Niccolo 3

The saga of Niccolo continues.... If you like historical fiction this series is a good one to seek out. ( )

Race of the Scorpions is the third installment in the House of Niccolo series. Nicholas vander Poele is a mere twenty-one years old and already a widower. His stepdaughters want nothing to do with him and summarily locked him out of house and business.
Of course there are interesting character maneuvers as well. Niccolo has a new enemy in Katelina van Borsten. She seduced Claes into taking her virginity and after their second tryst became pregnant. She ended up marrying Simon who's first wife gave birth to Claes. Ultimately, Kate married Claes's stepfather and together they are raising Kate and Claes's child, unbeknownst to Simon. All the while, Nicholas is growing in power. His business sense is blossoming which further irritates his enemies.

Dunnett continues to masterfully weave fictional story-lines around real people, places and events. It's what could have happened and probably did.
As an aside, her sex scenes are only hints of trysts and conquests, tastefully done. ( )

The Perils of Niccolo continue. An ax is buried in his shoulder and yet he survives and perseveres. This is the third installment of the House of Niccolo series and takes place in Greece and Cyprus, where Niccolo is caught between the warring half-siblings, Carlotta and James of Lusignan, who both claim the throne. The Genoese and Venetians are here, scheming, Uzum Hassan's Turkomans are in the background, and the Mamelukes have arrived. The politics and warfare are very twisty and complicated. And so are the personal relationships. Simon St. Pol is mercifully absent, but Katelina is an important character and we meet more people Nicholas seems to be related to.

I had my usual troubles with Dunnett. The overwriting is everywhere and I wish her editor had rationed her comma use. More seriously, her treatment of female characters continues to be frustrating and stereotyped. They all labor under their gender disadvantages in ways that feel more 19th/20thC than 15thC. All are frustrated, most are angry, the devious ones survive and the ones who become more sympathetic don't. Why does Dunnett kill off her non-horrible female characters? At this point it's both a feature and a bug.

The ethnic stereotypes are pretty much a given, but they are still unpleasant to read, and the homosexual and ephebophilic plot elements are just as clumsily (and pejoratively) rendered in the narrative viewpoint. The European villains are interesting, the Muslim ones are mostly not. Loppe continues to be a great, if under-specified, character, though. I assume his mysteries will be revealed in later books.

That said, I enjoyed the novel overall. The complexity is fun if you just go with it, Niccolo continues to be intriguingly opaque as he matures, and he's nowhere near as annoying as Lymond. What I like most is that the pursuit of commerce stays front and center, even as royals and aristocrats do battle with each other. It's not just about gaining thrones, it's about gaining trade routes, minerals, and the like. ( )

A journey to Cyprus, a courtesan, political and business intrigue, the usual Niccolo. You are never entirely sure who is on which side until the very end. Which I both like and dislike. I like it because too many books semaphore what is to come. I dislike it because I'm never entirely sure that I've caught everything, so much is somehow ambiguous in Dunnett's storytelling. But her writing and historical detail woven into the story is stunning, just part of the weave of the narrative, not tacked on for show. ( )