Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A Breath of Snow and Ashes

I've spent the past week with A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Diana Gabaldon, 2005), so I'm now all caught up with the Outlander series, just in time for An Echo In the Bone to debut next month.

This is the sixth doorstopper tome in the series, so it's by no means the right place to start. But it's a wonderful place to spend time with characters you already know and love. This volume takes the characters from 1774 to 1776 in North Carolina, with Jamie, who knows how the Revolution is going to turn out thanks to his time-traveling wife, daughter, and son-in-law, having to balance that knowledge with the fact that most of the rest of his friends and relatives are Loyalists.

What Gabaldon excels at is combining the grand, violent sweep of history with the little intimate moments of daily life. I hope I can write something half so rich someday.

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