Book Review: Outlander

Title:	Outlander
Author:	Diana Gabaldon
Series:	Outlander
Volume:	1

This is my third time reading “Outlander,” and I’m shocked that I never wrote a review before. I imagine that’s because by the time I finished the book, I was so emotionally wrung out, I felt that I needed some recovery time. I knew how to pace the ending this time.

When you’re reading it for the first time, you really don’t have a gut-level grasp of how huge this book is (unless you read a lot of traditional historical fiction), and expect the tension and corresponding emotional release will happen soon. But if there’s one thing Diana Gabaldon is good at, it’s building and sustaining tension.

The characters are so real, and drawn so exquisitely, that you feel everything they do. There’s fear and joy and anticipation and, yes, several times there are tears.

Another thing I missed until this latest reading is that the series is Claire’s story. I wasn’t conscious of this before, even though the novel is written in first person, which is always Claire’s voice. It’s only because I was reading a bunch of older Outlander posts/blogs online that I ran across Ms. Gabaldon’s statement of how, early on, Claire took over the story. That’s a subtle but important difference. I’m too used to romances being told from two points of view, and historical novels often having a lot more than that, which results in identifying with multiple characters. But this time I was a lot closer to Claire and what she was thinking and feeling than I was the previous two times.

This is a continuing story, but it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. There’s just enough about Claire and Jamie deciding what is next in their lives to entice you to start the next book (which I’ve also read before, but it’s been years, so it, too will seem new to me).

Rating: 5 Stars

Highly recommended.