Race of Scorpions, Dorothy Dunnett

Gotta say, I did not love this book, and that's unusual for me and Dunnett. She remains my all-time favorite author, but on the whole I'm finding the House of Niccolo books to be really strange when it comes to sex. Every sex scene, or love interest, is completely transactional, and it's a little bit uncomfortable.

Spoilers follow -- I find it really disappointing that Katelina's entire story arc was about Nicholas, whether she wanted desperately to sleep with him, wanted desperately to kill him, or wanted desperately to sleep with him again. She lived her entire life (in these books) revolving around him, which I'm not sure he deserved. And then there's Primaflora, who of course is a high class prostitute, and who of course turns out to be evil and manipulative. Or there is David (in Trebizond) and Jacob (in Cyprus), both of whom want to sleep with Nicholas, and the books treat both of them like monsters for it. It's just uncomfortable to read, and I'm frankly uncomfortable with how often Nicholas sleeps with ladies who then die, or how much his "quest" is driven by needing revenge or sexual relief after yet another lady he slept with dies. It's very Christopher Nolan, and I don't like him, either. 


The plot of this book should have been right up my alley with the plotting and the betrayal and the sieges. But halfway through the book stops to be about how the sugar business runs again, and it's boring. I don't care about Nicholas's trade dealings, or playing the Genoese against the Venetians against the Portuguese. It's too complicated to be interesting, and it's too pedestrian to be the plot of a sprawling novel like this.

I also think this book is entirely too fond of elliptical conversations that imply vaguely about plotting that's going on, and I'm tired of meaningful exchanges and knowing looks that don't actually tell the reader what's going on. I'm going to take reading break before I try the next book, because Right now, despite the beautiful writing, I am not really enjoying this series.

Grade: C
#53 in 2017