Outlander

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

My aunt loaned me this book, informing me that it was a must-read. Upon discovering that it is nearly 900 pages long, I put it on my shelf and avoided it for a long time. However, out of curiosity and some small measure of guilt, I finally worked up the courage to open the book, which turned out to be gripping and ended up taking me probably 60 hours to read (over the weekend).

The plot is gripping, if a little confusing. It is post-war 1945 and Claire, a war nurse, has reunited with her husband Frank, a genealogist, for a second honeymoon in Scotland, while he researches his ancestors, and she studies the local wildlife and herb-lore. While there, Claire hears some Scottish folk stories about fairies kidnapping people through invisible portals, the origins of Scotland, and of course, the Loch Ness monster.

While visiting a henge (a circle of upright stones whose purpose is still unknown to anthropologists today), she places her hand on a rock and is transported to the Scotland of 1743. While there, she becomes known for her healing powers (she knows what germs are), discovers the true identity of the Loch Ness "monster," meets a girl who also fell through the crack in time (from the year 1967), and learns what actually causes the "witch marks" on those who've been burned at the stake (I'd tell you, but I don't want to ruin the surprise).

Oh yeah, and she meets her husband's ancestor, gets forced into a marriage to the archenemy of said ancestor, falls in love with him by accident, kills some people with no idea of what kind of effect it might have on 1945, and in general messes with my head. Time travel drives me nuts. However, this book is not really science fiction, it falls more under the realm of fantasy and therefore requires less explanation on the details of the effects of time travel. Its not as hard to understand as, say, the plot of the Terminator movies. Any flaws in the logic can simply be explained away by the magic of the Wee Folk (fairies, pixies, elves, what-have-you).

Plot-wise, the book was incredibly entertaining, and having Scottish blood myself, I do have some loyalty to the culture and history of Scotland. I made an interesting discovery with this book. I dislike movies because I feel the plots are too short, and prefer TV shows because their plots are more drawn out. However, in books, I find I get irritated with long plots. So while it was incredibly entertaining, and would make an awesome TV show, I found myself wishing the book would end sooner. Some people may not be afflicted with this preference as I am, probably most people in fact, so this should not affect your decision to read the book.

One thing I noticed is that some of the scenes seem a bit disjointed and episodic. An explanation for this seems to be that the author (according to Wikipedia) writes them that way, and then arranges them into a coherent plot, rather than writing from beginning to end. Although this seems like a more economical way to use your time and imagination (working on parts you want to work on at the moment), I think that it is important to use some good transition work as well. An example would be something that happened frequently. Claire and her 1743 husband, Jaime, often have some quiet, intimate moments at night, in which they are standing together staring off into the sunset. In one moment, they are standing or sitting together and then suddenly Claire is sitting on a fence, without a mention of how she got there. It is a minor thing- the reader could take it as a compliment that the author assumes you have logical intelligence and do not have to be informed of every petty thing in order to follow a plot.

However, under these same lines, there were a few parts in which the author left things unclear which were not explained until a page later. Reading that, I would say, "Ohhhh!" and then go back a page to read it again and then suddenly that previous page made sense. In some cases, it was a conclusion one of the characters may have jumped to in which I did not follow that leap, and in other cases it might have been a statement I simply "didn't get." For the most part however, I generally didn't care if I "got it" or not, because the plot was good and I wanted to know what happened next, so I kept reading. Because of this, I'd imagine this book might be rated at a higher reading level than most books.

My last point (or possibly a warning) is that this book as a movie would be "PG-13" for most scenes, and then swing to "X" in others. The relatively benign excitement of some of the battle scenes and language are interspersed with scenes that are dramatically more mature. There are two attempted rape scenes, descriptions of an attempted rape that occurred to a character in the past, and a character's heartbreaking description of a homo-erotic torture scene in a dungeon. All other sexually-oriented scenes do occur in the marriage bed, so its not something entirely unGodly that a Christian would need to be warned about. However, the scenes do feel somewhat like voyeurism, so that is why I have decided on the warning anyway.

I would recommend this book to adults, including those who enjoy fantasy or time travel, who enjoy a good love story or historical fiction, who likes long books or has a whole weekend to kill, and who enjoys reading books in which the author presents explanations to common, unexplained phenomena using ancient folklore or vice versa. I didn't touch too much on that for spoiler reasons, but the author is quite clever at making everything connect in the end.