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A review by laviskrg
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
2.0
Finally! Oh my god, this was one of the greatest feats of intellectual effort in my life! This book was fucking bad! So god damned over-praised and ass-kissed throughout generations. Mostly by women. I would wonder why, but seeing as my gender has devolved for the past 2 decades or so, I honestly know the answer.
This 850-page torment was not the worst book that I've ever read. It managed to keep me going through some bizarre form of black magic I have rarely encountered before. It promised a lot, it gave A WHOLE LOT, but what it gave was not what I needed or expected. I expected a fun, sexy easy to read time travel adventure, as escapist chill bit of porn and some well-written historical settings. What I got instead was a fucking SOAP OPERA with a cliched Scottish cast, a weak, boring, limited, repetitive main female lead who lives in her own head but offers NO actual answers or meaningful introspection, a gay sadistic rapist for a villain (NO other motivation except the desire to fuck his younger brother), uncountable scenes of boring, both over-described AND under-described sex scenes (HOW???), a little bit of gratuitous violence, but nothing that could even come close to sating my blood thirst, a lot of borderline-retarded couple talk, chock-full of exaggerated promises and vows and desperate attempts at ignoring virginal awkwardness and let's not forget the general dysfunctional nature of the whole "idealized" relationship. And so so much more. In short: "action" scenes that are stretched over pages not because of the in-depth of the writing, but because of the cheap, purple nature of it. It is clearly more difficult to write amazing, comprehensive and exciting descriptions, that takes ACTUAL skill, not a fetish for one's own vocabulary.
The book tends to become better in the last third when there is LESS grunting, crushing, dominating sex and more humanity and also....more risk and violence. BUT in order for one to truly feel for the male lead's rape and torture, one must actually FEEL something for that particular character which is not the sexual frustration and faux-enamoring that I suspect 85% of the female fans in the community feel (which saddens me, truly). No, I was not impressed with Jamie, a character that, ignoring drama and suffering, does not change or grow throughout the story! He is charming, well-versed in languages, strong, potent, virile, stubborn, violent, supposedly funny, brave, an excellent rider and a good fighter and, in my opinion, one of the most limited male characters in modern literature FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END. He simply is (a fucking boring cliched as well), he does not grow. He is a religious peasant with a desire to copulate and a weird virginal attachment. I never felt that he actually RESPECTED Claire, or deigned it important to actually LEARN something from a woman who traveled back in time, who has knowledge of so much (supposedly cos in truth, Claire is an idiot), who has the ability to fuck with time itself. Nah, he is only a lad who falls for a wee lass, marries her so he can bed her (cos otherwise, his sky god would frown on the poor wee lad), and dominates her with violence, difference in height and strength and basically uses her as an orifice for his member, a member whose usage boggles my mind considering the amounts of damage that this 23 year old youngster takes throughout the book. So, sorry, Mrs. Author, it is NOT enough to have the male lead subjected to rape, mental breakdown and torture to get a sigh of empathy. I read books like a psychopath. I don't FALL for imaginary characters, I need to be made to feel for them, to understand them, to love them due to the way in which they are written and due to the quality of the story, and due to them feeling REAL. Good, bad, I don't care. Hot or not, I don't care. But please, not 6 ft tall cardboard cut-outs.
Yet, nothing, absolutely NOTHING, was less disappointing than the mind in which the reader is locked into, this being a 1st person book. The mind of fucking Claire "I-love-my-husband-but-hot-young-meat-makes-me-drop-it-all-in-a-month-or-so", the lamest nurse that has ever served in WW2. Yeah, sure, she mends bones. Some of them. She stitches wounds. Ok, cool. SHE MAKES ONE SINGLE FUCKING MENTION ABOUT THE WORST EVENT IN HUMAN HISTORY, which she'd just lived through......ONE. SINGLE. MENTION. Please, fangirls, please try to get your head around this simple concept. She has survived a genocide, has served in wards where men were broken into tiny pieces, physically and mentally, has seen the most modern elements of human technology used to destroy, burn, murder and disintegrate. She has seen, heard, smelled and tasted death. And yet, she is on the verge of fainting every time she thinks about Jaime being flogged. I am not saying flogging is chill, but ... WW2. The Nazis. The occupation of entire countries. The camps. WTF!
Claire is also an expert botanist because hobbies and she will obviously use every root and flower in Scotland to heal any infection ever. Cos you know, that's what happens when the main characters can't be killed off. Fuck historical accuracy. Fuck the fact that this book is supposedly taking place in the real, dirty, gross, elf-magic-free world. Fuck antibiotics most of all. You can just use that wee plant on the Fairie Hill.
