Voyager (Outlander) by Diana Gabaldon Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Voyager (Outlander)
Book Review: 3rd in Series - A Moving Scottish Historical!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the 3rd in the unique and wonderful Scottish historical (and time travel) series that grabs you by the throat and won't let you go. At over 1000 pages, this installment is an all day sucker of historical romance and well worth your time. The saga of Claire and Jamie continues in Voyager as Claire, who by 1968 has become an MD and is now chief of staff of a prominent Boston hospital, having discovered that Jamie did not die at Culloden in 1746, learns more about Jamie's hard life since they were forced apart 20 years ago. She is assisted in her research in Scotland by Roger Wakefield, an Oxford scholar and a Scot who is attracted to Claire's beautiful daughter, Brianna, who is the physical image of her father, Jamie. As the three conduct their research into the past, we become a part of Jamie's life during the years he did not have Claire. As life throws him one difficult challenge after another (living as an outlaw in a cave, prison, a servant in a rich man's house, manipulation and abuse by others, etc.), he remains a man of honor and integrity with a heart to serve and provide for those he loves all the while longing for his lost love and the child she bore him he has never seen. Claire longs to rejoin Jamie in the past though she knows another passage through the standing stones to go back 200 years in time carries great risk. It is a risk she is willing to take because he is her heart. This is a well told tale of a deep love that spans centuries and of the two lives deeply woven into the tapestry of Scotland's history. This is the only romance series I know of where the same romance flourishes in each book...it is a tribute to Gabaldon's outstanding talent as a storyteller and one who sees into the hearts of people that she can make it captivating. You want Jamie and Claire's love to go on forever. This book had me both laughing out loud and crying tears as it ripped at my own heart. I highly recommend it. And, should you need it, here's the list of the whole series in order:
Outlander (1991)
Dragonfly in Amber '(1992)
Voyager' (1993)
Drums of Autumn' (1996)
The Fiery Cross '(2001)
A Breath of Snow and Ashes '(2005)'
An Echo in the Bone '(2009)
Book eight ('No Publication Date yet)
Book Review: A Rollercoaster Adventure Ride for fans of Historical Fiction
Summary: 5 Stars
Okay, I'm going to keep this review brief.
This is after all the third book in this series and chances are if you've read the other two you'll probably read this one as well...
I am so happy to have found this series, I love it. I think it's great fun...well that is if you like to be kept hanging on the edge of your seat. I love the characters and the history and the storytelling is great!
Last night I was getting to the end of the book and feeling disappointed that it would be over until I remembered that there are three more books in the series! and more on the way!
Book Review: A disappointment
Summary: 2 Stars
Given the cliffhanger ending of the previous book, DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, I really looked forward to this one, to finding out how the story would be resolved. But this book, alas, was such a disappointment that I'm rather sorry I read it (despite how much I had WANTED to read it), and it ensured I lost interest in the characters and series. The story was an aimless mish-mash of perils-of-pauline escapades, with a non-sensical plot that peters out into a confusing and anti-climactic non-ending. And the characterization, which had first drawn me into the series, loses me in this book. Claire and Jamie were believably flawed characters in their twenties in OUTLANDER; in VOYAGER, they're physically 20 years older now... but they seem to have REgressed 10 years emotionally/mentally, rather than progressing 20 years. The result is middle-aged lead characters with the emotional maturity and decision-making abilities of teens... and it's an exasperating and unappealing combination. The author also seemed, when push came to shove, to have no idea how to write the climactic reunion of the two main characters--which reunion the novel spends a couple of hundred pages working up to. It's so flat, it's almost a non-event... and their relationship, which is at the core of the novel, never really seems to find its feet or recover from the tepid, distracted tone of their first few scenes together. Finally, I was bemused by the naivety and narcissism of a mother (Claire, the protagonist) who thinks that it's perfectly okay to permanently abandon her single 19-year-old daughter, who has no father and no other family members, with the blithe assumption that she's all grown-up and will be just fine on her own from now on.Book Review: A roller coaster ride!
Summary: 5 Stars
What a roller coaster ride! The book left me breathless and smiling. It was one adventure after another with a few calm points in between. From what I gather from the other reviews, Voyager was supposed to be the final book in a trilogy. I'm SO glad it isn't. I can't seem to get enough of Claire and Jamie and want to know: "What happens next?" We meet old friends, new friends and old enemys.
As well as being a romance and adventure, it is a mystery novel. Bones were found in a cave in the Caribbean in the 20th Century and I THOUGHT I'd figured out who they belonged to but I was WAY off course. And a person I THOUGHT was dead, escaped it and was very much alive.
The books remind me of a couple of my favorite novels I read as a child: Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Gabaldon is a superb story teller and makes you feel as if your are living in the 18th century right along with Claire. There are memorable scenes in the book, ones that I found particularly amusing: was where Claire arrives in Edinburgh and discards the wrapping of her sandwich and where Jamie sees her for the first time after 20 years. His reaction to her sudden appearance after so long is simply pricless! And as to the wrapping that covered her sandwich...I wonder if any one ever found it?
At over a 1000 pages the book is long but well worth it. As always I love the historical detail that DG puts into the book. The daily life that people lived and experienced, while it might be boring to some, it helps put you in the time period. Most authors simply skim over what life was like, whereas Gabaldon delves into it and gives you a sense of how people might have lived back then. As I said in a previous review, I admire the research and time that must have went into the book to bring it to life AND make you stay glued to the pages.
I can't wait to start the next one!
Book Review: Adventure Unfolds
Summary: 5 Stars
The Battle of Culloden (1745) destroyed the Scottish nation, which only in recent years has regained national sovereignty. I was hooked before OUTLANDER because my own ancestors were expelled from Scotland after the 1715 rebellion to become the Scotch-Irish who emigrated from Ireland in 1721 bringing the red hair and green eyes with them. The very interesting thing about these early Americans is that both the men and women could read and write.
Diana Gabaldon creates outstanding characters who bring them to vivid life, not just faded names on deeds, wills, and church records. The VOYAGER bring Claire Randall and James Fraizer back together again and moves them through many adventures including Jamie's sea sickness to the shores of the American continent.
The historical details and events are so accurate you hang on every word for the thrill of what will happen next and a window into the journey taken by your own.
Who can resist a love story so powerful and enduring it transcends time like that of Tristan and Isolde to become a part of the fabric of our language?
Nash Black, author of WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.