The Saturday Morning Post (No. 31 )

 

What next? How about a review of a fantasy romance novel? A well known one, one with its own TV adoption, so it will be no surprise what book it is to most of you. As you will see below, I don't think that I am the target audience for the book since I'm not female nor am I familiar with the tropes of romance, so that fact will likely color my opinions That said, I do have a lot to say about it. So let's get into it.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Note: A 2023 Read

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon  C

This is a long book. I had the ebook version of the boxed set of the first four books in the series, and I never seemed to make much headway reading it, no matter how long I read. A percentage point at a time. Thankfully, I only intended on reading the first  book - which came out at a 1000 pages of 5000 pages of the box set, on my fire tablet. I even finished it with a few days to spare on my 14 day loan.

It is a portal fantasy/historical romance largely set in the highlands of Scotland in 1743-44. I did watch the first season of the TV show some years ago It did not  impress me enough to continue on with it. Still, I thought that perhaps the book would be better. It was, until it wasn't. 

Briefly, the story is set after the Second World War. Claire, our narrator and hero, was a nurse in that war and is now on a second honeymoon of sorts with her husband Frank, reunited after the war had separated them. Frank has a great something grandfather, "Black Jack" Randall, who was a British officer in the 1743 timeframe who was stationed in Scotland, and had an iffy reputation that Frank was researching. Frank and Claire observe a modern pagan ritual around a small stone ring, and when Claire returns to collect some plant specimens, she is drawn into its magical powers, and finds herself 200 years in the past, in 1743. 

Right at the beginning she meets Frank's cruel distant relative, Captain Randall. Though he looks a lot like her Frank, she barely escapes being raped by him due to the appearance of some cattle raiding highlanders who save her. Her knowledge of treating wounds and illnesses serves her well as she treats some wounds while she's taken along with them, semi-accepted, semi-prisoner, vaguely suspected of being an English spy. Because she was raised by an archeologist who traveled the world, she was used to the often primitive conditions on sites and so was able to adopt to the primitive conditions she found herself in. Adventure and intrigues follow, with Claire eventually accepting an arranged marriage to make her a Scottish citizen, for reasons that in the end, really don't matter except to serve the romance plot.

The story is well written and told in first person by Claire, It is filled with well developed characters and well researched historical details. (Though, just to be a dick, I'll mention that in one scene she had her characters sitting on a "hay bale". An example of the occasional modern element some time creep into these types of storied. Recall that other book set in the 1920's where the characters looking at a hotel registry were looking a "screen". Details, details details. Not that it matters any.) I like how Gabaldon wrote Claire's backstory so she could realistically fit comfortably into the primitive 1743 setting.

As I guess romances do, it contains a lot of sex scenes with her 1743 husband, Jamie. I don't mind that, though my approach to first person narratives is that the narrator is telling their story to the reader, and well, relating detailed sex scenes would seem a little awkward to me, anyway. But then, this was likely written for women, and only they know what goes when they get to telling stories... I did find one thing that I thought strange, and that was, given all of Claire's candor about sex, she only mentioned her period once, and in passing. This is significant, in that she hoped to find a way to return to the stones in order to get back to Frank, her 1945 husband. That being the case, I would've thought that she'd be paying a great deal of attention to when she could safely make love to Jamie, so as not to return to 1945 pregnant. However, the possibility never seemed to cross her mind, at least for the first several months of her new marriage. While she and Frank had been trying to have a child, without success, as a nurse in 1945, she would  likely know enough about getting pregnant that the failure to do so might not be her fault, and take precautions. But as I said, this was not the case. It just had me wondering... But maybe that's a romance convention. You don't get pregnant unless the plot demands it.

I was ready to give the story a grade of B when I came to this story's natural ending, and a perfect lead to the next book in the series. Unfortunately, this natural ending came half way into the book. Nearly everything that followed was unnecessary for plot and character development. Moreover, the pacing slowed so that the second half of the book really dragged for me. It was mostly spent killing time and almost killing poor Jamie. 

I understand that a lot of stories put  their characters through a great deal of pain and suffering, and maybe that's a trope in romance as well. But in any event, Gabaldon spent many, many pages describing the various cruelties, rape, and illnesses that Jamie had to endure. This was a theme throughout the book. For example, before the story takes place, Jamie had been flogged by Captain Randall nearly to death. This same incident is told in great detail by I believe three different people, including Jamie. The tedious second half of the book begins with a section featuring the domestic life on Jamie's estate, half of which is spent recounting the many times young Jamie had his rear end warmed by the belt of his father when he did something he shouldn't have. Why? And then, later, Jamie is held in prison where he is tortured, and raped by Randall, which once again is recounted in great detail, as well as all the painful things that Claire has to do to patch him up and nurse him back to health afterwards. Clearly all this detail has been included in the book to appeal to its potential readers, since it is unnecessary to advance the plot or build character. It has me wondering if all the blood and suffering is a romance trope as well as a grim dark fantasy trope. Is it romantic for the lass's lad to suffer for her, and for her to tend to his wounds?  Maybe, given the popularity of this series. Once again I'm the odd man out.

So between the slow pacing - Claire spends several pages sneaking through a prison, and many pages describing her treatments of poor Jamie, the torture porn, and the overall extended spinning of wheels in the plot, the second half of this novel gets a D, from me, lowering the total novel a C grade. 

As I said at the beginning, this probably wasn't written for me. It might be for you. I won't be continuing on with it.