Quote:
Originally Posted by treadlightly
Outlander is one of my favourite series, but I did like subsequent books more than the first. For those that only read the first book, do you plan to continue the series?
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Funny, I've read all the
Outlander books and I liked the early books,especially the first two, best by far.
The Fiery Cross was one of the most boring books I ever read and I took a hiatus for a bit after that one. Curiosity took me back.
I had to take two stabs at reading
Outlander, as the first time I was so outraged by errors in the first few pages that I literally (yes, literally) threw the book across the room, and that's a honking big book. But I picked up the ebook when it was free and tried it again, and did get sucked in.
One of my pet peeves: when writers of historical fiction get the facts wrong.
Outlander starts in March 1945 (I think this was changed for obvious reasons in the British version) with Frank and Claire, two serving officers in the armed forces, off on a second honeymoon in Scotland. World War II was still going on! Hitler was still alive! There is just. no. way. Compounding this, they were consuming food and gas at a rate flatly impossible for any ordinary person at that time.
My next two errors were admittedly of the nitpicky variety, but I was loaded for bear after the whopper. Claire refers to the "Royal Army". It's not the Royal Army, it's the British Army. The other services are royal. And the name of the iconic perfume is L'Heure Bleue, not L'Heure Bleu, which is not only wrong, it's ungrammatical.
So I have to conclude that much of Gabaldan's vaunted research was pretty spotty, at least in the first book. I noted she also tended to get the correct form of titles wrong; this improved in later books when no doubt her research was better.
OK, I'm done venting. I enjoyed the book. A page-turner, it moves very quickly for such a long novel. Good fun once you decide to enjoy the ride, although I'll never find spanking an unwilling person sexy. Yeah, autre temps, autres moeurs and even Ricky spanked Lucy, but I still don't like it.