Reviews - Dragonfly in Amber

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Hmm. Well. So I gave OUTLANDER, the first book in this series, five stars. This one only gets three, but it's sort of a qualified three. Let me 'splain. I'm not a history person. I don't have a good mind for it - I get lost among names and dates - and I have a hard time keeping interested in the political maneuverings.

DRAGONFLY IN AMBER has a lot of history in it. There are zillions of political players and I quickly lost track of all of them. This book really centers around Claire's and Jamie's efforts to stop the battle at Culloden field (essentially, to stop Bonny Prince Charles from trying to take Scotland back from the English) and all the political machinations that go into such an epic task. Let me say again: there's a lot of history in it.

In the first book, the historical details were sprinkled in, leaving me with the feeling that I'd just gotten a pretty realistic idea of what life in 1740's Scotland was like, including some of the political climate. This book felt more like a college history course and I found myself skimming quite a bit of it.

That being said, if you love history, you'll surely love this book.

Also, most of the Jamie and Claire parts were still as lovely and well written as in the first book, and that's what kept me reading. However, there was a particular incident that takes up a good portion of the middle of the book, about which I felt almost entirely sympathetic with Jamie and yet I had to read through pages and pages and pages of Claire hating Jamie for it, railing against Jamie, etc. etc. That diminished the book's appeal for me.

So, overall, there were still aspects of this book that I loved--and I did stick with it for 866 pages!!--but it definitely fell short of OUTLANDER for me.

terprubin's review against another edition

4.0

Ok, I'll admit it. I am really enjoying this series, regardless of the fact that time travel seems to be a very minimal piece of the overall story. At least some of the time travel begins to regain a modicum of importance near the end of this book.

I still maintain that nothing in the 1740s section of the book has needed a time traveler. Of course, Gabaldon drops hints at the end of this book that foreknowledge of events might actually come in handy in book 3.