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At about page 100, the book stopped being a slog sprinkled with interesting bits and became an interesting book sprinkled with slogs.
I have identified a major reason why people tend to give up on it, apart from the fact that it's full of untranslated dialogue in at least four different non-English languages, it's hard to keep the characters straight, the politics are exceedingly complicated and Dunnett seems to think you're already well-acquainted with Scottish history, things happen for no apparent reason, everyone's motivations are kept opaque, the conversations sometimes remind me of attempting to eavesdrop on people speaking a language where you only know the interjections, and at least half of Lymond's dialogue is totally incomprehensible even when he appears to be speaking in English:
It's that once you get a grip on what's going on in any given chapter, the next chapter inevitably dumps you into a totally new inexplicable situation populated by new people who aren't properly introduced and whom you haven't met yet. So no matter how much you enjoyed the previous chapter, the one after it requires the exact same struggle to get into it that the previous one did. This makes the book very easy to put down and presumably never return to. I can't help seeing this as a flaw. Do the books ever acquire the sort of flow where you can just keep reading from chapter to chapter?
I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the fair scene. Do I detect a homage to the archery contest in Robin Hood? Did people really shoot at a live parrot atop a pole? Is Lymond really such a crack shot that (if he was being honest with Christian when he said he never intended to kill anyone that day) he could put an arrow into Richard's collarbone without the chance of putting it into his heart? (We'll leave aside the impossibility of even that paragon Lymond being able to know whether or not Richard would drop dead of infection.)
Lymond still annoys me. But I like Christian, even though she's frequently incomprehensible in the same way Lymond is. Does she know who he is, and if so, why is she protecting him? And if she doesn't, then why is she protecting him? She doesn't seem the type to fall madly in love and turn traitor over a pretty voice. Also, weren't English and Scottish people distinguishable by accent in those days? I was puzzled by the whole question of who was who, as they sound quite different to me.
I think Lymond's statement to her that if he told her he'd killed his sister and then she found out he hadn't, she'd love him twice as much as if he'd never said he was a murderer at all holds the key to his bizarre actions. Is the whole traitor thing an imposture, so that once people learn that he isn't one they'll think he's the greatest? That seems awfully elaborate. Or (this seems more likely) he was framed, and now he's using that theory to try to make the best of it while he clears his name by... running around being publicly and flamboyantly traitorous. Hmm.
Lymond is starting to strike me as the sort of person who would never get a watch dog to guard his house when he could spend three years secretly installing a Rube Goldberg anti-burglar system that would allow thieves to get inside and then dangle them upside down on their way out and then drop them into a big spiked pit, but would not tell anyone about this because that would ruin it, but be so concerned that his friends and relatives would get stuck in it that he'd publicly denounce them all in terribly erudite and insulting terms to make sure that they'd never drop in unexpectedly, and then spend the next three years coming up with clever plots to redeem himself in their eyes while still ensuring that they'd never visit. Meanwhile, the burglars would have heard that he'd been disinherited and lost his fortune, so they'd never show up.
I have identified a major reason why people tend to give up on it, apart from the fact that it's full of untranslated dialogue in at least four different non-English languages, it's hard to keep the characters straight, the politics are exceedingly complicated and Dunnett seems to think you're already well-acquainted with Scottish history, things happen for no apparent reason, everyone's motivations are kept opaque, the conversations sometimes remind me of attempting to eavesdrop on people speaking a language where you only know the interjections, and at least half of Lymond's dialogue is totally incomprehensible even when he appears to be speaking in English:
It's that once you get a grip on what's going on in any given chapter, the next chapter inevitably dumps you into a totally new inexplicable situation populated by new people who aren't properly introduced and whom you haven't met yet. So no matter how much you enjoyed the previous chapter, the one after it requires the exact same struggle to get into it that the previous one did. This makes the book very easy to put down and presumably never return to. I can't help seeing this as a flaw. Do the books ever acquire the sort of flow where you can just keep reading from chapter to chapter?
I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the fair scene. Do I detect a homage to the archery contest in Robin Hood? Did people really shoot at a live parrot atop a pole? Is Lymond really such a crack shot that (if he was being honest with Christian when he said he never intended to kill anyone that day) he could put an arrow into Richard's collarbone without the chance of putting it into his heart? (We'll leave aside the impossibility of even that paragon Lymond being able to know whether or not Richard would drop dead of infection.)
Lymond still annoys me. But I like Christian, even though she's frequently incomprehensible in the same way Lymond is. Does she know who he is, and if so, why is she protecting him? And if she doesn't, then why is she protecting him? She doesn't seem the type to fall madly in love and turn traitor over a pretty voice. Also, weren't English and Scottish people distinguishable by accent in those days? I was puzzled by the whole question of who was who, as they sound quite different to me.
I think Lymond's statement to her that if he told her he'd killed his sister and then she found out he hadn't, she'd love him twice as much as if he'd never said he was a murderer at all holds the key to his bizarre actions. Is the whole traitor thing an imposture, so that once people learn that he isn't one they'll think he's the greatest? That seems awfully elaborate. Or (this seems more likely) he was framed, and now he's using that theory to try to make the best of it while he clears his name by... running around being publicly and flamboyantly traitorous. Hmm.
Lymond is starting to strike me as the sort of person who would never get a watch dog to guard his house when he could spend three years secretly installing a Rube Goldberg anti-burglar system that would allow thieves to get inside and then dangle them upside down on their way out and then drop them into a big spiked pit, but would not tell anyone about this because that would ruin it, but be so concerned that his friends and relatives would get stuck in it that he'd publicly denounce them all in terribly erudite and insulting terms to make sure that they'd never drop in unexpectedly, and then spend the next three years coming up with clever plots to redeem himself in their eyes while still ensuring that they'd never visit. Meanwhile, the burglars would have heard that he'd been disinherited and lost his fortune, so they'd never show up.