But what offended me most about Claire is the fact that, despite a visible effort to make her stand out from the usual female protagonists of the early 90s (aka, the swooning, delicate, feminine heroines cradled in Fabio's bulging biceps), she was actually one of the first Mary-Sues, albeit leagues over the modern-day highschool young adult Mary Sue. She is a woman who thinks she is plain, but yet, most males naturally need to penetrate her almost on sight. She has had a colourful and difficult background from which she's learned exactly those few skills through which she can aid the clearly inferior males around her. She is out of place but somehow manages to fit in right away. She falls down a lot, gets beaten up, scratched, cut, bitten but never sustains anything beyond a few bruises and scratches. She is constantly subjected to cold temperatures and freezing rivers and mud, but never catches a fever, pneumonia or the most basic of urinary tract infections. I care for such details, cos otherwise, what is the point of SO MUCH fucking drama??? I'll tell you what: the forced attachment to characters that are really not interesting at all. Geilis Duncan, for example, had at most 10 pages of attention, but I would read 850 pages about her. But not written by this author, though.
Also, rape. Ah, the rape that seemed to traumatize SO MANY wenches weak in the head....I myself was not impressed, scared, terrified or traumatized by the instances of rape or, mostly, attempted rape. I know what history was like and I know what humanity is like today. However, when rape is used as nothing more than a plot point, and used to the point of inducing nausea, there is an issue. Literally any character of some import with a hole somewhere in their body is always threatened to get raped, then killed. I somehow doubt this in its entirety. While rape was used as a war crime, as something dehumanizing and grotesque, it was definitely NOT served constantly, daily, hourly, in any conflicting situation. Also, in order for me to feel something other than exhaustion and impatience, I need to have some kind of report with the characters. Otherwise, no, sorry, don't care. Maybe I am a psychopath or maybe I am smarter than the average Outlander reader. A note for the writer: everything, including rape, torture and murder, becomes tedious and irrelevant when it is an almost occurrence every 20 pages or so. It takes away from any stress or fear. It becomes a cheap plot point. And you have done this for basically any human suffering imaginable in this book.
Why, do you ask, would I give this pile of drivel more than one star. I don't fucking know. Let's make a mathematical calculus:
1. The song that made me want to read this desperately: 5 stars (congrats Starz show)
2. The main female lead - 1 star
3. The main male lead - 1 star
4. The drama - 1 star
5. The quality of writing - 1 star
6. The story overall - 3 stars ( it wasn't bad as far as time travel bodice rippers go)
7. The villain - 1 star
8. The "history" - 1 star. This is supposed to be highly researched, but I got less info than a 10 minute skin of a Wikipedia page would give me. But I already know Scottish history so 5 stars to me.
So it's 14 / 8 = 1.75. Since I've always believed in rounding up numbers in the advantage of the poor sod who tried, here's a generous 2 stars from me. But fuck off as "the number one bestseller that charmed generations".
Will I go on with the series? I highly doubt it, but I truly don't know. Depends on the show, which is vastly superior. Might just stick to that, cos I can binge that in one weekend and read actually relevant pieces of literature for the remaining month.
This 850-page torment was not the worst book that I've ever read. It managed to keep me going through some bizarre form of black magic I have rarely encountered before. It promised a lot, it gave A WHOLE LOT, but what it gave was not what I needed or expected. I expected a fun, sexy easy to read time travel adventure, as escapist chill bit of porn and some well-written historical settings. What I got instead was a fucking SOAP OPERA with a cliched Scottish cast, a weak, boring, limited, repetitive main female lead who lives in her own head but offers NO actual answers or meaningful introspection, a gay sadistic rapist for a villain (NO other motivation except the desire to fuck his younger brother), uncountable scenes of boring, both over-described AND under-described sex scenes (HOW???), a little bit of gratuitous violence, but nothing that could even come close to sating my blood thirst, a lot of borderline-retarded couple talk, chock-full of exaggerated promises and vows and desperate attempts at ignoring virginal awkwardness and let's not forget the general dysfunctional nature of the whole "idealized" relationship. And so so much more. In short: "action" scenes that are stretched over pages not because of the in-depth of the writing, but because of the cheap, purple nature of it. It is clearly more difficult to write amazing, comprehensive and exciting descriptions, that takes ACTUAL skill, not a fetish for one's own vocabulary.
The book tends to become better in the last third when there is LESS grunting, crushing, dominating sex and more humanity and also....more risk and violence. BUT in order for one to truly feel for the male lead's rape and torture, one must actually FEEL something for that particular character which is not the sexual frustration and faux-enamoring that I suspect 85% of the female fans in the community feel (which saddens me, truly). No, I was not impressed with Jamie, a character that, ignoring drama and suffering, does not change or grow throughout the story! He is charming, well-versed in languages, strong, potent, virile, stubborn, violent, supposedly funny, brave, an excellent rider and a good fighter and, in my opinion, one of the most limited male characters in modern literature FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END. He simply is (a fucking boring cliched as well), he does not grow. He is a religious peasant with a desire to copulate and a weird virginal attachment. I never felt that he actually RESPECTED Claire, or deigned it important to actually LEARN something from a woman who traveled back in time, who has knowledge of so much (supposedly cos in truth, Claire is an idiot), who has the ability to fuck with time itself. Nah, he is only a lad who falls for a wee lass, marries her so he can bed her (cos otherwise, his sky god would frown on the poor wee lad), and dominates her with violence, difference in height and strength and basically uses her as an orifice for his member, a member whose usage boggles my mind considering the amounts of damage that this 23 year old youngster takes throughout the book. So, sorry, Mrs. Author, it is NOT enough to have the male lead subjected to rape, mental breakdown and torture to get a sigh of empathy. I read books like a psychopath. I don't FALL for imaginary characters, I need to be made to feel for them, to understand them, to love them due to the way in which they are written and due to the quality of the story, and due to them feeling REAL. Good, bad, I don't care. Hot or not, I don't care. But please, not 6 ft tall cardboard cut-outs.
