The Outlander

Over the last 2 months I've been engrossed in a book series recommended to me called 'The Outlander Series' by Diana Gabaldon. The basic storyline is about a WWII nurse named Claire who, during her second honeymoon in Scotland with her husband, dissappears through some standing stones and finds herself in the 1700's. During her adventure she meets and ends up marrying, by neccessity, a Scottish man named Jamie. The first book is about their falling in love with each other and trying to evade the notorious Black Jack Randall, a cruel English soldier who gets far too much joy out of causing others pain. 

This series is very difficult to describe in terms of genre as it covers many of them. I think her website describes it best with a review of her latest novel in this series,

"An Echo in the Bone is the seventh novel in the wildly popular, NYT #1 bestselling, internationally award-winning Outlander series—described by Salon.com as "the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting Scrooge McDuck comic books."


I actually llike the mixing of the genre's, but overall I think it may be classified as a love story or romance as this is the prevailing theme throughout the novels regardless of what situations the characters find themselves in. I was somewhat shocked to discover that many of the events in the books are based, at least loosely, upon real events in history. It contains info about the battle of Culloden and the Jacobite Uprising in Scottish history. Also my own ancestors, the MacGregors, may have fought in this battle which of course didn't bode well for them since the English hunted down and killed everyone involved. I find these books to be well written and worth the effort (considering there length) and would highly recommend them to those who enjoy romance/historical fiction/adventure/sci fi/suspense novels!