I loved this book. It was well written, funny, believable, full of adventure and had really great characters who grew and learned over the period of the book. They also have enough mystery about them that the next book in the series is next on my list to buy!
Dunnett was highly recommended on one of my favorite author's web-sites. So, I picked up the book, started reading it and was sucked in even though I didn't really get what was going on. The plot follows a Scot, Francis Culter of Lymond, in 1547-1548 as he eludes the law and his brother in an attempt to clear the accusations of him as a spy for the British. At several points I wondered how on earth there could be a series of books about Lymond since, well, he was surely going to die or be caught or both, but somehow he manages to elude capture and survive.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. It is a forerunner (published in 1961) of the genre so doesn't have a lot of the conventions that historical fiction written more recently--like historical clues, translation of dialect, etc. However, Dunnett is a talented writer who can weave a story "like nobody's business" and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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