The Unicorn Hunt
The House of Niccolo 5
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
The exquisitely-researched standalone prequel series to Dorothy Dunnett's revered Lymond Chronicles, following the ancestors of Francis Crawford of Lymond in Continental Europe.
The Unicorn Hunt is Book Five in The House of Niccolo series.
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'Rich, newly wed, with a palatial banking house, a busy fleet, a small army, why should Nicholas vander Poele choose to travel to Edinburgh?'
That is the question on everyone's lips in the Autumn of 1468 - especially those of his enemy, Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren, who seeks nothing less than the destruction of the House of Niccolo and its cunning head.
But Nicholas soon proves that there are very good mercantile reasons for expanding his trading empire into the north. They also help to conceal his attempts to discover the true father of the child his vengeful wife insists is not his own.
From Scotland to the Tyrol, Cairo to Cyprus, Nicholas pursues a truth that many fear will destroy him and everything he has tried to build . . .
'Terrifically exciting. Some wonderful set-pieces and a cliff-hanging climax' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Last encountered in Scales of Gold , ruthlessly determined Flemish banker/knight Nicholas vander Poele, protagonist of Dunnett's House of Niccolo series, embarks on a new set of adventures that take him across late-15th century Europe from Flanders to Egypt. After a useful recap of the saga's previous four volumes, Nicholas sails to Scotland, where he confronts his archenemy, Simon de St. Pol, who may be the father of the child whom Nicholas's wife, Gelis van Borselen, is carrying. Months later, back in Flanders, vengeful Gelis, in order to punish Nicholas for fathering an illegitimate child by her sister, hides her newborn boy. Intrigue, betrayal and adventure follow as hardened Nicholas journeys from Florence, full of Medici machinations, to the Tyrol, where he uses a divining rod to find silver. Then it's on to Alexandria, to which the intrepid wanderer is lured in search of treasure, and to Mount Sinai, where he has a dramatic confrontation with his estranged wife. In Cairo, Nicholas is captured in a mosque and tortured, but he escapes to Cyprus, where he searches for the infant boy whose very existence he has begun to doubt. Dunnett keeps the surprises coming in this richly embroidered historical romance, a splendid entertainment peopled with dozens of historical figures, as she puts her finger right on the pulse of the 15th century's turbulent politics, mercantile concerns, earthy passions and deadly feuds.
