Kay's Bookshelf

There’s not much more I can say about the characters after all these books. However I just have to mention the change that Brianna went through – she has at last properly adjusted at 18th century life and more than that, she’s making efforts to improve it (paper, pipes, matches, etc.) which makes her even more likable than before. Roger has also gotten over his problems (his uncertain paternity of Jem and the loss of his voice) and now wants to become a priest, as he thinks he has a bit of a calling for that. The four main characters (well five if we count little Jem in) have become a tightly knit family which is a pleasure to read about.

I have read Alexandra Ripley’s Scarlett twice and both times I have wondered about the people in that book: the same people that she helped a lot, that owed her a great deal of their belongings and that esteemed her at some moment in time enough to call her “The O’Hara” – the same people have turned against her after a while and rejected her, trying to kill her too if I remember correctly. I wondered about that, about how fickle some people are, about how they bite the hand that once fed them – can such people really exist? I have found and had the exact same issue in this book: Jamie gives his people land, helps them get started working it, and in exchange they consider him their leader and refer to him as Himself. Nevertheless after a while gossip starts spreading and at his time of need Jamie is rejected by them, by his own people, who don’t bother listening to him or protecting him in his hour of need. Human nature is a mystery to me.

One of the reasons why I really wanted to read this book was because I read on a forum that Diana Gabaldon said that in this book the mystery of the ghost we saw at Claire’s window just before her first trip to the past was going to be explained. I was really curious about it (how do you explain such a thing? a deal with God perhaps?) but the explanation proved to be a bit disappointing: one random night Jamie dreamt about seeing Claire in her own time and that was that. Actually Jamie seems to develop a bit of supernatural capabilities in this book as he also gets to see Brianna in her own time – this time unseen. However this book was based on a supernatural fact to begin with so who am I to complain :)

Also on that same forum I read that this book was originally set to be named “King, farewell”, a title which I find absolutely brilliant given that in this book America is starting the war that is going to get her out of the English king’s domination. However it seems that it was sort of hard to remember and easily confused so the author changed it into “A Breath of Snow and Ashes”, in my opinion because she really likes the imagery of white snow covering burning ashes – one example is when Claire and Jamie’s house burns down – the other just mentioned once during a scene between Bree and Roger:

Then her hands rose and rested on him, the tears cool on his face, congealing, the white of her clean as the silent snow that covers char and blood and breathes peace upon the world.

It feels so strange letting Jamie and Claire go, after all these months spent reading about them. At least I do know that they’re happy together :) I’m looking forward to see if there’ll be a next book that will bring them back though. Claire must be around 60 though so I imagine her adventurous days will be pretty much over either way.

What I liked most: the way Marsali called her yet unborn child Monsieur L’Oeuf (I’m sure there were other more interesting things to like but I’ve gotten so used with them while reading all those books I stopped noticing them).

What I liked least: The length of the book. I could easily have skipped the first two-thirds almost on the whole.

Recommend it? Well… probably. But there’s nothing like the first books (it’s good but not brilliant).

This book is a sequel to:
Outlander
Dragonfly in Amber
Voyager
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Jamie turns fifty in this book, and it’s a bit strange to “see” him so old (not to mention Claire who’s older than him and whose wild brown hair is now almost entirely white). Other than that they are very much the same though and still very in love with each-other. In this book a connection develops between Jamie and his son-in-law, a thing that was sort of needed as Jamie didn’t hold Roger in too high an esteem for the larger part of the previous book. The two men bond and become a team, both when working as when fighting.

One of the moments I found interesting in this book was when Jamie was jealous on hearing that Laoghaire had a new suitor. While I wasn’t exactly pleased about that, I can see it happening very well. I think it adds depth to Jamie’s character, making it more… realistic. He may be very much in love with Claire but he’s human and has some weaknesses as such (as opposed to the absolute perfection one might expect from a character in a book) :) .

I did like this book but it had rarely managed to hold for me the attraction the other books had. Probably because nothing of absolute interest happened in this book (the others had a sort of theme that kept the reader on the edge of his chair, for example in the first one Claire goes back into the past and finds Jamie (this first one is still my favorite of them all), in the second one she returns to her own time and has Brianna, in the third she once again crosses the stones to be reunited with Jamie and in the fourth Brianna and Roger join them too; whereas in this book there is no such thing, they just go on with their lives – with a little bit of adventure on the side, I’ll grant you that, but nothing as I was expected it to.

