Niccolò Rising

Hello, a happy Dunnett reader here. I started this series with excitement and some trepidation. What was it going to be like? You know what to expect from Dunnett, and you never know what to expect from Dunnett.

So, we are in the 1460’s – here is Flanders, here is Burgundy, here is Brittany, here is Milan...

Intrigues; back-stabbing; clandestine meetings; assassination attempts; avalanches; swashbuckling; duels (fought with oars, of all things!); battles; crazy fun escapades; merchant house machinations. What a great mix of ingredients! I had no idea I could care so much about trade in Renaissance Europe. Dunnett made it fascinating, glorious, exciting. I had no idea I could care about alum! (I had to google it, too!)

The writing show more brought me joy.

”Bruges was the multiple voice of working water; and the quality of brick-thrown echoes, and the hiss of trees and the flap of drying cloths in the flat-country wind, and the grunting, like frogs in a marsh, of quires of crucified clothes, left to vibrate in the fields of the tenters. Bruges was the cawing scream of the gulls, and the bell-calls.”

Let’s talk about the characters. Claes/Nicholas: a dyer’s apprentice who is anything but by the end of the book. Dunnett tries to fool you, talking about an “oak tree with dimples”. Claes gets beaten uo a lot and makes people laugh. But ”Claes was always making toys, and other people broke them.”. Me: I think these people and the world had better watch out. Dunnett does a lot of showing and no telling at all. Most characters, and Claes especially, remain obscure. The showing that is going on is akin to a stage magician’s – look into my hat; no, there was no hat. You get glimpses. Claes/Nicholas is a genius, ”He had only his brain, which absorbed instruction and held it, for ever.” I found that I was always ageing him in my head by 10 years or so – there is no way he is eighteen. (Suspension of disbelief is a useful thing.) I do like that my idea of him is not complete yet. There are seven more books to go, after all. As for the others – Katelina (awesome!), Julius, Tobie, Gregorio, Marion – I am so curious about them all. I am curious about the villains, too. They are quite delicious, all wearing a sign “I am the villain of this book, am I being villainous enough for you?” It reminded me of the moment in The Three Musketeers, when d’Artagnan meets de Rochefort for the first time – only Dumas spells it out much more than Dunnett.

The plotting is impeccable, and Dunnett, as always, excels at emotionally exhausting scenes. There were narrative choices I did not quite like, but they did not lessen my enjoyment. Oh, and my heart broke again. The dramatic reveals towards the end are very satisfying to any reader who likes intricate and intelligent plots. The ending is excellent. I am looking forward to the next book so, so, so much!

P.S. The ostrich is great, I loved the ostrich! 😆😆😆 show less

Some chaotic incidents, beginning with an incident with a bath, a cannon and a canal, upset the good Burghers of Bruges. They also launch the career of a brilliant, dangerous man into the world of the Renaissance, where chivalry is on the wane and business is on the rise, and war is business. Despite his brilliance, he makes mistakes, or over-reaches, or simply sets in motion trains of events that have outcomes even he can't control or predict, for he is still young and inexperienced. If he survives his enemies, disasters, wars, tragedies and the machinations of Dukes and kings, he still has his family to worry about, because under all the plots and plans and clever designs there are deeper, ineradicable secrets. This is merely the show more edge, the launch and dive into the world of Niccolo. Questions you weren't aware were being posed in the first page will not be answered the end of seven whole epic novels, because though the writing can seem fine as filigree, it's also as sharp as razors and the plot is like a network of steel hawsers. Dive in, it's brilliant. show less

Oh Nicholas, the little schemer you are… I’m obsessed.

Set in the high middle ages on the cusp of the renaissance, Europe is filled with many factions and their representatives, all with their own agendas. (Both the factions and the people, and the people’s goals do not necessarily align with the faction they are part of to complicate things further.) Conflicts are fought in the background between the Ottoman empire and the Pope, between the French among themselves and the English also among themselves.

Among it all, Nicholas the foolish apprentice turns into a merchant who trades in letters, mercenaries, cloth and secrets.
The story was told through various third person perspectives, and this is both a strength and a weakness. This show more book is filled with names, titles and places, in various languages. It added an amazing scope to the story, but also distanced Nicholas.
No one knows what he is truly thinking or feeling. Maybe he loves the Charetty family. Maybe his personality all an act. Maybe it’s maybelline. Who knows?
Regardless, it was a grand adventure to follow him and I want to read what he does next. show less

Three young men floating down a canal inside a bathtub being delivered to a Duke in Bruges. Action and hilarity ensue but this chapter is key--don't read it lightly. I read it twice in a row. The chapter has layers and kicks off the events not only in this book but in the entire series. This is my second time through this series--it was a delight the first time when I had the pleasure of reading it through with several co-workers--we had a lot of fun at lunchtime discussing the antics of Nicholas de Fleury and company. And it was a delight this time. Dorothy Dunnett is for people who love dense historical fiction (I know this because there is a Dorothy Dunnett society and a Wiki)--she mixes in real events with fictional characters in show more 15th century Europe and there is always a surprise waiting around the page for you the reader and the characters in her books.

