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4.2 AVERAGE
4.2 AVERAGE
A complete let down, I’m very sorry to say. Over 900 pages where not a lot of interesting things happen. I’m really not that interested in the monotony of life on the ridge. I don’t mind a bit of it, you have to describe the surroundings after all, but so much time is devoted to the mundane, like Claire wondering what to make for dinner or having to sit through three church services in one day, each described in painstaking detail more than once. A lot of time is spent in different characters’ heads as they remember various minor characters from previous books. I couldn’t remember who most of them were so I spent a significant amount of time utterly bewildered. Many plots seem to lead nowhere. A lot was made of the discussion on gunpowder and we were given a long winded explanation on its production and even a scene where Bree makes a massive blunder with a purchase, but nothing was ever made of it and the topic never picked up again. In another example, someone has a heart problem and a big deal is made of it, but it’s completely forgotten in the end. In fact, they do something strenuous enough to make you worry how they’ll cope with a weakened heart but that story doesn’t go anywhere interesting either.
We know DG loves her history and loves to weave it into her stories. We all love history too, otherwise we probably wouldn’t be Outlander fans. The magic of blending history with an engaging fictional story is entirely absent here. It felt more like a history lecture and not even an interesting one. And on that note, one final complaint: I’m fed up with certain people being made the villain here. Native Americans and Africans are suffering greatly during this time in early America. In previous books, much was focused on the group of Native Americans trying to change the course of history and were made to look like lunatics for their troubles (didn’t Claire and Jaime also try to change history? No one thought they were crazy in doing so), but now we have a couple of characters with direct links to the enslaved who are turned into moustache twirling villains. If I were them, I’d want to watch the world burn too. I just think this is an extremely delicate subject matter and perhaps this author isn’t the right one to deal with it.
We know DG loves her history and loves to weave it into her stories. We all love history too, otherwise we probably wouldn’t be Outlander fans. The magic of blending history with an engaging fictional story is entirely absent here. It felt more like a history lecture and not even an interesting one. And on that note, one final complaint: I’m fed up with certain people being made the villain here. Native Americans and Africans are suffering greatly during this time in early America. In previous books, much was focused on the group of Native Americans trying to change the course of history and were made to look like lunatics for their troubles (didn’t Claire and Jaime also try to change history? No one thought they were crazy in doing so), but now we have a couple of characters with direct links to the enslaved who are turned into moustache twirling villains. If I were them, I’d want to watch the world burn too. I just think this is an extremely delicate subject matter and perhaps this author isn’t the right one to deal with it.
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
tense
slow-paced
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While it took me a little while to remember all of the various storylines from the last novel, I quickly caught up and was happy to spend time with this family once again!
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I thought I would sleep on this review before I wrote it.
This book is a seriously long book - almost 900 pages of small print. I love the characters and the setting is interesting to me as I don’t know a lot about the American war of independence. Diana’s character writing is also really good so I was excited to get my hands on a copy of the 9th book in her outlander series.
That’s what makes this so frustrating - the book just was long and meandering with no real plot line to it. The action all seemed to happen in the last 100 pages and to add insult to injury it was very rushed. A key plot line just seemed to vanish and be clumsily resolved. Another plot line was a repeat of previous plot lines that I didn’t find myself invested in at all, more like ‘here we go again’.
The time travelling aspect of the novels I’m really interested in and I hope we get a decent resolution to that in the next novel.
My advice for this book - don’t expect it to add anything further to the series except pass time until the last year of the war - which is really frustrating considering how long the books take to write etc.
This book is a seriously long book - almost 900 pages of small print. I love the characters and the setting is interesting to me as I don’t know a lot about the American war of independence. Diana’s character writing is also really good so I was excited to get my hands on a copy of the 9th book in her outlander series.
That’s what makes this so frustrating - the book just was long and meandering with no real plot line to it. The action all seemed to happen in the last 100 pages and to add insult to injury it was very rushed. A key plot line just seemed to vanish and be clumsily resolved. Another plot line was a repeat of previous plot lines that I didn’t find myself invested in at all, more like ‘here we go again’.
The time travelling aspect of the novels I’m really interested in and I hope we get a decent resolution to that in the next novel.
My advice for this book - don’t expect it to add anything further to the series except pass time until the last year of the war - which is really frustrating considering how long the books take to write etc.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Oh Diana, I love you so much but you're starting to lose me. No one could ever accuse a book in the Outlander series of being tightly plotted but this was taking it to some serious extremes. Where the hell was the editor? It was only because I am so devoted to the character in this series that I didn't give up around six hundred pages in when someone went on yet another very long, very boring journey to some distant town for very contrived reasons. Will I read the next Outlander book when it comes out? Absolutely, I am now now approximately 10,000 pages into this series and I don't give up easy. But am I anticipating it in the same way I did with the earlier books in the series? Unfortunately not.