What I liked most: IMPORTANT SPOILER ****** Obviously the moments that held the most tension: Roger’s hanging and Jamie’s snakebite; I think the author dosed the tension very well on these ones as it made me feel really afraid on this two occasions – I had a moment or two when I actually thought Roger has died, as for Jamie, even though I knew he wasn’t going to die because of his being a major character, I was really afraid he was going to lose his leg especially as I knew how much being whole meant to him ******* END IMPORTANT SPOILER
I also liked very much the letter Jenny sent Jamie, not only the feelings expressed there but also the very wording (“So now I am a grandmother ten times over, with my hair gone grey, and still I feel my cheeks go hot with shame and my wame shrink like a fist, thinking of Father bidding us kneel down side by side and bend over the bench to be whipped.”)(“Mother loved you always, Jamie, and when she kent she was dying, she called for me, and bade me care for you. As though I could ever stop.“)

What I liked least: The sheer length of the book – over 1400 pages according to Amazon. I don’t think any writer (not even a very good one like Mrs. Gabaldon) can fill that many pages with only interesting stuff. I think that the book would probably have been better if it would have been a little more condensed.

Recommend it? If you’re into really long novels then yes :)

This book is a sequel to:
Outlander
Dragonfly In Amber
Voyager
Drums of Autumn

This book is followed by:
A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 9% [?]

The story is now a bit more fragmented, alternating between what happens to Jamie or Claire and what happens to Brianna and Roger. Brianna is now a fully grown woman, making both her parents proud, a bit different from the American girl we first met two books ago. Also we get to see more of Lord John (who actually has some books of his own) and, like Claire, cannot help liking him more and more as he is a very good and noble man. Poor Roger goes through quite a lot, things that he would never have imagined in his scholar life in Oxford, however he manages to surpass everything, coming out on the other side as a better and stronger man.

I loved this book the way I loved all Diana Gabaldon’s books I read so far. I admire her skill and the way she paints her characters, making them truly believable. There were, as always with her books, times I got so enveloped in the novel that real life seemed sort of less real. I also loved the way she took care of all the loose threads in the book, we even get to see Gavin Hayes’ son in the end (Gavin Hayes being a very minor character, an old friend of Jamie’s, who wherever he went kept asking for his son, in such a manner (“A lad about fourteen,’ he’d say, ‘wi’ a green plaidie and a small gilt brooch.’” ) and with so much perseverance that left the reader a bit sad because it seemed such a futile search; nevertheless the lad does appear after a few hundred pages, when the reader has forgotten all about him, but said reader will be nevertheless rejoicing at the fact that his initial fears have been wrong and the beloved boy still lives – at least that’s how it happened to me).

Not in the least I am very happy to see Jamie for once not being an outlaw, I was getting a bit tired of that as he kept getting pardoned then an outlaw again and so on. Luckily America seems to be good for him so now he’s okay (for now as he’s still on the wrong side of the law due to some whiskey that he manufactures).

What I liked most: Can I say everything? I so love these books. If I had to choose a favorite moment it would be very hard, what with Brianna seeing her parents once again, Jamie mistakenly beating Roger to a pulp, Claire spending the night under a tree and making conversation with a skull, Claire trying to help Jamie who was fighting with a bear but hitting him in the head with a fish and many more. All scenes that maybe don’t seem like much but very captivatingly told and very enjoyable.

What I liked least: Brianna being raped and not being able to tell who the father of her child was. That was such a wrong thing to happen to two good people like her and Roger…

Recommend it?Yes. Especially together with the three previous books.

A quote:

You did forgive him, though,” she said quietly. “Why?”
[...]
“I had to.” He glanced at her, eyes straight and level. “I hated him for as long as I could. But then I realized that loving him… that was part of me, and one of the best parts. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t love me, that had nothing to do with it. But if I could not forgive him, then I could not love him, and that part of me was gone. And I found eventually that I wanted it back.” He smiled, faintly. “So you see, it was really entirely selfish.”

This book is a sequel to:
Outlander
Dragonfly in Amber
Voyager

This book is followed by:
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Both characters have grown older now, Claire is 48 (but looking and feeling quite young) and Jamie is 44. They have both been through quite a lot (especially Jamie), they have matured and changed. I liked the way Gabaldon accentuated the fact that, even though they were still very much in love, at first they did not actually know each other (a normal thing due to the twenty years that have gone by) and had to sort of reacquaint with each other all over again. I admire very much Gabaldon’s skill to bring her characters to life, to make the reader feel like they are some close friends (I myself had a moment, after few hours’ reading, when I closed the book and then for a short second felt amazed that Jamie was left there, that he wasn’t actually alive but only the figment of someone’s imagination).

