A review by owlyenthusiast
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

adventurous emotional tense 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? Yes

2.75

I had a rough time with this book, so I'm gonna do my best to spell out my thoughts. I'll start with the positive. It's quite clear to me that Gabaldon poured tons of scientific and historical research into this book. Even the fantastical portions of the novel felt grounded in the world, and I think that she was effective in crafting a rich cast of characters and an engaging environment for them to play in. I legitimately found the historical setting to be interesting,  and I appreciated Gabaldon's commitment to a rough-around-the-edges approach. Even within romance, I tend to prefer when the given circumstances and the starting points of the characters aren't pretty and next to perfect. With that being said, my biggest problem with the book was how Gabaldon utilized violence, especially sexual violence. I consider myself a pretty tolerant reader, and there is plenty of controversial topics that I can consume without objection. I think that violence within Outlander is necessary and inevitable, since I believe that the beating heart of the story is about war and how it changes people. Claire (our protagonist) is not just a nurse, she is a nurse that is from 1943, and just served in WW2. Jamie, our love interest, grew up in a Scotland being actively terrorized by the British and has faced unspeakable punishments at the hands of British military personnel. I think it would be naive to think that these characters would not face further danger, react violently to certain stimuli, or, in some cases, absorb terrible treatment with a hardened demeanor. However, there is only so many instances you can read about Claire being almost assaulted before you start to wonder why Gabaldon is relying on sexual violence as much as she is. Certain scenes made narrative sense, but many, to me, felt superfluous. It became annoying, rather than horrifying, which undercuts what those scenes could be achieving. There are many ways to establish stakes and the dangers that Claire faces without having almost every man Claire comes into contact with want to force himself on her. And there are ways to communicate Jamie's traumatic past and current situation without consistently showing what an angry and violent person he can be, even to Claire. This undoes some of the believably the main romantic plot had for me. I ended the book with the conclusion that Claire had a strange trauma bond with Jamie, not the deep love that Gabaldon wants them to have. Not to mention some mild Christian and gender essentialist undertones that were thrown in throughout the love story, some of which I'm tempted to forgive given the time period both characters are supposed to be from. To conclude, I am not sure I will continue this series, which seems like a testament to how exhausting I found the aforementioned elements, seeing as there are nine more books and I have little desire to pick up another. 
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