Book Review – the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon

Part time-travel, mostly historical fiction, a lot of romance and graphic sex scenes… I thought this would be more fantasy/time-travel and not so much historical fiction, but was not disappointed in the least to find that the historical aspect far outweighs the time-travel aspect.  It’s eighteenth-century Scotland in all its beauty and ugliness.  Wow.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Claire is a young married woman in the 1940s, who suddenly finds herself falling into the past through an ancient henge in Scotland.  She lands in 1752 clan-dominated Scotland, in the middle of the clans’ uprising against the British.  Her first encounter is a nasty one with a man who turns out to be her husband’s ancestor, glorified in the 1900s but not such a nice guy in real life.  Her rescuers, a rough, tough, band from the MacKenzie clan, include one Jamie Frasier, a heart-throb of a man in any century.  Of course Claire and Jamie fall in love, and have a lot of great sex, and Claire is torn emotionally by her passion for Jamie and her feelings of affection and duty to Frank, her husband in 1942.  Eventually she is forced to choose between them when she is presented with the opportunity to return to her own time through the henge time-portal.   Her decision is not surprising, but I will not spoil it here.The original novel, Outlander, has just celebrated its 20th anniversary, and there are 6 further novels. Each one is approximately 900 pages and covers such a range of time and adventures that there hardly seems anything more to do, but Ms Gabaldon’s mind is still spinning and she is still creating wonderful amazing stories. Let me just say that her lovers cross the Atlantic, establish a homestead in North Carolina and get caught up in the American Revolution, along with an extended family and tons of loyal friends. The last novel, An Echo in the Bone, was published in 2011, so her legions of rabid fans are hoping to hear of a new novel in 2013.