Yet, nothing, absolutely NOTHING, was less disappointing than the mind in which the reader is locked into, this being a 1st person book. The mind of fucking Claire "I-love-my-husband-but-hot-young-meat-makes-me-drop-it-all-in-a-month-or-so", the lamest nurse that has ever served in WW2. Yeah, sure, she mends bones. Some of them. She stitches wounds. Ok, cool. SHE MAKES ONE SINGLE FUCKING MENTION ABOUT THE WORST EVENT IN HUMAN HISTORY, which she'd just lived through......ONE. SINGLE. MENTION. Please, fangirls, please try to get your head around this simple concept. She has survived a genocide, has served in wards where men were broken into tiny pieces, physically and mentally, has seen the most modern elements of human technology used to destroy, burn, murder and disintegrate. She has seen, heard, smelled and tasted death. And yet, she is on the verge of fainting every time she thinks about Jaime being flogged. I am not saying flogging is chill, but ... WW2. The Nazis. The occupation of entire countries. The camps. WTF!
Claire is also an expert botanist because hobbies and she will obviously use every root and flower in Scotland to heal any infection ever. Cos you know, that's what happens when the main characters can't be killed off. Fuck historical accuracy. Fuck the fact that this book is supposedly taking place in the real, dirty, gross, elf-magic-free world. Fuck antibiotics most of all. You can just use that wee plant on the Fairie Hill.
But what offended me most about Claire is the fact that, despite a visible effort to make her stand out from the usual female protagonists of the early 90s (aka, the swooning, delicate, feminine heroines cradled in Fabio's bulging biceps), she was actually one of the first Mary-Sues, albeit leagues over the modern-day highschool young adult Mary Sue. She is a woman who thinks she is plain, but yet, most males naturally need to penetrate her almost on sight. She has had a colourful and difficult background from which she's learned exactly those few skills through which she can aid the clearly inferior males around her. She is out of place but somehow manages to fit in right away. She falls down a lot, gets beaten up, scratched, cut, bitten but never sustains anything beyond a few bruises and scratches. She is constantly subjected to cold temperatures and freezing rivers and mud, but never catches a fever, pneumonia or the most basic of urinary tract infections. I care for such details, cos otherwise, what is the point of SO MUCH fucking drama??? I'll tell you what: the forced attachment to characters that are really not interesting at all. Geilis Duncan, for example, had at most 10 pages of attention, but I would read 850 pages about her. But not written by this author, though.
Also, rape. Ah, the rape that seemed to traumatize SO MANY wenches weak in the head....I myself was not impressed, scared, terrified or traumatized by the instances of rape or, mostly, attempted rape. I know what history was like and I know what humanity is like today. However, when rape is used as nothing more than a plot point, and used to the point of inducing nausea, there is an issue. Literally any character of some import with a hole somewhere in their body is always threatened to get raped, then killed. I somehow doubt this in its entirety. While rape was used as a war crime, as something dehumanizing and grotesque, it was definitely NOT served constantly, daily, hourly, in any conflicting situation. Also, in order for me to feel something other than exhaustion and impatience, I need to have some kind of report with the characters. Otherwise, no, sorry, don't care. Maybe I am a psychopath or maybe I am smarter than the average Outlander reader. A note for the writer: everything, including rape, torture and murder, becomes tedious and irrelevant when it is an almost occurrence every 20 pages or so. It takes away from any stress or fear. It becomes a cheap plot point. And you have done this for basically any human suffering imaginable in this book.
Why, do you ask, would I give this pile of drivel more than one star. I don't fucking know. Let's make a mathematical calculus:
1. The song that made me want to read this desperately: 5 stars (congrats Starz show)
2. The main female lead - 1 star
3. The main male lead - 1 star
4. The drama - 1 star
5. The quality of writing - 1 star
6. The story overall - 3 stars ( it wasn't bad as far as time travel bodice rippers go)
7. The villain - 1 star
8. The "history" - 1 star. This is supposed to be highly researched, but I got less info than a 10 minute skin of a Wikipedia page would give me. But I already know Scottish history so 5 stars to me.
So it's 14 / 8 = 1.75. Since I've always believed in rounding up numbers in the advantage of the poor sod who tried, here's a generous 2 stars from me. But fuck off as "the number one bestseller that charmed generations".
Will I go on with the series? I highly doubt it, but I truly don't know. Depends on the show, which is vastly superior. Might just stick to that, cos I can binge that in one weekend and read actually relevant pieces of literature for the remaining month.