To be honest I did wonder why does the author insist on making Jamie an outlaw. You’d think that after seven years in a cave and quite a few in prison he’ll be happy to be forgiven and go live quietly with his folks. But no, he just had to take up smuggling, in Edinburgh no less. There is something that “city Jamie” is missing (as compared to the “non city Jamie”), I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it makes him a bit less enjoyable – I felt that in the second book too. We get to see a third Jamie in this book, the “sea Jamie”, as about half of the pages are spent sailing from one island in the West Indies to another. I like this Jamie very well, as much as I ever liked him when not living in a city.

We get to meet Geilis all over again, a very happy event for me as I was a bit bothered by a little discordance in the past two books: when Claire goes through the stones she ends up in the same spot about 200 years earlier or later, sequentially. The number of years she spends on one side or another is the same on both sides (for example she spends almost three years with Jamie and comes back after almost three years from the moment she disappeared). Geilis was another matter as she left twenty years after Claire and ended up five years earlier, which didn’t quite fit with the theory. Luckily we meet her again and she is able to explain that :)

I also find interesting the way Claire’s “lives” seem to keep “touching” each other. For example in this book in 1968 she has one doctor friend in America, a black man named Joe Abernathy. On her last visit to his office he shows her a newly found skeleton from a cave in the Caribbean, which they both examine and take turns in guessing what might have happened to her (they identify her as being a white woman that has been killed with a dull blade about two hundred years ago). Back in 1765 not only she meets with a strange black man which sort of reminded her of Joe (and also was a slave to a woman named Abernathy, making him very probably to be Joe’s grand-grand-grandfather) but she is also involved in killing a white woman, in a cave in the Caribbean, with a sort of stone axe, only later realizing the coincidence.

What I liked most:I did like the majority of the book, especially after they left the city :P However my very favorite moment couldn’t be any other than the moment Claire is reunited with Jamie. I find it very well written (and am amused by the fact that Jamie actually fainted) because they are both happy to see each other but also wary, each of them not knowing in what way the person in front of them changed in the last twenty years.

What I liked least: The fact that Jamie has married Laoghaire! I was so upset because of that (still am). I do understand his feelings, his fear of loneliness, his need of someone in his life and in his bed, but married? Jamie and Claire seemed to place very much importance on their wedding vows and the thought of his making the same vows to another… well it ain’t pretty. Especially as that another was Laoghaire! (I bet these were exactly the kind of feelings the author wanted the readers to feel, I see the manipulation but I still can’t help being annoyed and disappointed and a plethora of other things – but if I am honest I do admit that’s why I love these books so much, because of the strong feelings they make me have :) )

Recommend it? Absolutely, but only after reading the first two books. While this is quite a good read in itself it has a lot more depth and the characters are a lot easier to understand if knowing the prequels.

This book is a sequel to:
Outlander
Dragonfly in Amber

This book is followed by:
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 7% [?]

The book begins in 1968 and this simple thing has broken my heart. Because it meant that Claire actually did left Jamie behind at one time or another. For a moment I felt sorry I even begun reading this book as I would rather have known them together forever. :)

The book is very interesting, even though the first half was just a slightly bit disappointing. It was okay but the first book was way more than that, was truly amazing. A large part of this first half is dedicated to describing Jamie and Claire at Versailles. It was a bit harder for one to relate with the two characters given the circles they were in (they were familiarly acquainted with King Louis of France, Bonnie Prince Charlie, various dukes and counts and so on). Jamie was a business man and I thought the role fitted him way less than the one of the outlaw hiding in a forest. Same goes for Claire, she was far less interesting as a lady of society, attracting all the gentlemen, than she was when only a normal person in Scotland. Luckily their time in France came abruptly to an end (not before Claire slept with King Louis, why? why???) and they returned to Lallybroch where they spent some quiet time together before poor Jamie became an outlaw again (this time because of some forgery of Prince Charlie). And they sort of returned to the life I liked so much in the first book.

When reading the book I had no idea this was supposed to be a trilogy but I felt sure that the author had in mind this second book while writing the first one. At least because we now become certain that the ghost at the very beginning it was really Jamie as in this book he receives as a present the running stag brooch that had captured Frank’s attention back then. Also, when the two lovers have to part, he promises her he’ll find her:

“I will find you,” he whispered in my ear. “I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you—then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest.”
His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.
“Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”

However much I liked this book, the part at the end seemed to me a bit forced (the part where they all witness Geilis/Gillian as she passes through the rocks; I mean, what were the odds?). I did like though the fact that Geilis went to the past with a mission, a mission to help Prince Charles win, a mission that sort of explains her later behaviour. I actually wonder if, by any chance, she is the one that convinced Dougal MacKenzie to become a Jacobite.

