Caprice and Rondo : The Seventh Book in the House of Niccolo (House of Niccolo/Dorothy Dunnett)

Rating:
Summary: Rich and complex
Review: Caprice was everything I expected from Dorothy Dunnet, and I expect a lot. Great atmosphere, great story. But warning, don't start with this book. Read others in the series first. Like all the Niccolo and Lymond books, Caprice is beautifully researched and difficult to follow in the beginning pages. There are dozens of characters, most witty, and they often read each other's minds. Even minor players have large roles, so that following their conversations--and indeed who's talking--takes some getting used to. But there's a reward. Soon, you catch on and and it's a joy. Dunnet's ellipses let you participate much more than a simpler presentation that gives every character's every thought to you straight up. These people become your own family, friends, acquaintances and enemies. Unlike another reviewer, I found the characters exquisite, but then I know them from several prior books. It really helps to read the first book, Niccolo Rising, if not the ones between, to understand Nicolas and sympathize with him. And I doubt Gelis, Nicolas'wife, or her actions would have any meaning at all to readers who had not sufferred through her betrayal in earlier books. But it's still a great story. This edition does have a nice list of characters and summary of the plots from previous books, which are very welcome.

Rating:
Summary: The Niccolo Series begins to draw to a conclusion
Review: The seventh of Dorothy Dunnett's eight book House of Niccolo series is Caprice and Rondo. The Niccolo books have never engaged me quite as thoroughly as her earlier series The Lymond Chronicles did. Those are among my very favorite historical novels ever. The Niccolo novels are good, but I have tended to find them a bit harder to follow. However, in the particular case of Caprice and Rondo, I was able to follow the action quite readily. Perhaps as the series comes to a conclusion the answers to the many mysteries are becoming clear.

This book opens with Nicholas in Poland. He's been kicked out of his company and exiled from Scotland and the Netherlands as a result of his actions in the last book. (This is another reason the Niccolo books are a bit harder to like: Nicholas does some pretty clearly bad stuff. Whenever Lymond seemed to be up to something bad, it turned out he was being misunderstood.) In Poland he spends a winter womanizing and drinking with the pirate Pauel Benecke, who wants him to join in a pirate mission the following summer. But Anselm Adorne, the upright burgomaster from Bruges who misunderstands Nicholas pretty comprehensively, and who stands in a role vaguely similar to Lymond's brother Richard Crawford in the Lymond books: a good man who tends to regard the hero as an enemy because he doesn't understand him, shows up on a mission to try to recover damages from an earlier piracy committed by Benecke. Also, Adorne and the Patriarch of Antioch, Ludovico da Bologna, intend to head to Tabriz to negotiate with the Persian Uzum Hasan for support against the Turks. (So far, every character I have mentioned except Nicholas is an actual historical character. Dunnett does this extravagantly, on occasion, I think, using characters mentioned very briefly in historical records, which allows her to claim a character is historical but treat said person just like a fictional character.) And Nicholas' long-time friend Julius and his wife Anna also intend to go East, to Caffa in the Crimea, to negotiate new trade agreements for their part of Nicholas' former Bank. Inevitably, Nicholas is drawn into accompanying Anna and the Patriarch to Caffa and Tabriz, and he's also drawn into (or does he do it on purpose???) shooting Julius so he can't come, and frustrating Adorne's plans so he has to go home, mad at Nicholas again. Follows then plenty of action and danger and sexual tension, (this last as Nicholas, frustrated by 8 years of separation from his wife Gelis, must resist his attraction to Julius' beautiful wife), as things go horribly bad in Caffa, and Nicholas ends up trekking to Moscow, and a meeting with the mysterious Greek with a Wooden Leg, Acciajouli, who was involved in the very first of Nicholas' escapades from Book 1.

In parallel, we follow Gelis and Katelijne back in Scotland and Bruges, as the evil David de Salmeton hoves into view again, ready perhaps to revenge himself on Nicholas by attacking those close to him. At the same time Gelis begins to work to resolve her conflicted feeling about Nicholas. Of course, eventually Nicholas is lured back to the west, to confront difficult revelations about his family, and about his relationship with Gelis, and with others, and to try to rebuff various threats to his family and friends.

Much is resolved: perhaps almost too much. Some of the eventual revelations are a bit lurid, and perhaps a bit too reminiscent of some "revelations" in the Lymond books. Nonetheless, the book is fascinating reading, absorbing, colourful, complex. Another fine chapter in an excellent series of historical novels.

Rating:
Summary: Finally Some Explanations
Review: This the seventh book in the Niccolo series does offer some explanations of Nicholas's early life and gives some reasons as to why he did the things that he did. Brilliant Nicholas has been exciled to Poland. He tries to forget all of his previous life and become a devil-may-care pirate, but his history keeps coming in to interfere, and he has to resume his life in order to protect those that are dearest to him. In this book we contine to see the beautiful Anna, Julius's wife, and without giving the story away she is certainly not what she seems.
We also see Nicholas and Gelis get back together at the end of the story. That is indeed a happy occasion, but it puzzles me where Katalejne fits into this. We don't see much of her in this story, and that is a great loss since I for one feel that she is by far the superior heroine in this series.

I can't wait to read the last book in the series. Perhaps then things will all make sense. I found that there were some similarities between this series and the Lymond series, and that disappoints a bit, since the Lymond series is so superior. But this is still a good series and it's well worth the time spent to read it. I recommend reading all the books in the series in the order that they written.