2019/66: An Echo in the Bone -- Diana Gabaldon
2019/67: Written in My Own Heart's Blood -- Diana Gabaldon
Sometimes you just want to read something that is entertaining, distracting and long: so, when the black dog last bit, I embarked on 3000+ pages of Diana Gabaldon's 'Outlander' series, purchased piecemeal over the last year when they've been reduced-price on Amazon.
There is something very calming about reading a novel, or a sequence of novels, which feel more like a soap opera than a traditional beginning-middle-end work. I tend to read quickly and intensely -- often finishing a novel in one or two sessions -- and wondered whether this sense of dipping back into a serialised, episodic narrative over the course of weeks was a more usual reading experience, or one shared by those who read in snatched moments. I had little sense of an overall arc, though obviously there is such an arc -- as well as lesser arcs for individual characters -- in three long novels set between 1772 and 1778 in Colonial and Revolutionary America.
"So you got married, in spite of—I mean, you turned your whole life upside down, just to take care of Jamie Fraser's illegitimate son? And neither one of you ever talked about it?"A Breath of Snow and Ashes is overshadowed by time-traveller Claire's future memory of a newspaper report of her death, with Jamie, in a house fire. Jamie, meanwhile, is more concerned with the growing rebellion against English rule. Claire and Brianna have assured him that the rebels will win, and they've been right before -- the Jacobites did lose. But still ...
"No," he said, baffled. "Of course not." [A Breath of Snow and Ashes, p. 940]
Bad things happen to everybody. There are new time-travellers, betrayals, murders, rapes and a plethora of cases for Claire Fraser, Medicine Woman. (In one of these Claire makes some unpleasantly homophobic assumptions and comments about Lord John Grey, who is by far my favourite character in the series. Grrr.)
Lots on the vagaries of preindustrial life -- setting out a bowl of honey and flour to catch wild yeast when the bread starter has died; years of tea being unavailable; the smell, the constant awareness of mortality, the dangers of a country-wide battleground where militia and redcoats clash. And of course the notion of women as property. But at least Claire, Roger and Brianna are not bothered by the mosquitos, who have no appetite for 20th-century blood.
I'd asked her if she thought it was possible for a traveler to change things, change the future, and she told me it was, obviously – because she changed the future every time she kept someone from dying who would have died if she hadn't been there. Some of them went on to have children they wouldn't have had, and who knew what those children would do... [An Echo in the Bone, loc. 5716]
Reunions familial and otherwise, lost heirs, historical personages, a return to the 20th century , espionage, the chaos of war ... a shipwreck, and an unexpected marriage. A lot happens. And a heck of a cliffhanger ending.
...he found himself surprisingly cheerful. Jamie Fraser was alive, and he, John, wasn’t married. Given those two marvelous facts, the dubious prospects of escape and the much higher probability of being hanged seemed only mildly concerning. [Written in My Own Heart's Blood, p. 97]
More crises, more war, more deaths: but also more marriages, more reunions and Lord John being awesome.
In this novel Diana Gabaldon commits fanfiction, having Lord John encounter one "Natty Bumpo ... Folks mostly call me ‘Hawkeye,’ though." James Fenimore Cooper does get a namecheck in the acknowledgements, so that's nice.
And there's more on the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of time travel. And a very cheering ending -- welcome, as the next book has not yet been published.
All in all, this trio of long novels was a (mostly) very pleasant and undemanding read. I may not like all the characters, but I do feel that I know them, and that I'm interested in their stories. The historical detail is profuse, credible and immersive. The dialogue is often witty, and the pacing kept me reading. Like Claire, though, I do wish I knew more about the history of the Revolution! (And unlike Claire, I have the internet.)
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