
Queens' Play
Book Two in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles
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Narrated by:
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David Monteath
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By:
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Dorothy Dunnett
This second book in the legendary Lymond Chronicles follows Francis Crawford of Lymond who has been abruptly called into the service of Mary Queen of Scots.
Though she is only a little girl, the queen is already the object of malicious intrigues that extend from her native country to the court of France. It is to France that Lymond must travel, exercising his sword hand and his agile wit while also undertaking the most unlikely of masquerades, all to make sure that his charge's royal person stays intact.
©2010 Dorothy Dunnett (P)2019 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“Expert entertainment....Dunnett can describe a duel more convincingly than Dumas.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“Dorothy Dunnett is a storyteller who could teach Scheherazade a thing or two about suspense, pace and invention.” (The New York Times)
“Dunnett evokes the sixteenth century with an amazing richness of allusion and scholarship, while keeping a firm control on an intricately twisting narrative. She has another more unusual quality . . . an ability to check her imagination with irony, to mix high romance with wit.” [Sunday Times (London)]
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The Scottish Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise, thus wants Lymond of Crawford to go to France to protect her daughter Queen Mary, and he agrees to help, but he’ll have to go incognito as an Irish Renaissance rake (“an Irish princeling’s toadlike secretary”), so as to avoid revealing that the Queen Dowager has recruited him as a spy. The novel, then, takes place mostly in France: “the most extravagant, the most cultured, the most dissolute kingdom in Europe,” or, as Lymond calls it, “a hand-set maggot mound.”
As in the first series novel, then, Lymond throws himself dangerously convincingly into his role as an amoral, debauched bundle of sin while manipulating the people around him into bringing about desired results, juggling them like a bunch of knives while preparing for their sudden and unexpected attempts to fly from the control of his dexterous, long-fingered hands.
Will Lymond’s assumed Irish accent and language conceal his true Scottish identity? Will his enemies fall for his sensational sensualist disguise or see through it and expose him? Will he succeed in uncovering the mastermind behind the assassination attempts and put a stop to their machinations? Will his charisma and wits and abilities win over the French court? Will he fall in love again? Will people close to him get hurt (if not killed) again?
Although Lymond is (almost) unbelievably brilliant at too many things (including languages, disguises, quotations, poetry, bantering, riddling, juggling, singing, lute playing, sword fighting, wrestling, spying, strategizing, leading, negotiating, manipulating, and entertaining), he is suspensefully vulnerable to bodily damage and long rehabilitation.
As in the first novel, Dunnett writes a number of complicated, flawed, and compelling supporting characters, like the Scottish archer Robin Stewart (envious and ambitious and careless), the Irish beauty Oonagh O’Dwyer (patriotic and intelligent and ruthless), the Irish Prince Oleam Ro (educated and detached and impressionable). She writes intelligent and formidable female characters, like Margaret Erskine, Margaret Lady Lennox, Madame Boyle, little Queen Mary, and the Queen Dowager.
As in the first novel, Dunnett respects her reader’s intelligence and education, as in addition to English (often with thick Scottish or Irish accents and diction), her characters speak some French and Latin. And that linguistic complexity relates an equally complex political situation and tricky plot. Although I miss much, I rarely find it difficult to follow what’s happening enough to enjoy the appropriate suspense or emotion or humor, depending on what Lymond’s up to.
As in the first novel, Dunnett excels at extended, vivid, unpredictable, and exciting set piece scenes, including here a galley and galliasse collision, a royal entry into Rouen, a royal feast, a hare hunt, a race across rooftops at night, and a brutal fight to the death in a bedroom, as well as at intense, intimate conversations, like any scene where Lymond converses with any of the many strong women.
Dunnett also writes vivid descriptions with great similes:
"… the cool voice in which Margaret Douglas' sentiments were most often presented, ice fresh and bloody, like newly caught fish."
“He sat like a blackbird in cold weather at the table end and applied himself with both hands to his food.”
"… and then he turned as cautious as a dog with his first flea."
She also writes wise lines about human nature and life:
“Hero worship leads to nothing but misery.”
“Some people can't be saved.”
"A mind responsive to beauty is a storehouse with many rooms, words, sounds, textures, all the nobler exercises of the senses leave some image filed and folded to be summoned at need."
The audiobook reader David Monteath is superb.
I enjoyed Queen’s Play (1961) and I am looking forward to the third book in the series, but I hope this second one will be the last where Lymond pretends to be dissolute and dissipated. The first two novels have had enough of that.
Lymond Does France (or Lets It Do Him)
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worth the effort
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Ah, Lymond.
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Best Historical Novels!!!
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The narrator is excellent. He even does a great job with the little Queen Mary! Though in this book, I slowed down to speed of .9 at times to catch some of the details.
I am looking forward to Book 3. I plan to listen to it nexts while my mind is still in a 1500s adventure listening mode!
Excellent adventure!
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Lamentable French Accent
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Music and "dangerous juggles"
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There is no author like Dunnett
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Somebody threatens the life of small Queen Mary of Scots in France, and her mother, Mary of Guise, gets Lymond to come to France to protect the small queen. Too many subplots, quotes, and personalities to list, but this book is terrific.
Lymond incognito
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Queen's Play review
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