Re: Speed Reading

jimcolli@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Paul Ilechko wrote: 

I'm wrapping up the Dorothy Dunnett "House of Niccolo" series, I'm close
to the end of the eighth and last book, "Gemini". If you're interested
in early renaissance history, good writing, and damned good
storytelling, then the whole set is highly recommended.



Compare with George Eliot's _Romola_ for my elucidation.
I've done little more than peruse Dunnett in bookstores.

Romola is set at a specific time, beginning with the death of
Lorenzo Medici in Florence in 1492, a year marked
as otherwise unimportant by his Italian contemporaries,
but marked as pivotal by the author.  Romola makes
a bad marriage with a pretty boy named Tito Melema.
Savonarola's crusading book burners lurk everywhere.

Haven't read that one, sorry. Dunnett's books start in 1460 and run through into the early 1480s. Lots of interesting historical events - the fall of Trebizond and Caffa/Crimea to the Turks; Civil War in Cyprus and the siege of Famagusta; the fall of Timbuktu; war between Burgundy and France leading to death of Duke Charles, followed by murderous mayhem in Flanders; English invasion of Scotland led by Gloucester (future Richard III of England) and Albany (brother of the Scottish King James III); etc.

As far as writing ability goes, I'm not going to claim that Dunnett is at the level of Eliot, but she writes with a subtlety and dry humor generally unknown to writers in the historical romance genre. She is the Henry James to Patrick O'Brian's Jane Austen, perhaps.
.

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