Title: Dragonfly in Amber
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Published: June 1992
Pages: 949
ISBN: 9780440215622
Source: personal copy
Description: For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to Scotland's majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones ...about a love that transcends the boundaries of time ...and about James Fraser, a Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the security of her century to the dangers of his ....
Now a legacy of blood and desire will test her beautiful copper-haired daughter, Brianna, as Claire's spellbinding journey of self-discovery continues in the intrigue-ridden Paris court of Charles Stuart ...in a race to thwart a doomed Highlands uprising ...and in a desperate fight to save both the child and the man she loves....
I Give This Book 5 Stars!
I was completely floored by Outlander. It was a story like I've never read before. When I picked the book to read as part of a challenge last year, I did not know that it was part of a series. I knew when I was finished that I wanted to read them all. I wish I had sat down and read Dragonfly in Amber in one sitting. Instead I drew it out over a couple months, reading here and there. So, in that sense it's my fault that I sometimes got confused over who was who. Because lets face it, there's a lot of people and even more information presented in this book. But, its wonderful. I feel like I've been taken on a history lesson that is much more personal than any book or teacher could ever have shown me. Claire and Jamie are beginning to work their way into the favorite characters (and couple) category. They invoke a powerful mental picture. I love their relationship and to what grounds they will go to portray (notice I don't use the word prove) their love for one another. The events that happen in this story are also of high emotion and intensity. Diana Gabaldon has written a masterpiece. I can not wait to see were she takes Claire and Jamie next!
I agree, it's a great read! Better to read in one go though, as you say.
ReplyDeleteI found this website a while ago where Diana Gabaldon talked about how she became a writer; it's not available any more, or I can't find it any more. Anyway, you would have found it quite interesting. She apparently started it off as a short story that was circulated in a literary forum. This was when she still worked as a scientist. She had all sorts of romantic and otherwise ideas and shared them with the forum. Eventually someone said 'Diana, this is seriously good stuff, you should turn it into a novel', and that's how the first novel came about. There's no dearth of inspiration she said; she usually wants to write more than can fit into one novel, so she had to write several more. In the end, one of the friends from the literary forum took her along to this literary agent who was really famous, and this person instantly wanted to publish her. The rest is history.
I always think that context makes everything much more interesting, hence this little rant :)
This one in the series is definitely the one where I had a hard time remembering who was who and keeping the history facts straight. I will have to reread this one much more carefully when I do get around to rereading the series, unlike the first time when I read these book when I was so engrossed in them that I was reading them whenever possible. Glad to hear you're enjoying them though!
ReplyDeleteI really planned to get started on the Outlander series this year, but have changed my mind. I am shooting for 200 books this year. With that, I don't think I can focus on chunksters....2011 for sure.
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