Outlander (Outlander Series #1) by Diana Gabaldon

Romance. Historical fiction. Time travel. A psychotic villain. These are just some of the things you can expect to find if you read this book. Honestly, any one of those things would get me to read a book, but when you put them all together… it’s just perfection.

The story starts out with our hero, Claire, on a second “honeymoon” with her husband after World War II. Claire is investigating a stone circle on a hill in the Scottish Highlands when she is sucked through the stones to the year 1743. While she is in the same place, she’s gone back in time almost 200 years, and ends up in the middle of a fight between the Scottish and the English. Claire is captured by the English captain, who just happens to be the six-times great grandfather of her husband. Before she can puzzle through all of that, she’s rescued by the Scottish and taken to their hideout. Claire proves her worth by healing one of the injured Scots men, surprising them all with her medical history from her time serving as an army nurse. She’s then brought to the Scots stronghold, all the while planning her escape so she can return to the stones and go back to her own time.

Eventually Claire gets the chance she was hoping for, but before she can escape, the English captain comes back to haunt her. In order to evade him, Claire is forced to marry Jaime, the Scot whom she fixed her first night and became good friends with. Through a series of adventures and misfortunes, Claire and Jamie save each other numerous times. When the time comes to go back to 1946, she decides against it and stays with Jamie. Eventually the two defeat the English captain and are together at last.

As soon as I finished reading Outlander, I wanted to start the next book in the series. It combined everything that I love in a book, and it didn’t disappoint. There was so much happening throughout the story that I never wanted to put it down. What really amazed me was the amount of research Gabaldon did to make sure that her story was accurate. She researched the environment, the Jacobite movement, the speech, culture, and medical things (of both 1743 and 1946). All of these things were flawless, and they came together seamlessly.

While the research made the story historically accurate, the characterizations are what really sold the story for me. Claire is never a helpless heroine, even right after her world has been turned around and she has no idea where, or when, she is. The Scottish men all have so many layers to each individual that it’s amazing Gabaldon was able to come up with so many different personalities in one clan. Jaime is the hero every girl dreams of: funny, loyal, brave, fiercely passionate and protective. However, the shining star among the characters is ironically the villain, Captain Randall. Everything about him is ridiculously evil. He’s a psychopath who’s a closet gay guy (which was not something you admitted to in 1743), and he delights in torturing his enemies. I needed more than one hand to count the number of horrible things he did to Jaime throughout the story. I would never want to meet anyone like him.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a historical fiction romance with a bit of time travel thrown in. If you enjoy medieval Scotland, then this is the book (and series) for you!


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