Things You Should Know Before Reading Outlander

I was in the mood to read a fantasy series, but I had some requirements to meet:

1. The series should be four books or more.
I was itching for such a long series--maybe because trilogies are so common, and one-off’s are my usual, so I wanted something that stretched on and gave me returns for my investment into that fantasy world.

2. The author should be a woman.
I’ve been making an effort to avoid reading books by men, so yay womanpower!

3. The main character should be a woman.
Yay womanpower!

4. A romantic relationship should be an important part of the story.
Raise your hand if you think Tolkien should have written a lot more about elves making noble sacrifices for love instead of so many pages of scenery descriptions. *raises hand*

So, I asked the internet, and the internet gave me the Outlander series! Yay Scotland! It does indeed meet all the requirements: fantasy, female author, female MC, lots of books, and romance.

HOWEVER

The fantasy is minimal. Apart from one (1) short time-travel episode, one (1) loch ness monster sighting, and one (1) scene in which the MC Claire ‘heals’ someone from PTSD using psychological methods that are so ill-advised that I will call its success a fantasy element, there is NO FANTASY. This is historical fiction, which I also love, but no dragons, no magic, no dice.

There are a lot of sexy times. Do you ever have the problem where you want to read a novel with romance, but not necessarily a romance novel? And then it’s really hard to comb through google results because it’s hard to explain the difference to a computer? (side note: the word for ‘novel’ in Portuguese is ‘romance’, so just add more layers to that confusion.) I am not one of those people who is going to diss anyone for reading books with covers depicting buxom ladies making out with Fabio. But just be aware, unlike I was, that a sex scene happens about every 50 pages, and the book is 900 pages.

There is a violent male-male rape. And partner abuse. So, warning.

Despite being written by a woman and the mc being a woman, this story is anti-feminist. Let me tell you how all but one of the adventure scenes happen.

Sexy Jamie: Claire, don’t do THE THING. 

Claire: YOU’RE JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE MISOGYNY!! 

Claire: *does THE THING* 

Claire: *needs to be rescued* 

Sexy Jamie: *rescues Claire* 

Sexy Jamie: See, I told you! 

Claire: You were right!!!

ON THE OTHER HAND

There are really good pictures of how tough life was on the Scottish highlands in the 1740s. A lot of work, dirt, cold, disease, animals, and skirmishes.

Diana Gabaldon is from Arizona (*waves excitedly*) but she has clearly done her research: she frequently describes medicinal plants found in the highlands (she has a PhD in ecology) and uses many words of Scottish origin that I had never heard before.

Carlisle Castle, the site of many a Jacobite battle and the filming location
for an important part of the Outlander TV series.

The Jacobite risings and politics is explained through the narrative, so I am bound to remember it. When I went to Scotland a couple years ago, I had never heard of the Jacobites and had a hard time understanding some of the museum displays… it’s a wee bit complicated to keep everything straight.

The characters are really fun. They make jokes, they are passionate, they are quick to forgive, and they are courageous. I kept cheering for them the whole time.

So, have you read any fantasy series that meets all of my requirements? Give me the goods, people!! Stop being bad dragons and hoarding the treasures all for yourself!!

Poking past The Hedgehog hype

Sometimes I am a little late to the conversation. I know everyone was talking about The Elegance of the Hedgehog back when it hit the English-speaking shelves in 2008. Six years later, I decided to dive in. (Speaking of being late to the game, Starbucks in Dubai just got seasonal pumpkin spice lattes for the first time…)

The story alternates between the confessional-style musings and conversational-style writings of a rich, super-intelligent Parisian tweenage apartment resident and an astute, menopausal concierge of the said apartment. On the surface level I enjoyed this book immensely—two people on opposite ends of the societal spectrum confront some of their assumptions about the other side and come out better because of it.

I read others’ reviews of it after I finished, and I must say that I have to hand it to the critics. These characters spend the whole book moaning about how other people just assume things about them based on appearances but they don’t really get to know them. But the same two people who are doing the complaining don’t put in the effort to push past the pokey defenses of their cold neighbors, either. I’ve seen this conversation happen before:

“I feel so left out because no one invites me to do anything.”
“Do you invite anyone to do anything either?”
“No, but I’m new here / not good at it / boring so I shouldn’t be the one to do it.”

Except in the book it sounded more like:

“No one wants to get to know who I really am.”
“Did you try to get to know who they really are?”
“No, but I’ve spent enough time with them to know that they don’t care about me / aren’t worth my time / aren’t intelligent enough / won’t provide me with effortless, meaningful conversation.”

Once I realized that, it soiled my impression of the book. But I will hold on to the parts that I liked and made the book worth the read. A truly beautiful aspect of the story was the timid friendship between Kakuro Ozu and the main character Renée Michel. Both middle-aged, both introverted and kind-hearted, both epicurean. Their friendship is one that was in its beginning stages of development, yet already so familiar and trusting. I wanted to become a part of that intimacy. It is a modified Cinderella and Prince Charming story, but with realistic people who are in the afternoon of their lives rather than their mornings, who come with some baggage and history, who are looking more for someone they can talk to than someone they can keep up appearances with.

And, call me out for being a girl who likes to read about romantic relationships (then go right on dissing Jane Austen while you’re at it), but I wish the book was more about that. I don’t wish the story had cut straight to the part where Prince Charming/Kakuro Ozu is introduced. I wanted the story to be longer, and I wanted them to enjoy each others’ lives more. And I wanted that precocious, pretentious 12-year-old to take her know-it-all self elsewhere.