Comments | aella_irene: Book Review: Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

aella_irene

Book Review: Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

Aug 26, 2007 23:49

( People disappear all the time. Ask any policeman. Better yet, ask a journalist. Disappeances are bread and butter to journalists.

Young girls run away from home. Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers chnage their names and vanish into the smoke of imported cigars.

Many of the lost will be found, eventually, dead or alive. Disappearances, after all, have explanations.

Usually.

(From the first page of Outlander, unnumbered) )

diana gabaldon, book review, outlander, book reviews: 9/10

Comments 20

ankaret August 27 2007, 09:58:42 UTC

I love the first four of these deeply. There was a scene that squicked the hell out of me, but I can't remember which of the early books it's in so I won't mention in case of spoilers, but other than that - I loved Jamie, I loved Claire, and my heart belonged to the minor characters, particularly Murtagh. I gave the first one to my mother to read and felt like a crack pusher.

I do kind of wish she'd stopped after Drums of Autumn, though. It was all a bit law-of-diminishing-returns for me from there.

aella_irene August 27 2007, 12:06:13 UTC

I've read all of them, and I suspect that the scene that squicked you was in the first one- that's where most of the torture comes in ( ... )

ankaret August 27 2007, 13:38:31 UTC

I suppose his mother could have been the Dowager Countess Of Some Title That's Been Around Since 1148, remarried a more recent Marquis, and refused to change the monogram on her linen. But it's a bit of a reach.

aella_irene August 27 2007, 14:04:33 UTC

John's half-brother from her previous marriage is plain Mr, and his brother is said to be an earl. So, I think her editors fell down on the job. Or she and her publishers thought Lord John and the Private Matter sounded like a good title, and ignored the tiny detail that he can't possibly be a Lord. Or Both.

But other than that the book is wonderful, and John's family terribly engaging, the silent conversation between him and his mother held during a party is fantastic, and I felt a great deal of the book feeling sorry for his cousin Olivia, whose fiancee has a Dark Secret, which did not bode well for either of them.

(I need a Lord John Grey Icon, dammit!)

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