Long Ago and Far Away

I have been reading and greatly enjoying Dorothy Dunnett's Legendary Lymond Chronicles and have arrived at book four, Pawn in Frankincense.Dunnett, who demonstrates a remarkable facility with medieval languages and cultures, has just landed her eponymous hero, Francis Crawford of Lymond, in Algiers for his latest escapade en route to deliver a gift from the French king to the Ottoman Sultan.  While the characterization of the Turks does slip occasionally into cartoonish cruelty, exaggerated even in this cruel age, she does nevertheless paint a vivid picture of a world in which the Ottomans were the most powerful, wealthy, and sophisticated empire.  I haven't gotten far enough in the book to have a real appreciation for how Dunnett will develop her portrait of the leading power of the time, but whichever direction she takes promises to prove interesting, whether for depth of cultural understanding or depth of cultural misunderstanding has yet to be seen.