Oy vey. After this, I’m forty-five books away from being caught up. 45.
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Outlander
Mass-Market Paperback, 870 pg.
Dell Publishing Company, 2005
Read: March 7 – 19, 2014
So when the announcement was made that this was going to be a TV series, the descriptions offered sounded intriguing — a mix of historical fiction and time travel. I figured the series was at least worth a look. I mean with that many sequels, it had to have something going for it. 50,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong, you know?
Well, they’re probably not wrong, but they sure aren’t talking for me. What an exercise in futility. I literally knew nothing more about the key plot point on page 870 than I did on page 100. While I don’t demand to understand everything fully (even if there weren’t a half-dozen sequels to explain things), but I want to learn something, not just watch hundreds of pages of plot go by to get us nowhere.
So, in the days after the end WWII, an English nurse and her husband — both back from the War and reunited — go off on a second honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands. While her husband, the historian, is off talking about local history, Claire goes off for stroll and (skipping details here) finds herself face-to-face with her husband’s great-great-something-grandfather. Who turns out to be not-a-nice-man. So Claire ends up running away from this British officer with a group of Scots. Eventually, she finds herself married to one of them, falling in love with her second husband and having loads of sex. And there’s some running from the Brits, dealing with local politics, merging 18th century medicine with 20th century medicine, and getting some sort of religious instruction.
Outlander is big, sweeping, well-written, maddeningly dependent on coincidence, with one-dimensional villains and wayyyyy too much sexy-time — and, worst of all, it’s ultimately pointless. There is literally no point to this all. getting to the expected point is really what kept me going for the last 600+ pages. There are people who will love this (obviously, just do a quick Google search), but I won’t be joining that number.
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