House of Niccolo Series

The House of Niccolò #1-8

by Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett is the author of the world-famous Lymond Chronicles set during the sixteenth century, as well as the House of Niccolo series. She was awarded the OBE for her services to literature in 1992, and lived in Edinburgh.

The House of Niccolo - set in the 15th and 16th centuries and ranging all over Europe and the Mediterranean while being anchored in Scotland. The House of Niccolò consist of eight historical novels set in the mid-fifteenth century European Renaissance. The protagonist of the series is Nicholas de Fleury (Niccolò, Nicholas van der Poele, or Claes), a boy of uncertain birth who rises to the heights of European merchant banking and international political intrigue. The series shares many of locations with Dunnett's earlier six-volume series, the Lymond Scotland, England, France, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The House of Niccolò extends much further geographically to take in the important urban centers of Bruges, Venice, Florence, Geneva, and the Hanseatic League; Burgundy, Flanders, and Poland; Iceland; the Iberian Peninsula and Madeira; the Black Sea cities of Trebizond and Caffa; Persia; the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Rhodes; Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula; and West Africa and the city of Timbuktu.

Genres: Historical Fiction

Hardcover

About the author

Dorothy Dunnett OBE was a Scottish historical novelist. She is best known for her six-part series about Francis Crawford of Lymond, The Lymond Chronicles, which she followed with the eight-part prequel The House of Niccolò. She also wrote a novel about the real Macbeth called King Hereafter and a series of mystery novels centered on Johnson Johnson, a portrait painter/spy.

Her New York times obituary is here.

Dorothy Dunnett Society: http://dorothydunnett.org
Fansite: http://www.dorothydunnett.co.uk/

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;
Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.”

And thus, did I enter the intriguing webs of Dorothy Dunnett’s “The House of Niccolo’.” Eight books, thousands of pages. Deceit, vindictiveness, friendship, love, travels and mind opening descriptions of 15th Century Europe and The Levant.

There are many characters herein to get your arms around, however, not unlike a composition by J. S. Bach, the characters, the passages, tend to repeat. Once you learn them you do not forget. And you will not soon forget the characters you learn to cherish and love, nor the characters you soon love to hate, despise, loathe and wish of their demise at every turn of the page.

This series is a roller coaster of plots following the young hero through his development, his circle of friends and his enemies who lurk. I call Niccolo’ the man with nine lives, because this feline stalks, hunts and finds his lives snuffed in every book. I will say, without giving anything away. He remains at the end with one life left.

If you like following maps, seeing a time long gone through the eyes of the excellent historian researcher, Dunnett, you will enjoy this series. It is a marathon of a read. But once trapped in the author’s web, you will persist.

“And now, dear little children, who may this story read,
To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne’er give heed;
Unto an evil counselor close heart, and ear, and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale of the Spider and the Fly.”

Mary Howitt, author of the Spider and the Fly

[Ljonz · Rating 4 out of 5]

absorbing historical fiction

[Jenny H · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this. I'd enjoyed the Lymond series, but this was too much like hard work: eight really thick books each with an enormous cast of characters, many of them known by multiple names (aristocratic titles [some with more than one], first names [many duplicates], family names, nicknames, different names in different countries, secret aliases ... I was constantly flicking backwards and forwards to the cast list at the front of the book, which was not arranged very coherently, to find out who this character was that had just walked in after an absence of a couple of hundred pages.

In fact, I've only just picked the series up again after my first attempt, when I discovered the series was still being written and I realised I hadn't a hope of being able to keep track of it all during an 18 month wait between books; now it's no longer in demand at the library and I've been able to read them all end-to-end and I still got confused.

I felt the plot depended far too much on the fact that Nicholas has a whole string of people with a wholly irrational and murderous hatred of him; one or two might have been OK, but somebody different is trying to kill him for no apparent reason ("I just hate you!") in every book and it gets very far-fetched. There are also far too many people being secretly related to each other on either side of the blanket and nobody seems to know who anybody's father is, and sometimes not even their mother; one secret relation is unmasked on 'evidence' that is flimsy in the extreme (possible risk of spoiler, though I haven't been at all specific "Look, here is a character whose antecedents we know very little about! They must be the same as that other person from a completely different country whose family somehow lost track of them before the series opens!" )And then there's the device of the whole supernatural powers thing that is necessary for the plot in one or two books and then just vanishes again ("Oh, I don't do that any more, it wasn't good for me").

Finally, I felt cheated at the end: I kept on reading because I wanted to know the secret of Nicholas's parentage, but actually, we're never really told. There's a theory that we're offered part of the way through that by the end looks very much as though it's probably correct but the mystery is never actually resolved the way it is for Lymond.

I gave it two stars rather than one because it was a good yarn; I just don't feel it justified the considerable amount of time I spent on it.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of time to read all 8 of these.

[Douglas Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book (in 8 volumes) to read just for enjoyment. I'm reading it for the ninth time now. I tried the Lymond series, but it was boring and not smart enough for me. Dorothy Dunnett must have been brilliant, and yet she wrote an Adventure Story (with a historical background). AND it's the best Adventure Story I've ever read.