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mojotastic at 03:15pm on 16/06/2010 under books, dorothy dunnett is trying to kill me, lymond
mojotastic at 03:15pm on 16/06/2010 under books, dorothy dunnett is trying to kill me, lymondHi guys! So I'm titling this post "Morgan Tells You What to Read By Babbling Incoherently And Then Using Capslock A Lot." I'm sure you will all enjoy it.
I've been talking on and off recently about how I've been reading The Lymond Chronicles and how they are the best thing ever. And a few people have even expressed interest in also picking them up, even though I've prefaced every squee-fest about them with "BUT ALSO THEY ARE CONFUSING". At least two/three people on my flist I believe have at least started the books.
So I thought to myself, I thought "Self! If you can get a few people to pick up these books just by randomly mentioning how they are melting your brain, imagine what you could do if you made a pimp post! Maybe a whole OTHER PERSON would start reading. And then you would have THREE people to talk about them with. Three! Imagine!"
AND THEREFORE THIS POST WAS BORN.
Why you should read The Lymond Chronicles:
First off? THEY ARE THE THE BEST AND YOU SHOULD READ THEM! I just needed to get that off my chest. Do you like fully fleshed out characters who are awesome and annoying and terrible and precious and amazing, sometimes all at once? How about awesome strong female characters? How about action? Adventure? Intrigue? How do you feel about hot dudes and also super gayness. (Seriously. Like sometimes these books are SMALLVILLE gay. It's not an honor I give to just anything.) Then these books are for you!
"But wait! You've given no actual information about the books!" you're saying? Ok fine! There are six of them. Yes, the font is also very, very tiny. They sort of take forever to read sometimes. Whatever. I guarantee you that by book three you will be like "WHO NEEDS SLEEP!? THINGS ARE HAPPENING!"
The books are set in the 15th century, so it's historical fiction, and are insanely well researched.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snowfire who is a huge history junkie, loves them. But I also love them and I can guarantee you that whatever little you know about history, I know less. In fact, I feel like I'm legit learning things while reading these books. (Geeky disclaimer: I started looking up Mary Tudor today to get some background on stuff that may come up in the fifth book and after five minutes I quickly closed the page because OMG SPOILERS. HAHA! So I guess the benefit of knowing nothing about history is that I always have no idea what's coming up!)
The books center around Francis Crawford of Lymond, who in the first book is on the run around Scotland and England with a merry band of mercenaries after being considered a traitor to his native home of Scotland. Later the books travel all over the place, to France and Turkey and Malta and Russia. But I don't want to give anything away so I will probably not talk that much about specifics.
Lymond is seriously one of my all time favorite literary characters now though. The character could have SO easily slipped into Gary Stu territory (he's good at everything including: fighting, music, language, smartness, poetry, charming the ladies, scheming, and being hot. Every lady and dude will eventually fall in love with him, this is fact.) AND YET. Yet he just *feels real*. I think that's because his flaws are maybe as important, if not more so, than his strengths. He is often too mean to the people close to him and can be totally bitchy and reckless. He uses his thrall over people to their own detriment. Underneath the bravado he's so young and sad and it makes me want to give him a hug and tell him everything will be alright.
(Yesterdaymordororbust and I had a Lymond Lunch and we were like "You know what he needs? To just go home and get a hug from his mom. GO HOME AND HUG YOUR MOM LYMOND. That will make it better!")
Oh but speaking of his mom? BAMF. Sybilla is maybe the most awesome lady in a cast full to the gills with awesome ladies.
And the thing I really like about the writing of the female characters in this book series is that they are all strong and flawed and awesome and yet they all still feel like they could have really lived during this time period. As much as I love Libba Bray's A Great And Terrible Beauty/Gemma Doyle trilogy and it's "yay! feminism!" message, the thing that bothered me throughout all the books is that their mind frame always seemed a bit too modern. I still love those books and obviously more feminism in teen lit to offset horrible Twilight-like books is good. But the female characters are awesome here because they are awesome even within the confines of their societal roles.
So many of the female characters are awesome though. PHILLIPA! Who is so awesome and plucky girl adventurer. Oonagh, who is maybe the most hardcore person in all the books. Marthe! Christian Stewart!
Seriously when I started out the first book and was super confused and had no idea what was going on, it was the characters that I stayed for. They are all so wonderful. Lymond's brother Richard is maybe my second favorite character to the point where I squee internally whenever he pops up. Richard I love you! <3 Will Scott! Archie! Hell even Jerrott, despite how often I want to punch him in the face for being a douche.
