Book 63: The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

Once again I can't actually write anything about this book that isn't in some way a spoiler, so under the cut it all goes!





Honestly, from the very beginning of this series, Francis Crawford has demonstrated over and over again that he's better than everyone at everything, and that when he does something, he does something FULL OUT. So it should come as no surprise that when he has been emotionally and physically devastated and destroyed and left a broken man, his only possible response is to wall up his heart and freeze it into ice. And where better to do that than in Russia? Francis is very crafty and sly but you can't accuse him of being subtle.

Before we really get into the joy of Francis becoming an ice robot with no feelings, we have part one of the book, which is basically all about how great Philippa is and how totally delightful Danny Hislop is. Philippa returns to her home and has to explain, over and over again, that yes, she really did marry the neighbor's weird son, but he insisted, and it's not real anyway. She also gets herself involved with both Queen Mary of England and also the queen's sister Elizabeth, and attracts the attention of Margaret Lennox, and is constantly underestimated, and then she proves everyone wrong. Philippa's development as a character is so incredibly good and skilled and because that progression takes so many pages over so many books that cover so many years, you hardly notice it as it happens incrementally. As much as she's already a member of the Turkish harem in Pawn, it's in this book that she becomes a fully adult character; her agency and motivations and desires are so visibly informed by what she's experienced, and one of those experiences is marrying Francis Crawford more or less under duress. She's not going to let that pass her by without discovering what she can, whether that's by reading his library or visiting the relatives of the Crawford family who aren't presented to her on her return to Scotland. And when Francis doesn't respond to her letters telling him what she thinks he needs to know, her response is to attempt to go to Russia herself. She is not a character waiting around for her plot.

Meanwhile, while all of this is happening, Francis is off in Russia with Guzel recreating St. Mary's for Ivan the Terrible. One of the new recruits is Danny Hislop, who will flirt with anyone and anything, and honestly Dorothy gives Francis a new boyfriend every book, and Danny is a delight. He's not the only one vying for Francis's affections, though--the Tsar himself also depends on Francis to a pretty extreme degree, and eventually makes Francis his military commander, while also challenging Francis to a little recreational knifeplay for fun. Francis responds to this like he responds to everything, like all of his emotions have been surgically removed from his body.

The middle part of the book is as close as Dorothy has gotten to writing a section that's more or less camping, in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tradition; everything that happens in Russia is important and necessary, but to a certain degree much of it is more or less a montage of terrible things happening and Francis only sort of behaving like a human in response to it all. The thing that's great about all of this is that after everything that happens in Pawn, it makes complete sense that Francis would be a shell of a human being. One of my favorite things about Dunnett is that events and choices and actions have consequences, and they carry through the series and build upon each other. Francis is frequently incredibly frustrating in this book, and more than once I wanted SOMEONE to be able to sit him down and make him listen, but he can't. He has to get himself through it. And part of that is discovering that he can care about people again, but in typical Francis (and Dorothy) fashion, the way he discovers that is by suffering a loss once more on his way back from Russia to London.

The other thing that's so brilliant about this book is that for the first time, the unreliable narrator is actually Francis, because after four books in which Francis is always the one who knows what's going on but he can't tell anyone else, in this book he's the one constantly responding to faulty or incomplete information. And all of that comes to a head in part 3, which starts off with two of the most gut wrenching chapters in any of the first five books, and then that's followed up by him confronting what both the prophesy and Philippa's research has told us: he and Richard don't have the same father. And again, part of what makes Francis so compelling and also so awful is that you understand as a reader why he does and says the things he does, even while you wish desperately that you could reach into the page and slap your hand across his mouth. He's an injured cat who lashes out when anyone tries to help him, and you know why, but oh my god cat we're just trying to help you. I kept thinking of a lion with a thorn in its paw who would rather die of infection than let anyone close enough to him to take it out.

He can't deal with the reality that his mother either isn't his real mother or slept with someone who wasn't her husband, but it's much more difficult to freeze your heart when you're not in Russia. This is especially true when it turns out that the only one who's crafty enough to get the thorn out before he notices is Philippa, his wife whom he still can't divorce because of the Pope, who is the most unimpressed by his antics and tells him so to his face. And then all it takes is five minutes of Francis letting his guard down and he's done for, and it's every song in a musical in which someone sings about how before this very moment they never understood love but now!!!!!! NOW THEY KNOW!!!!! and it turns out that Francis's fatal flaw, the thing that would destroy him if he was in a tragedy, is being in love. He may be in his late twenties (not middle aged, no matter what Philippa may think), but given that he spent his teens rowing in a galley and attempting to clear his name, this is the time for him to act like a teenager. And so he does, running away from his feelings and being hurt about his mommy and protecting his brother from what he knows by being unbearably cruel to him, and then it turns out that the only thing he is actually a complete and utter failboat about is being in love. HE FALLS APART. AND IT IS WONDERFUL. So we have a marriage of convenience that will be dissolved just as soon as they can figure out how, and now Francis is in love but can never tell anyone, and Philippa is certain that the reason Francis is so desperate to return to Russia is to reunite with Guzel, and honestly how did I get so lucky. How is this actually happening.

And of course, being Dunnett, this is only like a third of what the book is about, and the entire thing is a mess, and I was two chapters away from the end when I suddenly realized that 95% of the book wouldn't be resolved by the time it was over, because that's what Checkmate is for. And just as I was about to wail in agony over that fact, Francis's friends kidnap him for his own good and trick him and prevent him from returning to Russia, because it's all well and good to pretend you don't have feelings, Francis, but Mikal was right in Pawn: you are loved, and no matter how hard you try to push people away, they aren't going to let you destroy yourself. JUST END ME.

So approximately seven hours of sleep after I finished The Ringed Castle, I started Checkmate. WISH ME LUCK.

Grade: A