Friday, May 2, 2008

Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon

I forgot to post about Outlander when I finished listening to it last fall, so I'll talk about it and the next in the series, Dragonfly in Amber, together. I finished listening to DiA today. These audiobooks are extremely long - the one I finished today was about 38 hours, and the next two in the series are both 40+hours. However, the narration by Davina Porter is extremely well-done.

If you don't know anything about the series, the premise is that a woman, Claire Beauchamp Randall, finds herself in 18th century Scotland after stumbling through standing stones near Inverness while on a vacation with her husband, Frank. That's the only fantasy feature of the book, though. Otherwise it's just a standard historical fiction; well, except that Claire has knowledge of the history of the time and knows things from the future that are helpful (such as an understanding of how disease is spread). There's also a good deal of romance when Claire finds love. I don't read romance anymore (can't say I never did...), but this is more than just a romance series.

I'm thoroughly enjoying listening to these books, but I have to take breaks between them, since they are so. friggin'. long.

I'm not sure what I'll listen to next. I have several Jodi Picoult books to choose from and a couple of other things of interest. I'm leaning towards Three Cups of Tea.

3 comments:

Jackie (Literary Escapism) said...

I love this series! The seventh novel An Echo in the Bone is suppose to come out sometime next year. I so can't wait for it. It's been 2.5 years since A Breath of Snow and Ashes came out.

Somer said...

I've really enjoyed the first two Outlander books! I've heard that the later books aren't as good - what's your opinion?

Marg said...

I love these books as well, and the next book in the series is my absolute favourite. The later books are not quite as good in my opinion but they are still definitely worth reading as Gabaldon's not quite as good is still a lot better than some other books out there!