The plots of the books are so fantastic too. They are so byzantine and elaborate and almost everything that happens is important, even though it might not seem like it at first. And action and adventure! Things nearly blowing up and actually blowing up! Races across rooftops! Scheming and double crossing and triple crossing and one of the most evil villains ever!
The reason these books aren't as well loved and popular as they deserve to be is because they are ridiculously confusing. Like sometimes Lymond will quote things in Latin and French and there is NEVER any translation. I've just learned to roll with it but I can see how that would get annoying. Also there are about two million characters and they all have weird and confusing names and about 12 titles each. Lymond himself must have at least 50 titles by now.
But the books are so good! I finished the fourth book last week and was crying so hard that when my mom saw me she was like "Did something terrible happen!? Did someone we know die?!" And I was like "MY BOOK OMG". Seriously. My emotional destruction, provided by Dorothy Dunnett. I just started the fifth book and I am SCARED because I know that terrible shit will happen and I just want everyone to be happy and go home to Scotland to see their mom and brother and have shenanigans but that is obviously not going to happen. WHY DOROTHY DUNNETTT WHY?
If any of this ranting has gotten you at all interested in the books (and I wouldn't blame you if it didn't. I'm not selling these so much now as just squeeing about them and making myself sound deranged) my advice is just to push through the first 100/200 pages of the first book. Don't worry so much if you have no idea WTF is happening. No one does. You will eventually. If you get to the end of the first book and you're not like "omgomgomg" than possibly the book series isn't for you. But if you are OMGOMGOMG the second book is a bit slow, but from the third book on it gets INSANE.
(I am a weirdo part one million: I already want to reread the first two books because I feel I didn't properly appreciate them and that I would understand them a lot better now that I know WTF is happening.)
In closing? THEY ARE AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD READ THEM. (And squee with me please!)
I've been considering starting up a Lymond Book Club community here on LJ withmordororbust. I know there's a general comm for Lymond stuff but it's actually hard to discuss the books without getting spoiled. I think it would be fun to have people discussing all the different books as they read them and we could break the books down into parts for discussion posts, etc. Plus my immediate reaction whenever anyone mentions they are reading the books is generally "OMG! What do you think?! Where are you? How do you feel? Who is your favorite? TELL ME YOUR FEELINGS!" Which I think gets a bit creepy. So if we had a book club I might stop creeping people out by sending them weird Lymond emails.
Would anyone else reading the books/thinking of reading the books/have read the books be interested in a Lymond Book Club?
~Morgan
I've been talking on and off recently about how I've been reading The Lymond Chronicles and how they are the best thing ever. And a few people have even expressed interest in also picking them up, even though I've prefaced every squee-fest about them with "BUT ALSO THEY ARE CONFUSING". At least two/three people on my flist I believe have at least started the books.
So I thought to myself, I thought "Self! If you can get a few people to pick up these books just by randomly mentioning how they are melting your brain, imagine what you could do if you made a pimp post! Maybe a whole OTHER PERSON would start reading. And then you would have THREE people to talk about them with. Three! Imagine!"
AND THEREFORE THIS POST WAS BORN.
First off? THEY ARE THE THE BEST AND YOU SHOULD READ THEM! I just needed to get that off my chest. Do you like fully fleshed out characters who are awesome and annoying and terrible and precious and amazing, sometimes all at once? How about awesome strong female characters? How about action? Adventure? Intrigue? How do you feel about hot dudes and also super gayness. (Seriously. Like sometimes these books are SMALLVILLE gay. It's not an honor I give to just anything.) Then these books are for you!
"But wait! You've given no actual information about the books!" you're saying? Ok fine! There are six of them. Yes, the font is also very, very tiny. They sort of take forever to read sometimes. Whatever. I guarantee you that by book three you will be like "WHO NEEDS SLEEP!? THINGS ARE HAPPENING!"
The books are set in the 15th century, so it's historical fiction, and are insanely well researched.
snowfire who is a huge history junkie, loves them. But I also love them and I can guarantee you that whatever little you know about history, I know less. In fact, I feel like I'm legit learning things while reading these books. (Geeky disclaimer: I started looking up Mary Tudor today to get some background on stuff that may come up in the fifth book and after five minutes I quickly closed the page because OMG SPOILERS. HAHA! So I guess the benefit of knowing nothing about history is that I always have no idea what's coming up!)The books center around Francis Crawford of Lymond, who in the first book is on the run around Scotland and England with a merry band of mercenaries after being considered a traitor to his native home of Scotland. Later the books travel all over the place, to France and Turkey and Malta and Russia. But I don't want to give anything away so I will probably not talk that much about specifics.