Please, oh please, someone adapt this into a series for HBO, Showtime or Netflix. show less

When Dunnett finished the Francis Crawford of Lymond series she felt there was more to Francis Crawford's story that needed to be detailed. By way of explanation she went back to the 15th century. Niccolo Rising is the first in the House of Niccolo series and features Nicholas de Fluery, three generations before Francis Crawford of Lymond's birth. For reference, the 1459 Queen of Scots is thirteen years old.
Be prepared for high drama! Nicholas (or Niccolo or Nicholas vander Poele or Claes, as he is first called) only wants what every young man craves - acceptance, recognition, and love from his elders. When we first meet him, he is known as Claes, an eighteen year old dyer's apprentice. Clumsy as a puppy and equally annoying, the people show more in his life spend most of their time babysitting his actions and cleaning up his messes. It is hard to imagine Claes's transformation into a good-with-numbers, savvy businessman who capture the heart of one of the most prestigious women in the country. Much like 15th century Bruges's commerce and trade, Claes undergoes a spiritual and intellectual growth. By the end of Niccolo Rising he is practically unrecognizable. And that's when the fun starts... show less

I liked this very much. It's a real puzzle-box of a book, and wants close attention -- Dunnett makes you work hard for your swashbuckling. But it was so rewarding, and exactly what I want out of the genre. I'd read some really tepid historical fiction in my 20s and had pretty much decided it wasn't for me, but Wolf Hall knocked me out and I'd been hoping for something similarly complex, evocative, and seamless in regard to research/story. This was entertaining and invigorating, although it took me the first hundred pages or so to get into her narrative groove. But very much worth it, and dammit now there are seven more to the series and, I find out, two companion books so you can look up the historical references. I'm hoping they have show more costume pictures, because that's what I was most curious about, and Google only satisfies halfway show less

Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolo series offers us an entry into the world of the late 15 century in all its richness and physicality, with the food, the pewter cups and candian wine, the sumptuous clothes, the woodsmoke-filled freezing halls, the pissstinking dye vats, the canals and bridges and gates of the towns, the armour, the pageants, jousts, feasts and plagues, the high politics, and low scheming of bankers, burghers, bishops and high born bastards, Dukes, Kings and Princes, the wars, wounds, living, loving and dying.

Here is a partial list of historical events covered by the series:

The fall of Trebizond, last outpost of the Byzantine empire
The rise of the Ottoman Empire in the black sea
The trade rivalry between Genoa and show more Venice
The end of the Lusignan dynasty on Cypress
The Wars of the Roses in England,
The marriage of James II of Scotland and Margaret of Denmark
The marriage of Zoe Paleologue and Ivan the Third Grand Duke of Musocvy
The disintegration of the empire of the Golden Horde
The sack of Timbuktu by the Songhai empire
The siege of Famagusta
The fall of the duchy of Burgundy

Through all these events the hero of the series, Nicholas van der Poele, steers his remarkable career, first as a Tyl Eulenspeigel-like apprentice in Bruges, then mercenary leader, merchant, banker, pirate adventurer, inventor, maths genius, lover, diviner, political and financial advisor to Dukes and Princes, father and enigmatic friend. He is accompanied on these adventures through early modern Europe and the Levant by his band of friends and colleagues, each of whom has a particular skill: a doctor, a priest, an apothecary, a gunner and metalsmith, a notary, a business manager, a ship master and so on. The running story line is the visceral feud between Niccolo and the St Pol family, and the commercial rivalry between Nicholas’s own company and the mysterious Vatachino firm.

Dunnet is an extraordinary phenomenon. Her novelistic method is to eschew internal psychological narration (of the kind that Eliot and Tolstoy employ), and to focus on the events and actions of the characters, the external view. This creates the incredible pace of the novels, and at the same time keeps the reader alert for what is really going on underneath the surface. Her understanding and presentation of history is thick with the details of ordinary life; she completely understands the complex relationships between politics, religion, economic forces and the inertia of everyday life and how in this period all is seared with trade. She is capable of intensely beautiful descriptive prose, a kind of maidenly raciness in the love scenes, swashbuckling set-pieces of violence, subtle and elusive descriptions of negotiations at high levels. She weaves together her fictional characters and the real personages of history so well that you cannot tell the difference. Her development of character (over 4,300 pages and eight novels) is astonishing in the way she commands the reader’s loyalty, respect and love for the ‘good’ characters, and hatred for the ‘bad’ characters, without sacrificing complexity and insight into how those characters have become what they are. She is also a witty commentator on the parameters and conventions of the genre without introducing the kind of jarring anachronisms that mar many writers of historical fiction. Her metaphors are all firmly entrenched in the worldview of the characters (which, according to that most didactic of critics James Wood, is the hallmark of great writing) and there are several very funny jokes. My favourite is the list of the (uncapitalised) names of the castles owned by Prince Sigismond of the Tyrol: sigmundhelm, sigmundhof, sigmundfried sigmundfreud…

Like the great Dumas, she is capable of invoking in a sophisticated (possibly jaded) adult reader the kind of feverish, intoxicated, under-the-bedclothes-with-a-torch kind of reading last experienced in childhood.

Read the full review on The Lectern:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2008/09/house-of-niccolo-dorothy-dunnett.html show less