Books and Movies

I finished listening to Voyager by Diana Gabaldon - the unabridged audiobook - this evening. All 36 discs! In fact, I started it so many weeks ago, and so close on the heels of Dragonfly in Amber, that I had to think very hard about how the book started!

There is no easy way to give a plot synopsis of this - especially if you’re not familiar with the first two books, so I’m just going to jump in and tell you what I thought.

I loved this book - more than Dragonfly in Amber - and I think that’s because Jamie and Claire were together in the present during most of it, like Sandy mentioned in her review. Of course, before Jamie and Claire were reunited, she had to say goodbye to her daughter, Brianna, an emotionally exhausting scene. Then comes Jamie and Claire’s reunion in the print shop in Edinburgh, which made me sob like a baby.

Of course, not long after being reunited, Jamie and Claire are thrust into a sequence of events that take them from Edinburgh, home to Lallybroch, to France, and then to the West Indies. They encounter a Jewish naturalist, a defrocked priest, a murderous fiend, a foot-fetishist Chinaman, a voodoo priest, Portugese pirates, an Irish galley cook, and more than one familiar character from the previous books.

This book has just about everything you could want in a book: adventure, romance, history, danger, and magic. Claire and Jamie weather it all together, reinforcing the idea that theirs is a love for the ages. I am thoroughly exhausted after finishing this book. I don’t remember much about Drums in Autumn - it’s been so long since I’ve read it - but I hope for the Frasiers’ sake that they get some much deserved down time. I will be taking a bit of a rest from the emotional investment that these books require, and listen to a Stephanie Plum or two.

4 out of 5 stars