Lymond is seriously one of my all time favorite literary characters now though. The character could have SO easily slipped into Gary Stu territory (he's good at everything including: fighting, music, language, smartness, poetry, charming the ladies, scheming, and being hot. Every lady and dude will eventually fall in love with him, this is fact.) AND YET. Yet he just *feels real*. I think that's because his flaws are maybe as important, if not more so, than his strengths. He is often too mean to the people close to him and can be totally bitchy and reckless. He uses his thrall over people to their own detriment. Underneath the bravado he's so young and sad and it makes me want to give him a hug and tell him everything will be alright.
(Yesterday
mordororbust and I had a Lymond Lunch and we were like "You know what he needs? To just go home and get a hug from his mom. GO HOME AND HUG YOUR MOM LYMOND. That will make it better!")Oh but speaking of his mom? BAMF. Sybilla is maybe the most awesome lady in a cast full to the gills with awesome ladies.
And the thing I really like about the writing of the female characters in this book series is that they are all strong and flawed and awesome and yet they all still feel like they could have really lived during this time period. As much as I love Libba Bray's A Great And Terrible Beauty/Gemma Doyle trilogy and it's "yay! feminism!" message, the thing that bothered me throughout all the books is that their mind frame always seemed a bit too modern. I still love those books and obviously more feminism in teen lit to offset horrible Twilight-like books is good. But the female characters are awesome here because they are awesome even within the confines of their societal roles.
So many of the female characters are awesome though. PHILLIPA! Who is so awesome and plucky girl adventurer. Oonagh, who is maybe the most hardcore person in all the books. Marthe! Christian Stewart!
Seriously when I started out the first book and was super confused and had no idea what was going on, it was the characters that I stayed for. They are all so wonderful. Lymond's brother Richard is maybe my second favorite character to the point where I squee internally whenever he pops up. Richard I love you! <3 Will Scott! Archie! Hell even Jerrott, despite how often I want to punch him in the face for being a douche.
The plots of the books are so fantastic too. They are so byzantine and elaborate and almost everything that happens is important, even though it might not seem like it at first. And action and adventure! Things nearly blowing up and actually blowing up! Races across rooftops! Scheming and double crossing and triple crossing and one of the most evil villains ever!
The reason these books aren't as well loved and popular as they deserve to be is because they are ridiculously confusing. Like sometimes Lymond will quote things in Latin and French and there is NEVER any translation. I've just learned to roll with it but I can see how that would get annoying. Also there are about two million characters and they all have weird and confusing names and about 12 titles each. Lymond himself must have at least 50 titles by now.
But the books are so good! I finished the fourth book last week and was crying so hard that when my mom saw me she was like "Did something terrible happen!? Did someone we know die?!" And I was like "MY BOOK OMG". Seriously. My emotional destruction, provided by Dorothy Dunnett. I just started the fifth book and I am SCARED because I know that terrible shit will happen and I just want everyone to be happy and go home to Scotland to see their mom and brother and have shenanigans but that is obviously not going to happen. WHY DOROTHY DUNNETTT WHY?
If any of this ranting has gotten you at all interested in the books (and I wouldn't blame you if it didn't. I'm not selling these so much now as just squeeing about them and making myself sound deranged) my advice is just to push through the first 100/200 pages of the first book. Don't worry so much if you have no idea WTF is happening. No one does. You will eventually. If you get to the end of the first book and you're not like "omgomgomg" than possibly the book series isn't for you. But if you are OMGOMGOMG the second book is a bit slow, but from the third book on it gets INSANE.
(I am a weirdo part one million: I already want to reread the first two books because I feel I didn't properly appreciate them and that I would understand them a lot better now that I know WTF is happening.)
In closing? THEY ARE AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD READ THEM. (And squee with me please!)
I've been considering starting up a Lymond Book Club community here on LJ with
mordororbust. I know there's a general comm for Lymond stuff but it's actually hard to discuss the books without getting spoiled. I think it would be fun to have people discussing all the different books as they read them and we could break the books down into parts for discussion posts, etc. Plus my immediate reaction whenever anyone mentions they are reading the books is generally "OMG! What do you think?! Where are you? How do you feel? Who is your favorite? TELL ME YOUR FEELINGS!" Which I think gets a bit creepy. So if we had a book club I might stop creeping people out by sending them weird Lymond emails.Would anyone else reading the books/thinking of reading the books/have read the books be interested in a Lymond Book Club?
~Morgan
excited
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