Reviews with content warning for Ableism - Outlander

Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

outofthepinksky's review

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adventurous challenging emotional tense slow-paced

4.0

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honestlyyours77's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is a reread as I needed an audiobook to listen to before bed that I didn’t have to 100% focus on.

As always it’s a favorite and I love listening to Davina narrate.

I think at nearly 35 years old it should be reading modern classic status as boy does it stand the test of time!

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sup3r_xn0va_maya's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

2.0

💬: “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered into my hair. “There’s the two of us now.” I felt warm, soothed, and safe for the first time in many days."

Gabaldon, Diana. Outlander: A Novel (Outlander, Book 1) (p. 212). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

📖Genres: romance, romantasy, adult, adventure, historical romance, historical, fantasy

📚Page Count: 850

🎧Audiobook Length: 32h 38min

👩🏾‍🏫My Rating: ⭐️⭐️ - 2/5
----

TW -

ableism, animal death, blood, body horror, cursing, death, death of parent, emotional abuse, gore, grief, injury/injury detail, misogyny, murder, physical abuse, pregnancy, rape, sexism, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual content, sexual violence, torture, violence, vomit, war

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon is an 800+ page historical romance that has action, spice, time travel, and adventure. Claire is a nurse from 1945 and she's thrusted back in time a few hundred years, where she has to survive until she figures out how to get home. It's here that she meets Jamie, a Scott who wants to show her a love so true. At least she won't have to try and survive alone, with him by her side. I didn't love this story, I barely liked it. Between the weird and slow pacing and the threat of rape being constantly thrown around, by the time the book was over I was exhausted and annoyed from the read.

I didn't like the book's pacing. The book started off really slow, I'd say it took about 2 to 3 hours of listening to the audiobook for the story to actually start moving forward. Once the story started to move, things got interesting and I became invested. Then, I'd say 200 pages into the action, things slowed down to a crawl and I stopped caring about the story. After about 150 pages of the slow crawl, things picked up again. Do you see where I'm going with this? This strange pacing continued throughout the entire novel.

(Trigger Warning - rape, sexual assault)
The threat of rape was constant from the moment the main character went back in time. I understand that your female main character went back in time, that doesn't mean you have to have every other man she encounters try to physically & sexually attack her. I honestly should have counted the amount of times Claire was threated with physical or sexual harm by a man, there are a few times where she actually IS attacked. Claire apparently isn't the only one who's in danger of being sexually assaulted.

At the tail end of the book Jamie gets arrested and he incidentally ran into Randall, well Randall is an evil man so he wanted to take revenge on Jamie and he does that by mutilating, torturing, and raping Jamie for an uncertain amount of days.

(Trigger Warning - rape, sexual assault, drugging)
Unfortunately, it gets worse. Now,

by the time Jamie is rescued from Randall at the end of the book, he has PTSD, he's so sick that he might die, and he doesn't want to look at his wife because he feels ashamed and disgusted with himself because of the sexual assault. How do I know this? Because he tells Claire and there's a dialogue about the assault and Jamie tells Claire exactly what was said and done to him. For some odd reason the author decided to make Claire drug Jamie with opium, so he hallucinates, and then she pretends to be his assaulter (Randall) and she says the things he said and then she does the things he physically did to elicit a response out of Jamie. Well, it does get a reaction, Jamie attacks Claire and they go tumbling to the ground (while Claire is getting beat on by Jamie). Somehow, while they're tumbling on the group Claire is able to insert Jamie into her, and now they're having intercourse. Claire "cured him" and helped him claim his "manhood".

OMG. How ridiculous, gross, and unnecessary.

(Trigger Warning - physical abuse, domestic abuse)
The spice fluctuated. At first I was into it but then there was this strange scene where

Jamie physically held down and beat Claire because he wanted to prove to his band of merry men that he was punishing her for her actions. I just didn't understand this scene, it made me sick to my stomach and it made me like Jamie a lot less than I previously did. After that, I wasn't interested in any spice between Jamie and Claire.

I'm giving it one and a half chilies 🌶️.5 out of five chilies

This book also ends in the

pregnancy trope

, and if you know me then you know I hate that trope very much. So, the ending was just disappointing for many reason. I really tried to trust recommendations and then trust the process with this one and that failed me. There were only a few times during the 32 hour audiobook that I enjoyed the reading experience. I just didn't like this book and I won't be continuing with the series.
⭐️⭐️ - 2/5

I listened to this for free on the library app, hoopladigital.com

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bookish_baker_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-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? No

3.5

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soph22's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

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margueritestjust's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

I read this as part of a book club read. Some parts of it I loved, others not so much.

The characters: Well, we have to start off with Jaime. My mom has read the books and watched the show, and so have my friends who did the book club with me (well, at least watched the show) and I've heard quite a bit about him from them, and he was even in his way a little unofficial mascot to me - and my mom and I had referred to him jokingly as "the king of men" (as I understand he's called in the writer's room on the show?) And may I say I was NOT disappointed. Incredibly fierce, protective, and loving, he's pretty much everything anyone could ask for in a fictional boyfriend. The funniest part of it all was realizing that this man is younger than me 😭.

