Twisted Kingdom

I first tried to read Outlander a couple years ago, and I found that for whatever reason I couldn't get into it. Then, people started talking about it all around me these last few months, so I decided to give it another go. I couldn't find my copy of it at first, so I had to borrow from my friend, but I have read it now. I don't know what was wrong with me last time I tried because I loved it this time around!

From the back of the book:

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon - when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is Sassenach - an "outlander"- in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord... 1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life... and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire... and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

The novel starts out rather dull, so I can understand why I didn't like it the first time through. The man that Claire has married in 1945 is rather addicted to history, and gets so wrapped up in that there is very little action until Claire touches the stones that send her back into history. I must be honest, I like fantasy, so time-travel is not all that strange to me. It was the idea of time travel in a historical fiction novel that always makes me a little leery. The truth is, though, I think that the way that Gabaldon sends Claire back into time is believable because she uses something that people today do not understand. The rocks that stand, like Stonehenge, are a archealogical mystery, so who is to say if you are not standing there at a certain time during the year that you will not be sent back in time. Stranger things can happen.

When Claire goes back in time, she is obviously not sure what is going on around her. One minute she was picking an interesting flower, and the next time men in ancient uniforms are running around her. She is not dressed properly for the times, and the first people she runs into are the British army, specifically a man by the name of Jack Randall, her husbands many great, grandfather. A man that her husband respects and looks up to because history has painted a wonderful picture of him. We quickly learn, though, that history does not always tell the whole story. Jack Randall is a brute who is bent on anger and injury. He shows up many times throughout the novel, and never once does he show the sunny picture that Claire's husband painted him as.

Who would have imagined what would have happened if she had been left with this heartless man, but when Randall thought he had her a man comes out of now where and whisks her off on another adventure. These are Scottish men, men that Claire finds herself connected to for the time being. She shows them that she is not a hopeless woman when she saves one of their injured, James Fraser. It is nothing at the time, but before the novels end, James (Jamie) will become an important part of the novel. You see, Randall is not finished with Claire, and in an attempt to save her, a member of the MacKenzie clan sees to that she marries a Scottish man so that she does not fall under the category as being a English woman, and thus at Randall's beck and call. This Scottish man is none other than Jamie Randall.

This marriage opens interesting circumstances for the young heroine because she is determined to return to her own time, so how can she marry this Jamie person when her heart belongs to another man in another time. In the end, though, she values her life more than worrying about infidelity. This begins a whole new chapter in her life because this strange, young Scottish man genuinely loves her and she finds feelings for him developing. So, when the choice is presented to her that she go back to 1945 or stay here with him, she has a difficult choice to make.

As your read this novel you can really imagine that you are living in the 1700's, the picture that Gabaldon paints through Claire's eyes is that clear. You get to witness the clan fights, see deep dark secrets about history played out, and understand what it is like to go from having a comfortable existence to going back to a time where many modern (for 1945) luxuries do not exist. Gabaldon will have you hooked as you get going, and you will not want to stop experiencing this English woman's adventures through time with her young Scottish love.

5/5

This is a mystery series by Jasper Fforde, and I am not a person that reads many mysteries because they do not generally appeal to me. This series does, though. I had first heard of it on a message board that I visit and then promptly pushed to the back of my mind. I actually saw this novel twice at a second hand store before my mind registered where I had heard the title before and picked it up. It was amazing to me, also, because it is the first book in the series and me and second hand store history states that I am meant to find the third or fifth book, never the first. But, this time I was in luck and decided to give the mystery a try.

It is not your general run-of-the-mill mystery story because it is a literary mystery. The main character, Thursday Next, works for a section of the justice department that is concerned with literature. Most of the time they just check novels to see if they are forgaries, but once in a while something big comes across their table. This happens to Thursday when a professor of hers turns out to be involved in a big literary case and she is pulled into the middle of it.

Her uncle has made a machine that will allow people to go inside of books and interact with the characters, and the "bad guy" gets ahold of it. He has been stealing ancient manuscripts, another thing that it is the literary teams job to protect, and one of those manuscripts is the famous Jane Eyre. Imagine the excitement when he actually goes into the novel and takes out the main character. Literary freaks go crazy because the story is told entirely from Jane's point of view, so without her there is no story.

This adventure sends Thursday on a lot of missions. Firstly, she finds herself moving back to her hometown, a town that she had turned her back on because of all the bad memories it held for her. There she finds herself working for a man that is more concerned with his budget than solving a case and the true leaders of the world, a section of the "government" that controls them all. A lot of things happen in this novel, both with a character from Jane Eyre being able to come easily to her rescue from outside the pages of a book, a time travelling dad, and a period of time spent in the pages of one of the most famous novels of all time. It is extremely wonderful reading, even if you are not the type that likes mysteries, this book has things in it for everyone.

4.5/5

This is book 2 in the Thursday Next series, the adventures of a literary agent. This is another case where the back of the book really covers the story quite well:

Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bite the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens's Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro. If she retrieves a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe's "The Raven", she thinks Goliath might return her lost love, Landen. But her latest mission is endlessly complicated. Not only are there side trips into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.

It really was a tale order for such a small book. I think if anything I liked this one better than the first book in the series, The Eyre Affair. The only thing that made me sad was the ending made the book not able to be read on its own, while the first one cleaned up the loose ends. I have to read the third book to see what happens next, but I want to have the fourth one on hand before I attempt so that if I want to know what happens next it is available. Might have to order it off Amazon as I am not having much luck tracking it down. Some people call these books monotonous, but I enjoy her adventures through the literary worlds. It also makes me want to read the books that she travels through.

4.5/5

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander
Jaspe Fforde's The Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book