Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [0]
GEMINI AND THE HOUSE OF NICCOLÒ
“Dunnett has brought her House of Niccolò series to a triumphant end [and] has saved some of the best surprises in the series for last…. She deserves a spot on any serious reader’s short list of masters of historical fiction.”
—The Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer
“No one who has read the first seven volumes will want to skip this one.”
—Newsday
“As a writer of historical romances, Dorothy Dunnett … epitomizes [the genre]…. She salts it with wit and intelligence and serves it with style and elegance.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Dunnett is a storyteller who could teach Scheherazade a thing or two about pace, suspense and imaginative invention.”
—The New York Times
“The House of Niccolò books amount to an extraordinary achievement…. Even academics, so often contemptuous of historical novels, have come to respect her comprehensive research and her exactness with documented history…. I wish this were not the end.”
—Sunday Telegraph
“Powerful, almost operatic…. The conclusion of a great work…. The publication of Gemini completes an ambitious literary circle.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“Mistress of several languages, both ancient and modern, and of many literatures and philosophies, Dunnett produces writing that is informed, formal and flawless…. Opulent descriptions, witty repartee, gripping duels and battle scenes, ebullient practical jokes, and smoldering sexuality crowd the chapters with a life so full of color and intensity that it leaps off the pages.”
—The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
“Dorothy Dunnett, historical novelist extraordinaire. Witty, urbane, observant…. The best writer in the genre since Sir Walter Scott.”
—Sunday Times (London)
“A stunning finale…. There are plots and counterplots, terrific fights, hairbreadth escapes and rescues and daring cliffhangers. The suspense and excitement amount to a breathless pitch of tension…. With their obliquity of references, allusions, veiled hints and sudden revelations, her books are sophisticated, closely woven gems. Elegant, scholarly, witty and fully crafted social novels, they are enhanced by Dunnett’s acute observation, basic common sense and deep knowledge of human nature.”
—Journal Extra
“Enthralling…. Fans will be reluctant to let go.”
—Booklist
“A series that will give us our fill of high Renaissance adventure and espionage…. She strings every vivid incident on a rapturously solid sense of period.”
—The Guardian
“Dunnett’s gift lies in her ability to take history’s bare bones and invest them with life. She does this by creating … characters whose humor and pathos reach across centuries…. Like a literary Pieter Breughel, she reproduces history in all its grime and glory…. Her work exemplifies the best the genre can offer.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Dunnett writes the most exciting historical novels around…. [She is] one of the greatest tale-spinners since Dumas.”
—The Plain Dealer
“Complex and ambitious…. Throughout the series, Dunnett has maintained her consistency of vision, presenting the Renaissance in a multilayered collage, depicting in detail a world that in many ways set the stage for the onset of modernity in Europe. Readers are accustomed to seeing this degree of world-building in science fiction and fantasy. It is refreshing to find it in a work so grounded in actual events…. Always immaculate in her research, brilliant in character descriptions, hers is a style second to none.”
—The Washington Post Book World
For Alastair
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Characters
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part II
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part III
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter