Review: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just 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 circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743.

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

Mass Market Paperback, 850 pages

Published July 26th 2005 by Dell Publishing Company (first published June 1st 1991)

Terri's Thoughts

Judging by the fact that there are over 35,000 reviews of this book on Goodreads, I think I may officially be the last person remaining to finally read this story.  Truth be told, it has been on my to be read pile for a very long time and I just couldn't find the time to pick it up.  I finally decided the best thing to do is to listen to the audio book so that I could multi-task while listening to the book.  And truthfully, now that there is a television series for this series, I felt it was only right to read the book before tuning in.

As there have been so many reviews, I feel that there is not a whole lot more that I can offer regarding the story.  Since I loved the story, as clearly others have as well,I will instead focus mainly on my opinion of the audio book.

While my foray in to audio books is a fairly recent one, this being only the third, I have to say that this was the best one I have experienced thus far.  The narrator, and forgive me I forget her name, was absolutely outstanding.  She captured the essence of the story and the voices of the characters better than any of the other books I have listened to thus far.  I was completely impressed with the choice of narrator and have to commend whoever it was that made the decision to use her.

That being said, the foray in to audiobooks is not without pain.  One must have extreme patience as this story was extremely long with many chapters being over two hours.  I could have read the book five times over (at least) in the amount of time it took to listen to it.  Admittedly, I do have access to a paper copy however once I started listening to it I could not stop.

This was a fantastic book and since it is part of a series I know I will be tuning in or reading the rest of the series.  To keep my review objective, I will admit that I found there was an abundance of gratuitous sex in the story that grated on my nerves after a while.  I am not opposed to it in a book, I read a lot of adult contemporary, aside from that I was hooked. I also was anxious to see the end of the book by the time

If you have lived under a rock and not heard of this book, I urge you to experience it for yourself.  You will be caught up in the story as I was.  Now I can watch the TV series (at least season one) without guilt!

About the Author

Diana Jean Gabaldon Watkins grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona and is of Mexican-American and English descent. She has earned three degrees: a B.S. in Zoology, a M.S. in Marine Biology, and a Ph.D in Ecology.

She currently lives in Scottsdale, Arizona .

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