Claire. What to say about Claire. Okay, I'll be honest, she kind of annoyed me. She's pretty much useless as a protagonist because she never seems able to solve problems on her own, and in fact, expects, other people to solve them for her. I could maybe have forgiven this earlier in the book if she hadn't also continued to do so in the last sections of the book. Her relationship with Jamie feels unequal because she's always complaining about having to comfort him when he literally will comfort her even when he's doing worse himself. I don't know, it was just so frustrating to me. There's this nigh unto perfect man (who I will acknowledge is definitely not fully perfect) who cares so much for her in so many ways and she just never seems willing or able to reciprocate that care.

Jack is...well, okay, I have a lot to say about his character. The whole thing about Frank that bothers me, and it goes hand-in-hand with a bit of other writing in other various points of the book, but it's really not a good look that the only gay characters in the book are either (a) a rapist, and (b) a pedophile. I think that the book's messages on sexual assault are important, and the juxtaposition between consensual and indeed loving sex versus non-consensual and damaging sex helps to illustrate that topic well, but it rubbed me the wrong way to have, again, literally the only gay characters in the book be a rapist (

and also possibly an incestuous rapist in the case of Jack, as I think it was mentioned that he had lust/feelings for his brother

) and a pedophile (unfortunately I forget his name, he's a minor character). Especially when the book literally won't shut up about all the sex the heterosexual main couple has, literally all the time. Like seriously, so many sex scenes.

Other characters: Ian and Jenny are major couple goals and I love them so much. Dougal was a fun character, though his

lust for Claire really comes out of nowhere to me. It's like the author was trying to figure out how to make things hard for her character and just threw Dougal randomly at Claire because then she could be like....#feminist or something

I also felt quite bad for Frank, who I really can't say enough deserves better, especially because Gabaldon would literally not stop bringing up how much Jack looked or acted like him pretty much every time Jack and Claire crossed paths, thereby associating the two of them together in the minds of the reader.

The plot: Okay, I'll be honest, the first maybe quarter or so of this book drags quite a bit. It's not that it's uninteresting necessarily, but the pace picks up quickly after that, with a lot more plot threads that are introduced and developed. One of the things that annoyed me was that Claire always said she was trying to get back to her normal life, but it's like girl just enjoy Scotland!! You're there, with a husband that you do actually like as compared to the one who quite frankly deserves better than you!! Once she decided to stay in Scotland is when I really felt like the book had a clarity of purpose. We didn't have to have Claire telling us about how much she wanted to get back to Frank (who she didn't seem to like much in the first place, rip Frank, you deserve better). Another thing that annoyed me was how they somehow managed to keep running into Jack, as if he and his command were the only Redcoats in the entirety of Scotland - it felt practically cartoonish at times. But as the plot threads started to pick up, so did my interest. The final section after all of the stuff goes down at the prison (which is definitely very intense, so definitely check out content warnings especially if rape and graphic violence), there's strong sections of hurt/comfort (forgive the fanfic term from 2011) and that in particular I ate up. It was good enough to convince me to go on with the series.

One other thing is that I didn't really like how they was practically no time travel back and forth or whatever - but I've been promised that it happens more as time goes on (and as the book goes on).

The actual writing itself is not much to write home about - but it's a debut novel, which I always try to keep in mind with any author that I read.

So, definitely a bit of a mixed bag. Hopefully with time she improves, and I do think I've heard that there are eventually gay characters who are not literally the epitome of evil, so that's nice. I liked the world of Scotland in the 17--whatever's and I really liked Jamie.

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elizlizabeth's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

3.0

I enjoyed the first half of the book but by the end it honestly felt like the plot was there only to justify the smut. Jamie was my favorite character but by the end he had lost all semblance of personality and coherency in favor of whatever the plot or Claire's own arch required. Claire herself was very annoying and unlikable to me, but her actions and personality made sense for the plot so it's not really a critique and more of a lack of affinity on my part.
Gabaldon is a very good writer and I truly enjoyed the historical fantasy part of this. Not sure if I'd read the rest of the series after that infamous dungeon scene tho. Definitely read and heed the warnings on this one.

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laurenleigh's review

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tense slow-paced

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

3.0

What a bizarre reading experience. This was a TERRIBLE book with a FANTASTIC narrator. I’ve heard the book and the show described as “rapey,” and that is spot on. How the hell are there like 9 more books and 8 seasons of this?? I can’t believe I actually made it through 33 hours. Davina Porter was just so magical with all the different voices and accents. I enjoyed listening to her so much! I guess I gave up trying to make excuses for the plot and had to laugh at it instead. Except I’m not laughing at all at a husband beating his wife. That scene and the aftermath were so twisted. So much about the plot and Claire’s character make absolutely zero sense to me. Pretty much only giving stars for the narration.

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linnylionheart's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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carleesi's review against another edition

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3.5

The storytelling is amazing but HOO BOY did I forget just how probbo this story is. Very very full on homophobia and ableism from the author rather than it being part of the story.

Remembering how my friends mum gave this to us to read when we were 15 and thanking my lucky stars I never actually found a boyfriend like Jamie even though I so desperately wanted one. Domestic violence, multiple comments about “not being able to stop” or Claire just having to cope with the fact that he’s going to fuck her,

even after he is raped!!!

. Big ick from Jamie. Tv Jamie is far superior. As is tv Claire

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