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Claire
Randall travels back in time, purely by accident, finding herself in 18th-century
Scotland. Her life is in peril from the moment she steps in the middle of a skirmish
between a small band of Scottish clansmen and a Dragoon of English. She is forced to
adapt in a society functioning before the inventions of plumbing, penicillin and anything
resembling a judicial system.
She uses her intelligence and medical
training to survive, careful to hide her identity as someone from another time. This
takes some creative story telling and remembering not to refer to any event that took
place past this period.
One man makes her life-altering experience
bearable no matter how frightened she gets. Jamie Fraser starts out as a traveling
companion and becomes so much more. Jamie is a young, outspoken, warrior and a bit of an
outlaw. His devotion to Claire is unwavering: he will risk life and limb. They speak to
each other in playful banter often followed by love scenes that are downright surprising!
There is always a level of suspense in the book. Will her false identity
be discovered? Can she get back to the time-travel rock to return to her 20th-century
husband? Does she even want to?
Outlander is the first in the saga,
followed by Dragonfly in Amber, Vogager, Drums of Autumn, and The
Fiery Cross.
Outlander is not a light read. The author
describes settings, people, and conversations with a great amount of detail. She writes
the dialogue in the style of the Scottish brogue, which keeps it authentic. As an
example, “Better have a wee nip,” he whispered to me. “It willna fill your belly, but it
will make ye forget you’re hungry.”
This is a highly absorbing read, and
you will likely carry the characters with you. Someone I know has read the entire saga
and is eagerly waiting for Diana Gabaldon’s new novel – A Breath of Snow and Ashes
to be written because as she puts it “I miss Claire and Jamie.”
