num_pages: 672
description: 'If they place the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left and ask me to give up my mission, I will not give it up until the truth prevails or I myself perish in the attempt . . .'It is 1557 and legendary Scottish warrior Francis Crawford of Lymond is once more in France. There he is leading an army to rout the hated English from Calais.Yet while Lymond seeks victory on the battlefield he is haunted by his troubled past - chiefly the truth about his origins and his marriage (in name only) to young Englishwoman Philippa Somerville.As the French offer him a way out of his marriage and his wife appears in France on a mission of her own, the final moves are made in a great game that has been playing out over an extraordinary decade of war, love and struggle - bringing the Lymond Chronicles to a spellbinding close.'A masterpiece of historical fiction' Washington Post
  '
Melodrama of the most magnificent kind' The Guardian
language: English
title: Checkmate
titlecomplete: Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
characters: Marthe, Philippa Somerville, Nostradamus, Mary Queen of Scots, Richard Crawford, William Grey, Sybilla, Piero Strozzi, Jerott Blyth, Francis Crawford of Lymond
genres: Romance, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, France, Scotland, Historical, 16th Century, Fiction, Literature, Adventure
ratings_count: 3572
places: England, Lyon, Paris
series: The Lymond Chronicles
publisher: Penguin UK