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Learn moreThis second book in the legendary Lymond Chronicles follows Francis Crawford of Lymond who has been abruptly called into the service of Mary Queen of Scots.
Though she is only a little girl, the Queen is already the object of malicious intrigues that extend from her native country to the court of France. It is to France that Lymond must travel, exercising his sword hand and his agile wit while also undertaking the most unlikely of masquerades, all to make sure that his charge's royal person stays intact.
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, Queen Elizabeth appointed her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She died in 2001.
Reviews
“Expert entertainment. . . . Dunnett can describe a duel more convincingly than Dumas.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Dorothy Dunnett is a storyteller who could teach Scheherazade a thing or two about suspense, pace and invention.”
—The New York Times
“[Lymond] is arguably the perfect romantic hero.”
—The Guardian
“A masterpiece of historical fiction.”
—The Washington Post
“Dorothy Dunnett is one of the greatest talespinners since Dumas . . . breathlessly exciting.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Exciting, dangerous, fascinating.”
—The Boston Globe
“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 Expand reviews