Be as all over the place as you want, dear. The book certainly doesn't help, as it's a bit all over the place too.
The first part, with Jamie, was incredibly depressing for me. To see him want to die and, for a number of reasons that he can't even begin to control, he
doesn't.
So very painful. Then to switch to Claire and see that, though she has been successful for 20 years, her marriage to Frank has been filled with pain and trauma ...
This was the book that sealed my distaste for Frank. I really like that the show is trying to flesh him out more as a character, but the fact he was planning to finally leave Claire and
take Brianna with him was just the final straw for me -- even with his death right after that. It just makes my blood boil. Like, seriously?! You're going to take your wife's daughter as your own and take her
away from her mother?
Pulling over some of my thoughts from the Reign OT thread when I first read the book:
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While Claire marries Frank for love and Jamie out of necessity, it is her marriage to Jamie that leads to her decision to stay with him rather than return to Frank when she is given the choice and opportunity to do so. Frank comes across as a modern, enlightened and civilized man and Jamie as somewhat of a possessive, barbaric man. Frank worked intelligence for the war, while Jamie freely goes about swinging a broadsword. But Jamie is the better husband. He is the husband who treats her as a partner, who loves her unconditionally and seeks to serve her at every turn. From the first book, when Frank asks Claire about other men and says he understands if she were to have been unfaithful, I get the distinct impression that he's trying to tell her that he himself has been unfaithful and is simply too much of a coward to come out and say it aloud. Anyone who has started DiA knows that Claire is finally trying to piece together what happened to Jamie and the Lallybroch men after she returned through the stones. In the meanwhile, she and Frank have been living together as husband and wife, raising Brianna as their daughter (even though she's obviously Jamie's daughter) because he feels responsible for Claire -- but not because he really still loves her at all. In Voyager you find out that he has repeatedly cheated on Claire and intends to leave Claire and move back to England with his latest mistress, hoping to take Brianna with him. Best I can tell, they are working to seed some of those pieces of Frank's character early on and I think it works really well.
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I expected to be super emotional when Jamie and Claire were reunited for the first time, but very surprisingly I wasn't. I think I built it up too much in my own head, so when I finally got to the scene it wasn't what I had envisioned in my mind. The scene in the book was beautiful though!! I really hope that the show gets to this book because I know that Sam & Cait would slay this scene  What really moved me where the scenes following the meeting in the print shop. Hearing the 2 of them profess their love for each other and talk about how neither one of them every forgot the other  |
I know we've discussed this in other places when you were first reading this section. For me, I was just a mess. My husband was in Nepal for two weeks a few years back and that wait alone was so agonizing for me. The anticipation of him coming home was almost too much to handle. The thought of 20 years?!
The way Gabaldon built up to the moment where Claire saw Jamie in the print shop, it was like I couldn't breathe. I was also the first one from our group to read it, so I had no expectations. It just unfolded before me and left me a happily sobbing mess. If they do get a third season, I thoroughly expect Sam and Cait to slay it, as you've mentioned. One of those epic moments where time will seem to cease ...
The location shifts are nuts and I think there's a lot that is lost when Gabaldon takes the story out of Scotland. I understand why she does it, but then she has to build a new world when it might be a tighter story if she didn't. I thought the jump to the Caribbean (in particular) would be a really rough transition. Reading the description, I was like
Seriously?! You're going to the New World? but it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.
The Laoghaire business was a fairly bizarre shock to my system. I absolutely loved that Ned was brought back into the picture to sort out all of the legalities.
And Geillis?! More crazy with every book.
Somehow, however, even her story seemed plausible. That's why I keep reading, I think. Even though I don't always care for Gabaldon's writing style, she navigates complicated plot structure across books that both manages to surprise me like very little else I've read AND doesn't seem as incredibly far-fetched to which a series about time-traveling through stone circles should lend itself.