Written in My Own Heart’s Blood – an Outlander novel

Written in My Own Heart’s Blood – an Outlander novel

Diana Gabaldon – Hachette -832 pages - $39.99

Reviewed on Radio NZ National 18 June 2014.

This novel is the eighth in the Outlander series of multi-genre novels. The first, Outlander, was published back in 1991. So she is averaging a new title about every three years although this last one, a real whopper at 832 pages took her four years to write. They have all been enormous world-wide best-sellers and it is estimated that this new one published simultaneously around the world in all English language markets on 10 June (I had to sign a confidentiality clause to get a copy 4 days before that date) will probably sell close to half a million copies in this first week after publication.

Last week 800 fans turned out for the book’s launch event at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, hosted by the Poisoned Pen, her home bookstore. The Poisoned Pen already had advance orders for the book for over 4,000 copies.

I mention all this because it does show that the Outlander series is truly a phenomenon in the book world.

It is time travel, adventure, history and romance all combined.

I came to this book with the huge disadvantage of not having read any of the earlier titles in the series. This new book opens in June of 1778 with the British army withdrawal from Philadelphia, George Washington prepares to move from Valley Forge in pursuit, and Jamie Fraser comes back from the dead to discover that his best friend has married his wife believing Jamie to be dead.

I guess you could read this as a stand-alone novel but personally when I started the book I felt confused by the large number of major characters, multi-layered individuals with complex relationships, and so I put the book aside and did some research courtesy of Google and Wikipedia. This mainly involved reading synopses of the earlier titles, particularly the first one, so that I then knew what was going on within the various families and how they came to be in the American colonies in 1778.

In a nutshell then for those who haven’t read the earlier titles the books feature an ex-British WW2 army nurse, Claire Randall, who (in the first book) in 1946 accidentally steps through an ancient standing stone near Inverness in Scotland and finds herself trapped in 1743 Scotland where she subsequently, against her will marries the charming highlander Jamie Fraser. Subsequent books follow their adventures with this latest one very much built around their involvement in the American civil war. There are long scenes featuring various battles, quite bloody in parts too; there is so much information in fact, so many sub-plots, so many characters, with event after event that it needs a slow, deliberate read otherwise you are likely to miss some key element of the story. It took me a week of quite long sessions to read.

Fans of the series are legion and several local booksellers I spoke to said they have already had to re-order stock to meet demand. They also told me that by far and away the biggest followers of the series are women.

The book has a happy ending with the author clearly leaving the way open for another in the series. Fans will be hoping they don’t have to wait another 4 years.

By the way there is a 16 part tv series in production in Scotland which is expected to debut in the US in August this year.

The author