The title of the novel is open to interpretations. There is an actual dragonfly in amber that Claire has received as a present at her wedding to Jamie (with a poem written on it, part of which Claire discovers, hundreds of years later, to be also written on her wedding ring). In my opinion the title is referring to the fact that, no matter how hard she tries, Claire is as incapable to stop the Culloden Battle as a dragonfly in amber (she does once refer to herself as such).
LATER EDIT: Actually the title seems to be explained a lot better in the third book, the dragonfly in amber is Jamie himself:

He had been fixed in my memory for so long, glowing but static, like an insect frozen in amber. And then had come Roger’s brief historical sightings, like peeks through a keyhole; separate pictures like punctuations, alterations; adjustments of memory, each showing the dragonfly’s wings raised or lowered at a different angle, like the single frames of a motion picture. Now time had begun to run again for us, and the dragonfly was in flight before me, flickering from place to place, so I saw little more yet than the glitter of its wings.

I found some interesting things in this book, for example did you know that “mac” means “son of” in Gaelic? Which sort of explains why the vast majority of the clans have names beginning with Mac. Also, did you know what a rat satire was?

“A rat satire is an old Scottish custom; if you had rats or mice in your house or your barn, you could make them go away by composing a poem—or you could sing it—telling the rats how poor the eating was where they were, and how good it was elsewhere. You told them where to go, and how to get there, and presumably, if the satire was good enough—they’d go.”

The book really sparked my interest into the Culloden area so here are some related links:

• Clan map of Scotland: here
• Diana Gabaldon tour (yes there is such thing): here
• Some pictures from nowadays Culloden: here
• The headstone of the Clan Fraser: here or here
• Cairn detail: here
• Other headstones:
  • Clan Stewart
  • Mixed Clans
  • “here the head of MacGillivray fell”

This book is a sequel to:
Outlander

This book is followed by:
Voyager
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 6% [?]

It is a bit interesting how the more I like a book the harder is for me to review it. And as I was completely trapped into this book and read it breathlessly, this will be a very hard article to write.

What should I begin with? I fell completely in love with the two characters, Jamie and Claire, each a perfect match for the other. They are both very courageous, very stubborn and sometimes temperamental, but they are both loving and gentle too. They laugh together, they cry on each other’s shoulders and, of course, they make steamy love to each other. Unfortunately they have to keep rescuing each other from some terrible trials too (especially as Jamie is an outlaw, being convicted for a crime he never committed). One can easily forget Jamie is only 23 given that he’s been through so much and that he is so in control of himself (Claire is 28). I could write a lot more about these two characters, but I don’t want to give spoilers away. For me this book was quite an experience because I was always wondering what will happen, will Jamie live, will they be together forever or will Claire have to go back to Frank in the end, and so on, and I wouldn’t like to ruin this things for others. :)

When I first read the book I knew nothing whatsoever about it beforehand, because I wanted to let it surprise me. And so I paid little attention to the ghost (“a Scot, in complete Highland rig-out, complete to sporran and the most beautiful running-stag brooch on his plaid“) that was looking unhappily at Claire’s window in the very beginning. I have even forgotten all about it while reading (there’s nothing else ghost-related in the book). Now that I remember though I cannot help but feeling immensely sorry for Jamie (because it could only be Jamie’s ghost), come to take a look at his beloved wife in 1945, two hundred years after his own time.

I absolutely recommend this book. I was immensely sad to have to let go of the characters. The good thing is that the book has no less than five sequels at the moment, with rumors about another one or two. So it’s very likely that I’ll keep in touch. :)

Here is a random quote:

Jamie twisted in his saddle, to look back up the slope.
“I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday,” he said softly. “Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I’d be strong enough to send ye away.” He shook his head, still gazing up the hill, a faraway look in his eyes.
“I said ‘Lord, if I’ve never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.’ ” He pulled his eyes away from the cottage and smiled briefly at me.
“Hardest thing I ever did, Sassenach.”

I so loved the way he called her Sassenach (meaning English or Outlander and usually said as a term of abuse; not in this case though :) ).

This book is a prequel to:
Dragonfly in Amber
Voyager
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 8% [?]