Exhausting and exhilerating, joyous and brutal, thus the final volume of House Of Niccolo, set mostly in Scotland across a span of years as Nicholas steps up to undo the damage he inflicted on the country, and perhaps even commit himself to more than that. This is Nicholas redeemed, almost, but not quite, free of secrets and hidden agendas, embraced and trusted by family and friends, giving freely of himself to help a flawed ruler and his advisors save a country from civil war. But both the known enmities of his family and the hidden one have not yet been resolved, and this delivers a final gut-punch that, initially, seems to shatter the entire eight-volume narrative, until you think about it, and reread, and see the whole thing laid out in all its nasty murderous glory. 

Dunnet's genius for long-term plotting matched only by her ability to meld historical fact with fiction and a writing style deceptively light but actually hard as nails gives us a mixture of headlong adventure, careful negotiation and national midwifery ending in a wrenching mix of tragedy and triumph. I've finished the series and already I'm looking forward to rereading the entire epic again, but I shall be patient, and besides, after all that effort to close the circle, it'd be remiss of me not to visit Lymond.