Felicia's Reviews > Outlander

The entire series is sweeping, epic and lovely. However, in the middle the hero and heroine spend twenty years apart, in their own times and never the two shall meet-well, until they meet again, obviously. But it can be disconcerting if you pick up any of the others and they are not 'together'. Fascinating reads though.

This series gets better with each successive book. In fact the last one, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, was the best ever! It wasn't my cuppa tea when I first started it, but somehow now I'm hooked.

I am absolutely in love with this series, which is only helped along by the fact that a friend introduced it to me by sending me the first book while I was studying in France and desperate for leisure reading. I read it for the first time in the days leading up to meeting my online love for the first time (a redhead, incidentally) in London and travelling up to Aberdeen, so all my personal romance is folded in there too. The sequels are MASSIVE (she's well into the 4-digit-pg numbers per book now), but I ration myself to a chapter a day just to make them last longer because she takes so long between books. I feel like Jamie and Claire are family; I'd read their grocery lists just for "news from home." I'm so glad you enjoyed it too--it's so much more than the usual "flip up the kilt" hormonal fantasy.

"Highland hunk fantasy" - I love that category. My local bookstorekeeper refers to those as "lonely secretary's fiction". That said - even as a male reader of "real" fantasy, history and thrillers I love this series (and I'm working myself through part six, the"Echo in the Bones" at the Moment). The writing gets continuously better (and continuously farther away from all those other highland fantasy. Even geographically, walking right into the war of independence), there's real and mostly believable character developement and there's fever historical and technical errors than even inmost so-called real historical novels (most of which are nothing but historical fantasy all the way through). I found but three or four obvious ones throughout the whole series. That's kind of a record. Even Ken Follett comes up with this much in one book.
Gabaldon even goes as far as actually using the help of her foreign translators to get foreign languages really right (most authors don't bother still today, in times of E-Mail).
And best of all - Mrs. Gabaldon has a tendency to not take herself and her chosen genre too serious, while staying respectful to her readership and characters. All in all an intelligent read (and probably the only one in the whole hunk-business. I had to fight the urge to scream and throw books while struggling with the likes of e.g. Julianne Lee).

Voyager is still my favorite, and if you have the chance, you should really read the others. Jamie and Claire are such an amazing fiction couple. I have actually cried reading these, and I don't do that.

You know that's Sam Sykes's mom?

I wanna go on tipsy bookstore adventures with you, that sounds brilliant!

So, I am just this far behind the rest of the world.... but I am so enjoying this book!

I still think Highland Sextasy is better.

I felt the same way (my wife and I watched the series, first), but I wonder about reading the second book. I've heard it's much longer than the first--and the first was pretty long!

I met Gabaldon once in Tucson, at their Book Festival, and she was VERY entertaing. I've never actually read any of her stuff, though. Is this a good place to start? It's certainly THICK . . .

I'm enjoying your enthusiastic reviews!