***WARNING: This review will contain spoilers. If you don't want to know what happens either in this book or in the Outlander series, I suggest you don't read the rest of this post.***
Description (from cover):
"In this rich, vibrant tale, Diana Gabaldon continues the story of Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser that began with the now-classic novel Outlander and continued in Dragonfly in Amber. Sweeping us from the battlefields of eighteenth-century Scotland to the exotic West Indies, Diana Gabaldon weaves magic once again in an exhilarating and utterly unforgettable novel...
Their passionate encounter happened long ago by whatever measurement Claire Randall took. Two decades before, she had traveled back in time and into the arms of a gallant eighteenth-century Scot named Jamie Fraser. Then she returned to her own century to bear his child, believing him dead in the tragic battle of Culloden. Yet his memory has never lessened its hold on her...and her body still cries out for him in her dreams.
Then Claire discovers that Jamie survived. Torn between returning to him and staying with their daughter in her own era, Claire must choose her destiny. And as time and space come full circle, she must find the courage to face the passion and the pain awaiting her...the deadly intrigues raging in a divided Scotland...and the daring voyage into the dark unknown that can reunite--or forever doom--her timeless love."My thoughts:
***Once again, I will give the spoiler warning. Stop reading now if you don't want to read spoilers.***
I loved that Claire and Jamie are reunited at last. This book takes place twenty years after Claire returns to her own time. Gabaldon catches the reader up with what has happened to both Jamie and Claire during their twenty years apart from one another. That's all fine and dandy. Here's what drove me nuts with this book. So once Claire and Jamie are reunited and spend some time being reacquainted with one another, some things happen and they must set out on a voyage to the Caribbean. They leave Scotland via ship and spend months on the sea. Claire is then taken by the captain of another ship because of her medical knowledge; the ship has had an outbreak of typhoid. She is separated from Jamie and left alone on this ship to provide the crew with medical assistance. She learns that someone on this ship has it out for Jamie and will be using her as bait to have Jamie arrested for previous seditious charges. Claire decides to abandon the ship once she is close to shore.
Claire finds herself washed up on an uninhabited island. However, lo and behold, the first person who finds her is someone Jamie once knew back in Scotland. Now what are the odds of that happening? Seriously? Gabaldon, what are you thinking? This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever come across in my reading. Not only is this not even remotely close to being believable, but it is absurd. For someone to sail halfway across the world, end up on an virtually uninhabitable island and be rescued by someone one knows to an extent, would NEVER happen. Ever. Does anyone else find this odd? I know that this is fiction and a book and not real life, but I at least like my books to be somewhat plausible.
The other thing that drove me up a wall with this book was that Jamie and Claire seem to have a million lives. They get hurt, end up in situations where it is impossible to escape, yet they somehow survive unscathed. I get that the author is trying to create suspense within the plot, but it's getting to the point of being annoying. The first two books in this series were great. This one not so much, for me at least. I know these books have almost a cult following, but if this is what is to be expected for the series and for Gabaldon's writing, I might have to throw the rest of the books at the wall in frustration. I will continue with the series because I want to see if Gabaldon can pull it together and get the series back on track, but if this is what the rest of the series looks like, then I'm very much afraid I will be left seriously disappointed. I am however making a decision not to continue with the series right now. I need a break. The sheer size of these books are overwhelming to me and I feel like I need to spend some time apart from these books in order to come back to the series refreshed. At this point I feel like I would nitpick every little thing and to be honest I am a bit annoyed (as if you couldn't tell). So a break from the Outlander series is just what I think I need.
Overall Rating: 3/5
Title: Voyager
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Series: Outlander #3
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: December 1, 1993
Pages: 880
Genre: Historical Fiction
Disclaimer: This book was selected from the library by myself and I reviewed this book without compensation of any kind. All thoughts and opinions are solely mine.
