Dragonfly in Amber

Book two in the Outlander Series finds Claire Randall age 60, I'd say the addition is wrong, 23 years older back in twentieth century Scotland with her daughter Brianna Randall. No explanation is supplied but her 6-ft tall daughter has flaming red hair! To begin Roger Wakefield, a timorous orphan of 8 in book one is our narrator with Claires' part in italics.

Having visited the site of Jamie Fraser's grave Claire explains to her daughter the source of her sire's DNA and is magically transported back to his living presence in Eighteenth Century Le Havre and Paris. Compared to the cultured comforts of a Twentieth Century Inverness Manse life in a Paris pension is crude and ribald. There is nothing suggestive about their interactions.

Eighty-seven page chapters are somewhat intimidating to the reader but progress seems rapid.

I had not expected to encounter Hildegard of Bingen here nor had I previously read of her imposing physical height. Members of the French Royal Court figure prominently along with Bonnie Prince Charlie and his father James.

Murtagh is as loyal to his Scottish Laird as any Italian Capo to his Godfather and as willing to render any service required. No blood oath could be any stronger. Jamie trusts his wife, Murtagh, his sister and her husband—a childhood friend. His cousin and business partner Jared is not on that list. For all its rich dress and manners the French Court was a den of vipers and thieves fuelled by gossip. The truth is a valuable commodity due to its rarity.

The Bonnie Prince Charlie presented here is a more romantic figure than the one presented by historians. Given modern day secessionism in Scotland one wonders if the events that led to Cullodon were spurred so much by loyalty to a vain and pigheaded Prince who was barely Scottish or by a desire for independence from England that rallied round a Bourbon Heir.

For all that he is presented to us by his wife it is hard not to like Jamie Fraser. Larger than life and strikingly handsome despite his many scars he has a charisma and an appeal that shines through the words on the page. John Randall, on the other hand is an arch-villain we can picture as the villain of The Patriot or Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter, though he did not get to play the part in the TV Series.

It can hardly be accorded a spoiler to say that the Uprising of 1745 did not go well for the Scots. Therefore it is with a feeling oncoming doom that one reads the last quarter of this novel knowing the outcome as we and our heroine do in advance. The stupidity and pigheadedness of Prince Charlie that dragged his loyal retainers into this ill-begotten rout is well documented. The chapter I am reading is 150 pages, a thing most would consider book-length in and of itself.

In an era before sterilization and antibiotics treatment of the wounded was nearly as deadly as injury itself. Malnutrition, ill health, and lack of cleanliness contributed to poor outcomes for the wounded. We are spared the more gruesome surgical details but the need to have a strange women attend to a rough Scot's urinary needs was more painful than the disabilities that made such attention necessary. Having a women sew up a scrotum hacked by a sword thrust.... We learn of the initial battle itself as Jamie describes it to Claire after the fact.

And so drunk with a triumphal return to Scotland Charlie Stuart leads his men on a fruitless campaign into England squandering their strength before leading them to eventual defeat on the Moors of Cullodon. Knowing what is coming Claire's Scottish Laird sends her back to the Twentieth Century before facing his own doom.

With the heroic figure of Jamie Fraser laid in his grave just past his mid-twenties I am curious to see where book three takes us.