Gemini (The House of Niccolo, 8) (edition 2000)

Oh!
Nicholas has decided to settle in Scotland and put right some of the wrongs he did when last there and appears to fall quite happily into trading and domestic life. However, there are plenty of plots around King James, mostly from his brothers and sisters - a hereditary illness of the temper is noted. The St Pols (Jordan and Henry) are nearby, and sometimes their meetings are not acrimonious Julius appears determined to dig further into Nicholas's family, even though Nicholas doesn't want that any more. He talks with Bonne, Adelina / Anna's supposed daughter (who Adeline tried to pass off as Nicholas & marian's daughter)
Then Nicholas becomes embroiled in the plotting of Albany, King James's brother, someone is trying to set him up as treasonous. Simon de St Pol arrives from Madeira, and seizes upon evidence that Nicholas is a traitor; he and Henry ride to catch him in the act of spying for the English, and end up drowning. Nicholas tracks down the person who was responsible for exacerbating the feud, and understands finally why... Finally, Bell reconciles Jordan and Jodi, who becomes his Semple heir.

We don't seem to get a 100% definitive statement over Nicholas's legitimacy; it seems that Sophie conceived twins, one miscarried early, and some months later she bore a child"; but we are never told if it was the same pregnancy, or a different one. I'm not sure we are ever told exactly who Bonne is, bit I loved that she married a Malloch and moved to the Meditterannean (Mallett, anyone?). And at the end of the book, we are introduced to Francis Crawford, the grandfather of Lymond.

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For a review, please visit my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2012/11/06/gemini-dorothy-dunnett/ ( )

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I finally made it to the end! After being totally absorbed in Nicholas's life for two months, 8 books, 6000 pages, the ending left me bereft. And of course the first thing I wanted to do, after that humongous twist, was go and read the whole thing from the beginning, and I've had to wean myself off gently. Everything was so real, and I feel like I've lived through 20 years of history. 'The Spring of the Ram' and 'Scales of Gold' were my favourites -- Nicholas goes to some exotic location and outwits people. Anything set in Scotland rather dragged (which made most of Gemini rather a slog, to be honest).
I'm forcing myself to take a month off, before I start the Lymond Chronicles. ( )

Was; and is; and will be.
What more could you want from the last book of a series if not a final like this? During this long journey with Nicholas I always tried to imagine what would happen next, how it would end up for this guy that from being a dyer makes his way in the world until he gets to own a bank, a trade network and a dense array of friends and enemies. Probably what made ​​me fall in love with Dorothy Dunnett lies in her ability to surprise, to let me open-mouthed to contemplate the pages, going back to look for those clues, scattered nearly so well as to escape attention, which in hindsight give a whole new meaning to the story.

SPOILER ALERT!

The first half of the book runs slow, preparatory; we follow Nicholas in his attempts to remedy his past actions and eventually build a life together with Gelis, his son, and the ones that have always been close to him; but the last half is a storm in full, it hits you and overworks you, and makes you almost lose your breath. The death of Simon and Henry, the revelation of who Julius really is and how he has always plotted and hampered Nicholas, are the parts most exciting and loaded of the entire series. The ending left me well, a bit with a bitter taste, and a bit with the joy of seeing Nicholas finally happy and find there, among the pages, another memorable character, Francis Crawford of Lymond. ( )