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A review by stridette
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
This is absolutely going to be someone's favourite book. It does a few things, and mostly, it does them really well. I think my main issue stems from how I don't like the mix of those things as much as I thought I would.
I loved the history of it. I loved the political intrigue, the adventure, and the surprisingly gritty and gruesome realism that came with a violent life and a medical calling. I thought that all of this stuff would temper the romance and make it much more interesting for me, but alas, it just felt incongruous. The two aspects lay side-by-side and never really met, and when the focus was on the romance and the sex, I grew quickly bored.
The author tried. For example, she spent a fair while trying to get the leads to understand their differences in what was expected in terms of violence and consent in the context of marriage, but it only consisted of talking and never amounted to anything satisfying. Honestly, that whole section mostly felt like the author trying to get away with squeezing in a bit of BDSM and dubcon. I never cared enough about any of it to find anything but boredom in this whole section.
The ending was also way too long. The whole bit in France needed to be scrapped. It felt more like sequel material.
Other issues included some surprising turns into homophobia and ableism. Our villain's mentally challenged henchman was especially heinous. There was really no call for any of it. I know it was the 90s, and at the time it was probably quite advanced in the way it had our hero raped by another man and not at all lessened in his masculinity for the experience. That's me being very generous, though. It was honestly hard to read.
I loved the history of it. I loved the political intrigue, the adventure, and the surprisingly gritty and gruesome realism that came with a violent life and a medical calling. I thought that all of this stuff would temper the romance and make it much more interesting for me, but alas, it just felt incongruous. The two aspects lay side-by-side and never really met, and when the focus was on the romance and the sex, I grew quickly bored.
The author tried. For example, she spent a fair while trying to get the leads to understand their differences in what was expected in terms of violence and consent in the context of marriage, but it only consisted of talking and never amounted to anything satisfying. Honestly, that whole section mostly felt like the author trying to get away with squeezing in a bit of BDSM and dubcon. I never cared enough about any of it to find anything but boredom in this whole section.
The ending was also way too long. The whole bit in France needed to be scrapped. It felt more like sequel material.
Other issues included some surprising turns into homophobia and ableism. Our villain's mentally challenged henchman was especially heinous. There was really no call for any of it. I know it was the 90s, and at the time it was probably quite advanced in the way it had our hero raped by another man and not at all lessened in his masculinity for the experience. That's me being very generous, though. It was honestly hard to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Biphobia, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault