I absolutely dragged out the finishing of this to a ridiculous degree, to the extent that as the story moved into its final stages and the suffering of its main characters reached an unbearable pitch I began to feel guilty for protracting their agonies. I did not want to leave the world of Dorothy Dunnett, a world which as far as I'm concerned encompasses King Hereafter, Niccolo and Lymond in one massive epic generational saga. In the latter case, a characters who is introduced to us as a rogue and a bit of a prick, frankly, albeit by the end of the book proven to have been forced into the role, is stripped bare of all defences and shown to be barely hanging on by a thread thanks to a lot of things that are no fault of his own. Checkmate has everything - torrid romance, intrigue, action, self-sacrifice, humour, war, high pagentry, low villainy, emotions repressed so damned hard they are literally killing their repressers, and lots of French poetry. I sigh, I swoon, I'll come back soon.