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  • Queens' Play

  • Book Two in the Legendary Lymond Chronicles
  • Written by: Dorothy Dunnett
  • Narrated by: David Monteath
  • Length: 21 hrs and 39 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (4 ratings)

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Queens' Play

Written by: Dorothy Dunnett
Narrated by: David Monteath
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Publisher's Summary

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 Audio

What the critics say

“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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3 queens, with special danger for the youngest.

In this novel, the second of a six volume series, the 3 queens are Mary of Guise, the dowager queen of Scotland, her daughter Mary Queen of Scots, and Catherine de Medici, Queen of France... and a 4th very powerful woman, Diane de Poitiers, mistress of the king of France, who is probably the wealthiest woman in Europe then (the 1550's). Mary Queen of Scots is about 8 years old, a royal child growing up in France at the court of Henri II. She is in great but not always obvious danger. Queens' Play has Scots, French, Irish and English characters, and the narrator, David Monteath does a superb job with all of them. I really enjoyed it. There are many exciting and anxious moments in the book, but one passage that I return to is when the Irish prince O'Liam Roe, exasperated and fierce, tells Lymond that he is a leader of men, and then the prince proceeds to tell Lymond just what it is to be a leader. His words have stayed with me. These 6 books of the Lymond Chronicles follow ten years in the life of Lymond = Francis Crawford, second son of a noble Scottish family (approximately 1548-1558). It is a hero's journey, but Francis Crawford is not any stereotypical hero. Instead, he is a brilliant, complex, flawed and compelling man, not simple or often easy to like... but his journey is that of a hero, and I'm grateful to have swum in the waters of his life. It is a very fine audiobook series, for those who like historical fiction.

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