10-31-2005, 08:00 AM
This is the 6th book in the Outlander series (nope, nothing to do with the Peter Hyams scifi film with Sean Connery & Peter Boyle). It's a historical romance similar to Gone With the Wind.. if Gone with the Wind had gone on for even longer and one of the characters had originated in post WWII England or late 1960's Boston and then traveled to Tara accidentally, and then tried to prevent the war or survive the reconstruction.
The first one was good -- long on story, good characters, enough historical detail to make you comfortable and not bored by the detail, relationships and events you care about following. I read the second and third because I was genuinely curious to see how it would be resolved. By the fourth one, it had started to become a bit tedious, the story suffers and gets lost amidst the tiny historical details, and by the last one, the story that originally got you attracted is almost completely gone. The conflict is merely how do people get through the challenge of each day, rather than how do they relate to each other AS they get through the challenge of each day.
And as is typical for this series, the one story point that's unresolved that got me to go ahead and buy THIS book, is not really resolved in this book -- you get half an answer. To really find out what happens, I'm probably going to get sucked into buying whatever becomes the seventh book. Assuming she ever writes it.
The first one was good -- long on story, good characters, enough historical detail to make you comfortable and not bored by the detail, relationships and events you care about following. I read the second and third because I was genuinely curious to see how it would be resolved. By the fourth one, it had started to become a bit tedious, the story suffers and gets lost amidst the tiny historical details, and by the last one, the story that originally got you attracted is almost completely gone. The conflict is merely how do people get through the challenge of each day, rather than how do they relate to each other AS they get through the challenge of each day.
And as is typical for this series, the one story point that's unresolved that got me to go ahead and buy THIS book, is not really resolved in this book -- you get half an answer. To really find out what happens, I'm probably going to get sucked into buying whatever becomes the seventh book. Assuming she ever writes it.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.