholas. there's also a sort of like. violence? in the affection zacco and gelis feel for nicholas, even though it's for different reasons.

it's not all similarities because i think the key difference is that zacco was a little too domineering when it came to nicholas (which makes sense because he was a king), while gelis and her games made her and nicholas equals with a similar wavelength, because nicholas loves games.

anyway this is super random and i wonder if i'm crazy or if it was intentional and because dorothy was like That i choose to believe

#house of niccolo #maybe i could talk about this more coherently if it weren't for the fact that i last read RoS 2 years ago but alas #maybe domineering isn't the right word because zacco was also very sweet and he did play with nicholas like they were #two baby lions but also his sweetness towards nicholas came off as suuuuper possessive so lol #I MISSED HONPOSTING WOW

leojurand

contender for gayest dunnettverse scene and i'm not joking

#thinking about them. again.#why is the kiss on the brow DEEP AND HOT #dorothy fujoshing out

crazy how Pawn in Frankincense is the best book of all time but it's not Dunnett's best book

#does anyone get it

mblematic

captive prince getting people into the lymond chronicles is so funny to me... like oh you enjoyed half a weed brownie? have you tried... heroin ?

#lymond #truly hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby #but also... they don't know they should actually be reading house of niccolò...

leojurand

seeing the way people talk about Jaime Lannister makes me so glad that Age of Madness isn't nearly as popular as ASOIAF so i don't have to see anyone perceiving Leo dan Brock as long as i stay away from the First Law subreddit. peace and love

leojurand

also what i meant in the tags is that people judging characters by their own morals instead of trying to understand their arc based on the character's own environment is boring. and i get why the average reader would do that but when you have books like First Law or ASOIAF it gets very hypocritical very fast because fans have wildly different moral standards depending on the character. we're all biased but. come on.

#“why does jaime have so many shooters” - a cersei fan

seeing the way people talk about Jaime Lannister makes me so glad that Age of Madness isn't nearly as popular as ASOIAF so i don't have to see anyone perceiving Leo dan Brock as long as i stay away from the First Law subreddit. peace and love

#i did already go Through It during the great the wisdom of crowds war of 2021. i was in the trenches #different bad takes though #like the discourse with jaime seems to be very “you can understand a character and all dislike them because they're unlikeable” which. yeah?#or “why should i care about what this cishet white man goes through” which. could be said about 50% of the cast of ASOIAF lol #but it's also a very boring way of engaging with fiction #and sure you can dislike a character and you can think their arc isn't compelling #but when it's so obvious that you're judging them from YOUR perspective instead of trying to see THEIR perspective #i judge... i do judge you a bit #i don't want to quote any tweets specifically but in general it's a very stantwt type of discussion of the character #which means it's not interesting and very surface level #anyway leo you're safe my child

leojurand

Gelis Van Borselen is so so special, I think it's just as hard to find similar characters as it is with Nicholas because very few authors are brave enough to write a female character like That but also for some reason I feel like there's a tether with Alicent... I just can't explain it because I've never even watched hotd lol but it's a hunch

leojurand

I watched The Lion in Winter recently and Eleanor of Aquitaine? Gelis variant for sure

#it's all coming together...#the scene where eleanor is tormenting henry about sleeping with his father. which she might or might not have done. lollll

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