This is the final novel in Lady Dunnett's eight-volume The House of Niccolò series, the "prequel" to her six-volume The Lymond Chronicles (1961-1975). The House of Niccolò series begins in 1459, with Niccolò, an eighteen-year-old dye-yard apprentice in Bruges. The period covered saw the beginning of a north-westerly migration of wealth from the Mediterranean, first to Bruges and Antwerp, and after, under the oppression of the Hapsburgs, on to Amsterdam and London. An unprecedented explosion of wealth from trade allowed a unique, and short-lived, social mobility between the merchants and the aristocracy, giving rise to the merchant-princes. The Renaissance was gaining momentum, accelerated by an exodus of scholars to the West, following the fall of Constantinople six years earlier. Seven novels later, Niccolò is a formidable figure, a master of trade and politics, who - among other adventures - was at the fall of Trebizond, visited the schools of Timbuktu before its destruction in 1468, dabbled in the Cypriot succession and fought with Charles the Bold at the Battle of Nancy. Against this vast historical and geographical backdrop, a family history unfolds. Niccolò was rejected as illegitimate by his mother's husband, the beautiful and vicious Simon de St Pol, and when he tries to prove his legitimacy he is met with force, both physical and financial, from Simon and Simon's father, the formidable Jordan de Riberac. Niccolò works his way up from the lowly position they have forced on him, using a range of talents deriving from his superhuman abilities with mathematics.Niccolò is soon in a position to exact revenge, and it is this which earns him the mistrust of his friends, especially when he attacks his family by bankrupting their homeland, Scotland. This is symptomatic of his one great flaw; Niccolò lacks malice, but he has no conscience when lost in the workings of his plans. "I'd begun to notice I'd gone too far... [but] it was beautiful. Wheels are beautiful." Scotland is also the winning-stroke in his eight year conflict with his wife. She tries to prove herself his equal but ends by accepting that no one is. When Gemini begins they are reunited, and Niccolò returns to Scotland for reparation and to neutralise the threat from his family. Another difficulty is that Simon is blindly bringing up Niccolò's son, Henry, as his own. The physical resemblance between Simon and Niccolò's son could prove Niccolò's origins, but he reckons the damage of the revelation would be too great. The author has no such qualms, and in Gemini, Dunnett mercilessly ties up loose ends. No more can be said without giving away the plot, for this is truly the last volume of a series. It can be read on its own, but should be taken as the conclusion of a great work. Fiction is constrained by fact, and nowhere more so than historical fiction, where the story must fit in the spaces between recorded history. Dunnett gets around this difficulty by thorough research. There are something like 600 names in the character list for Gemini, of whom fewer than fifty are not "recorded in history". In two areas, however, Dunnett seems to lose her attachment to realistic historical narrative. The first is the weight given to astrology (hence the titles of the books) and divining, which increases as time passes. It is hard not to link this with her philosophy of history, which views the course of events as a directed stream, in a Hegelian sense, the avatars of which are the great men, fictional and real, who are central to her narrative. Dunnett may hold neither view personally, but both traits in the fiction suggest an underlying mysticism. Fortunately, the reader is not expected to swallow this completely. Dunnett's writing style is not the neutral prose of genre fiction and can be hard to read. The rhythm of her writing is often awkward in descriptive passages containing unwieldy lists of information, combined with the archaic manner of which historical novelists are often guilty. At times, this works with the melodramatic content to produce a powerful, operatic mixture. As Dunnett has progressed her style has improved and developed. Her strongest writing is in the dialogue, where she displays her characters' intelligence while masking intentions. Her characters' speech is filled with apt quotation, sometimes a little too much. One would expect men of learning to know their Greeks, Romans and the Bible; obscure allusions to authors such as William Dunbar, the Pléiade poet de Baïf, and the playwright John Heywood are all used lightly - often just a phrase - and usually left unidentified and untranslated.
However, it is neither as a literary novelist nor as a historian, but as a writer of historical fiction that Dorothy Dunnett deserves recognition. She has taken two men, Lymond and Niccolò, who, like all heroes of romantic fiction, are described exclusively in superlatives, and thought about how such "megalopsychic" creatures would affect and be affected by others. This psychological realism within the fantasy is matched by the convolutions of plot. A mere fifty pages before the end of Gemini, we discover that one of Niccolò's oldest friends, familiar for over 4,000 pages and twenty-five years, is his most implacable enemy. We then discover that Niccolò knew this, and resisted taking action because of consanguinity. The revelation is rendered credible by a lightly drawn but consistent trail of evidence and by the technique of never revealing a character's whole thoughts, even when the narrative perspective is within the character's mind. The author's patience and complexity run through both series of novels, which are linked, something hinted at by the first physical description of Simon. The publication of Gemini completes an ambitious literary circle.
There are really two "stories" to comment upon. First, the overarching story of the eight novels ends less than satisfactorily, with the wholesale slaughter of characters overdone. Where is the final confrontation with Simon? Hardly anyone at the end gets enlightened with Henry's true parentage--one of the main plot drivers of the whole series. And who the heck is Bonne? I'll pay Dunnett the compliment of intentionally leaving a few loose ends (do any of these dovetail into the Lymond books?), but they are frustrating all the same. Don't look for any further character development except for Henry and, perhaps, Jodi a bit. The fascinating Gelis turns into a cardboard character after the reconciliation, and Nicholas morphs into a helplessly manipulated wimp. An epilogue linking to the Lymond novels, though, is understated and beautiful--every word counts here.
Second, the story within the novel is a blithering account of mind-numbing minutiae of Scottish politics and history. Where is the adventure and suspense of Africa, Trebizond, Egypt, and Cypress? Other that a Scot, who cares about which clan supported which palace intrigue? And the occasional list of Scottish lords and their relationships (characters who are otherwise not introduced and about whom we care nothing, although they also pad the bloated List of Characters at the front of the book) are sleep-inducing at best. I am sure Dunnett waxed proud of her beloved Scotland, but had this been the first novel of the series, it would have been my last.
Despite all of the above, of course you should read Gemini if you have read the rest. It's hard to say goodbye to such compelling characters. Just be prepared for a big disappointment.
