Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Dragonfly in Amber

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon

50 reviews

loudgls89's review against another edition

adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I have slightly mixed feelings about this book. I was so invested in Claire and Jamie after the end of book one, but starting this book with Claire back in the ‘present day’ made me wonder what we could possibly be about to read.

We start the book introduced to Roger, who ends up helping Claire and her daughter Brianna in their endeavours to do some ‘family research’, trying to figure out what happened to Jamie after Claire was no longer with him. I immediately assumed that Brianna was Jamie’s daughter, but there were many things throughout the book that left me wondering if that could be true.

We’re also introduced to what seems to be a potential romance between Roger and Brianna, but it doesn’t feel natural – very one sided on Roger’s part. We’ll see where it develops.

Back to the question of how in the world we were going to get back to Jamie. We end up there as Claire starts telling Brianna and Roger her story. Brianna doesn’t believe a word of it but we spend the next 700 pages being told the story in great detail.

I loved Claire and Jamie being back together again, it just felt right. The story was clearly well researched (although I don’t really know the history that well so for all I know it was incredibly far fetched).

On the negative side, the story felt like it was a lot longer than it needed to be – at almost a thousand pages It was definitely a major time investment and could’ve probably have been a couple of hundred pages shorter without losing too much.

My other negative is the amount of non-consensual sex as part of the plot. It might have been very common at the time and therefore historically accurate, but it also made me feel a bit uncomfortable to be reading it – not all of it felt necessary to the plot.

What I did like was Claire being an active character and not just Jamie’s wife, and that Jamie was mostly happy for that to happen – although their relationship through this book was definitely not without ups and downs. They went through an awful lot together and the ending was pretty expected given what we knew from how the book started..

Back in modern times as Claire finishes telling the story to Roger and Brianna, and then we’re back to puzzling how or if Claire and Jamie could be reunited again…I guess we’ll find out in book 3!

Content Warnings

toni7tess's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

3 stars for Gabaldon's beautiful writing style and description. But there are a few things that really annoy me. First of all, why does she have to keep using rape as a plot device? It takes away so much from the story and just feels super unrealistic and over the top. The other thing (and this felt genuinly ridiculous) is that for some reason Gabaldon has a tendency to make all the really evil people in her stories gay? I know this book was written a long time ago, but at this point it kind of feels like she is doing it on purpose. And if you're going to include LGBTQ+ characters in your book, why not also include some consensual sex?
The book (even more so than the last one) felt like it could have been a few hundred pages shorter, but that wasn't that big of a deal to me because I really like Gabaldon's writing style.
The love story between Roger and Brianna also really didn't feel believable and like it was just there to frame the rest of the story. It was very hard to get emotionally invested and I would have liked that part of the book to be a bit more focused.

Content Warnings

jadebear's review against another edition

Go to review page

The scene where Jaime is complaining about Claire’s dress being too scandalous irritated me. I kept listening for a while after that to the audiobook, but I found I just couldn’t continue. It was too much. How are we supposed to love a character that says those things, not to mention in the previous book where he spanked her. I’m glad they changed it for the TV series, but I won’t continue with the books.

Content Warnings

meganpbennett's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Dragonfly in Amber starts off very differently than Outlander ends. In fact, it starts 22 years after Clair first goes through the stones and ends up back in time, and 20 years since she returned

pregnant with Jamie's child

. Clair calls on Roger, a historian, and asks him for information about some men who may or may not have died at Culloden, and eventually tells Roger and her daughter, Brianna, the story of Outlander and what happened between the end of Outlander and Culloden. I say that because Culloden is a fixed point in time - no matter what you try to do, a fixed point in time will happen as it is meant to happen.

A good portion of Dragonfly in Amber is spent in Paris, where Jamie is trying to both support Bonnie Prince Charlie's uprising and keep it from ever happening. Lots of things happen in Paris, and it's fascinating.

Content Warnings