Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Outlander by Diana Galbadon


Synopsis: The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon--when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach--an "outlander"--in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues and dangers that may threaten her life...and shatter her heart. For here she meets James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, and becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire...and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

My thoughts: I’m in love. This is definitely going to my top 10 books, soooo good! I’ve always loved Scotland and the UK all in all, but now I just wish I could live there!

    This book isn’t only about romance. In its almost 800 pages you can find adventure, mystery, suspense, anger, envy, all kinds of feelings and book genres that I can possibly think, except horror (actually, thinking again, there was a part that I felt horrified). Diana Galbadon made an exquisite work in creating these characters; all of them had depth, a past, a future, no exception at all. It’s been a long time since I made so many faces during a reading, she made me hate Randall and love Jamie and worry for him as if he actually existed! Its twists made the reading so pleasant! I thought that I would finish it in four months - if not more - and yet I finished in half of it because it was so good and easygoing to read it - I would've finished sooner if it wasn't for my University. And the author isn’t done yet: no, she already wrote eight volumes, with about the same amount of pages as the first one, but why stop it, right? Sooo, she’s writing a ninth volume! Is she competing with George R. R. Martin from the Game of Thrones saga or something?? I don’t have time – nor money – to read all this! :P

     The scenario is greatly written, very detailed, letting you create the whole thing in your head. Sometimes, though, it was a little distressing to keep searching for pictures of the plants and flowers that she used in the scene – she is an ecologist, so it is expected – but it didn’t bother me that much. It was a learning – even though I don’t remember most of the flowers anymore.

      I loved Claire, but the way she is portrayed in the TV series, in some way it seemed a little bit different for me. In the book, her inner strength and strong will is shown most of the time in her attitudes, more than in her manner of speak. In the series is the opposite, but lovely just the same. It's starting to become usual to see strong women in books and I really hope that it continues to be so! We need more and more in order to show girls that damsels in distress aren't the only possible occupation for a lady! ;D

      Jamie though… he is my true love. ;) He is strong, romantic, faithful, stubborn, maddening, everything that makes him a perfect gentleman and in the same time a great scoundrel and a magnificent warrior and Scot. He is different from any character I’ve ever seen because every word he says isn’t off the place or off the beat, he seems to know what to say, when to say and how to say it in a way that will make him ever cuter! In all the reading, I never felt as if the character was “being forced to say” that sentence – I don’t know if it makes sense, I just feel it. When he was suffering I felt it in my bones as if I was watching him right in front of me and I cried and had to close the book for a while before being able to open it again - and that folks, never happened to me before, I can assure you. Even my friends, when they saw me reading it, got preoccupied that I would burst into tears.

     Randall deserves to die a very slowly and painful death that will consume him piece by piece until he is so crazy and tired that he will beg to be killed. That’s all I have to say about him.

    Dougal Mackenzie is different than what the series portray. While reading, I imagined that he would be tall, with mid-length brown hair and black eyes, and in his forties. The series made him look older, I believe.

   Angus and Rupert are the funny duo. Despite their clumsiness, they are the type of person that you can count on. Murtagh, even though he doesn’t talk much, he was, for me, one of the most loyal persons I’ve ever seen, and very protective as well. Miss Fitzgibbons is so cute and reliable I wished I had such a governess to help me every morning!

  Starz is making a wonderful job in turning this saga into a series. I could never ask for a better cast to give Claire and Jamie life.

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To everyone who got interested in the series: