So yes, dear reader, I continued on with "Outlander" series and if this, first book in 2017 signifies anything at all, it will be a year of guilty pleasures, so what. At the back of my mind I have enough classics and serious literature for a lifetime so from time to time I deserve to spoil myself with occasional step in the right direction and just purr with pleasure next to the open fire cracking, while winter howls outside. To be perfectly honest, I read first three volumes long time ago and promptly forgot all about them completely - something must bothered me since I never continued and right now I started to get the idea why exactly this happened.
The first part, "Outlander" was great. No, not great, brilliant because I have read it three times now and loved every second of it, so I just had to continue with sequel. But during "Dragonfly in Amber" I started to feel certain repetitiveness - the curse of all the sequels - not that anything was bad and Gabaldon still knows how to hold our attention, but occasionally I skipped page or two, specially when Claire Randall gets all hot just standing next to her husband and out of the blue they start grabbing each other while the world is falling apart around them, wars are fought and such. Yes, I got it, he is ultra stud and can do it anytime, anyplace, anywhere but we know it already.
Perhaps what bothered me the most (now and previously when I read it first time around) is Gabaldon's idea to start the novel with Claire Randall back in present time and telling her story in the flashback: its not really impossible to follow, but disliked these switches between present and the past, it would have been completely different if we just continued where we stopped last time around. Knowing that she tells her story in flashback also means that she obviously survived all the dangerous situations. And the fact that main heroine finds herself in Paris (eventually at the court of King Louis XV) reminded me too much of another famous literary damsel in distress, Anne Golon's Angelique who if I remember correctly also went to Paris and got ravished twice per chapter. Not sure is Gabaldon familiar with that book but similarities are there.
For the sake of remembering and reminding myself about what I had actually read (since my brain is apparently like a Swiss cheese) I will shortly describe the plot just so that in the future I don't get idea to re-read this again, though for the time being I will take a break from Gabaldon: Claire and her husband travel to France where they outwardly deal in some wine business but are actually involved in some heavy political intrigues, while at the same time our heroine volunteers in local hospital where she quickly gets reputation as a healer and gets acquainted with formidable mother Hildegarde and master Raymond who both prove very helpful when political enemies start plotting against her. French boy Fergus gets adopted by Claire's husband and he is brave and skilled enough to always save situations, though we occasionally worry about him since he has a talent to fall in all sorts of troubles. Pregnant and occupied with her hospital work, Claire almost gets raped in the dark streets of Paris but this was not an accident - it was obviously arranged by some enemy and it turned out it was not suddenly unearthed Jonathan Randall whose brother Alex is incurably sick and in love with young Mary Hawkins (therefore we find explanation about future Frank Randall's true ancestry). After lots of complications and miscarriage, our couple eventually returns to Scotland where they get even more involved in upcoming war as Bonnie Prince Charlie collects all the clans to help him gets the crown. Situation eventually becomes too dangerous and Jamie forces Claire to escape trough the standing stones back in the future, because she is pregnant again and he wants her to be safe with her unborn child, even though he will probably die in a war. Back in present time, Claire tells her story to her daughter Brianna (who refuses to believe it) and young historian Roger (who turns out to be son of time-travelling witch Geillis Duncan) and her reassures her that, in his knowledge and historical research, although lots of Scots died in the battle, Jamie was not one of them.
It was compulsively readable indeed and I couldn't really put it down, in fact I finished novel caught completely in fever of the early morning hours. There are more sequels but I think about taking it easy and visiting them month by month in the future. Best of all was the final separation between Claire and her husband, that was really memorable:
"I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."
His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.
Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well."
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