Outlander - The Books vs The Series

I’m intimidated by big books.  Any book with over 500 pages scares me.  I like to read fast and with a large book, I know going in it’s going to take a lot longer to read.  So even after hearing so many wonderful things about Outlander, I still gave it a pass.  But after hearing constantly how Jamie Fraser was the perfect hero, I finally bit the bullet and read it.  This is probably going back about 10 years or so.  I read Outlander, skipped Dragonfly in Amber and skipped a good deal of Voyager and read the part where Clare and Jamie were reunited and I was all good.  I was never tempted to read any of the other ones. 

 

 

 

I heard talk over the years about how wonderful it would be to see the books be made into a movie and who should play what part.  I never really cared.  But then I heard Starz was going to make it into a series. A much better idea then say a three part movie franchise like they do with so many other books to movies.  And while I was ambivalent as to who would play Clare, when I saw who was chosen for Jamie, well, my hot actor radar kicked up big time and the more I read about it the more excited I got until I could hardly contain myself when it started playing in Canada on Showcase.  I love period piece movies series, North and South, Last of the Mohicans, Rob Roy, The Highlander (the television series – never did see the movies) and so on.  So I was ecstatic when I found out that yes, we would be able to see it in Canada.

 

I loved it from the opening credits, in fact I have the song now from ITunes.  I waited anxiously for 10:00 every Sunday night for it to start.  And oh my, the connection between Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire!  Their chemistry leaps off the screen.

I thought three episodes in that since it’s been a while since I’d read it, I should do a reread.  And now that I had a Most Excellent Picture of Jamie – I think I didn’t really before as he was described as having red hair and

Carrot Top kept getting in the way.  I skipped the first part and started reading where the series was up to and kept reading until the end of the first series.  I figured I’d keep reading when the series had a break but that didn’t happen.

The second series started last Sunday – and hands up – who watched it??  I gave up smoking when I broke my leg but my heavenly stars I could have used one towards the end of the final scene. 

 

That was – as Jim Carrey says – SMOKIN’.  I was definitely breathing heavy.  Anyway – moving on – I figured I’d best get back on the book horse and start reading again.  And I hit a wall.  A huge wall.  I wall I don’t think I can climb and now I remember why I didn’t get caught up in the whole series like so many others have.

 

I Don’t Like Claire.  Oh no I do not like her at all.  While not as apparent in the series because I do like Caitrona playing her, in the book, I find her dreadful. 

***Rant about to begin****

I do not understand why she seems determined to press all of Jamie’s buttons. 

It seems like it’s almost out of spite.  Here she has this hot, young guy who is strong and brave and hot and patient and forward thinking for his time and hot and willing to risk his own life for her and hot and funny and protective and willing to take on the punishment of others and hot and a virgin no less but very good at it once he gets going and hot and between the Jamie in the book and the Jamie in the series just about the most perfect hero – evah – and Claire seems determined to rile him up in one way or another.  I get that she comes from the future and as a working woman is even more advanced than the usual housewife, but she’s not in her own time and so she shouldn’t play be the rules she knows.  In the past, she should be led by Jamie.  While I don’t agree with the controversial spanking, she did do an extremely stupid thing and as a result has risked the whole clan, not to mention putting a HUGE target on Jamie’s back.  She knows there are redcoats wandering about.  She knows that Black Jack Randall is after her.  And during their epic fight she had the nerve to call Jamie a sadist – when she had evidence herself and what she saw he had done to Jamie, that Randall was a sadist in truth. 

Yes, I get that she wants to get back to Frank - though why I don’t understand completely why when she has Jamie.

Yet despite everything he has done for her she accuses him of cheating.  She accuses him of marrying her for money.  NO, you stupid woman!  He married you to SAVE YOUR LIFE.  I don’t see a whole lot of gratitude for that either.  Sure there was some – but not much.  I swear Jamie has the heart of a saint to both get past his anger so quickly and forgive her so easily.

 Anyway, I’m going to have to give up on reading the book.  To do both would be a double negative on my feelings for Claire.  I would be so angry with her while reading and so angry while watching.  And because the series is so good and Jamie is so, um hot, I’m just going to stick with the series.

~*~*~*~

 

And I need to update a previous post.  I was talking about getting invested in shows only to have them cancel before their time and I completely forgot about Copper.  This was another show that ran on showcase a couple of years ago about Kevin Corcoran,  a ‘copper’ from Ireland who helped police the slums of Five Points district in New York City just around the time of the Civil War.  He was a very intriguing character, a real anti-hero.  One scene he would do something heroic, the next something despicable.  It was a series done by BBC America and I loved it.  I was devastated when it was cancelled.

Well, that's it for today.

'til later

Recent Read

Ghost Moon by Rebecca York

Why this one: As you may remember, I mentioned to Katie that I prefer werewolf books to vampire and I said I was reading this one

Steam Level: It might be a tad difficult to see the person across from you – they might be blurry

Amazon Blurb:

A freed slave from a parallel universe, Quinn has come to this world on a vital mission. But she's stopped in her tracks by the seductive attentions of a mysterious spirit. He's a ghost named Caleb Marshall—a werewolf who was supposedly murdered by the ancestors of her dearest friends...

When Caleb finds a way to take over a human body, Quinn can no longer resist her overwhelming desire, even though she's not sure she can trust him. But soon she discovers that they have a common enemy—and if she doesn't act fast, she may lose the man she's come to love, along with her life...

My thoughts: I had read a couple of her earlier werewolf books in a related series and quite liked them. Then I read one that I didn’t really care for and she kind of fell off my radar. I got this one in San Francisco and decided to take them back up again. Apparently I missed a few in between and I wish I had read them first as I would have got a better impression of this alternate universe she has incorporated but as it is, I really enjoyed this one. It was quite different. It’s got quite a few different paranormal elements going on and normally it might be too many for me, but in this book they all really worked.

At the start of the book we see a fight to the death between two men in werewolf form which happened a long time ago – sometime in the 1920’s I think – it’s been a while since I read it and I don’t remember the exact date but as it’s a very short scene I’m not going to look it up.

Cut to the present time and our heroine Quinn has escaped from an alternate Earth – one in which things went terribly wrong and there is a real divide between rich and poor. The rich have enslaved the poor. Quinn is looking for a way to help her friend still stuck and pregnant in the not so good universe and a tear has been discovered between the two that allows her to travel back and forth. While she is on her way to meet up with friends (characters from a previous book I haven’t read but plan to) she feels this ‘presence’. It turns out to be Caleb who has somehow not ‘gone on’ to the next world. Quinn has some kind of special powers and is able to see and feel him. Caleb is overjoyed as he hasn’t been able to talk to anyone since he died. There is an instant attraction between these two and I had no trouble buying into it. All seems hopeless though what with him being a werewolf ghost and her from another dimension. But when he somehow manages to take over another body, it seems they might have a future after all. But Caleb must deal with some unforeseen issues first.

I thought Caleb an excellent hero. The author manages to make us feel his lonliness and his joy at finding someone who can ‘reach’ him. And not just someone, but the person who it turns out is his chosen mate. He’s a bit autocratic in his dealings with Quinn, but then he comes from a different time.

And Quinn is a very good heroine. She is loyal to her friends and also loyal to Caleb. I think it would have been better if I had read the previous books, but as it is, I didn’t have much problem picking up on this story. There are some visits with characters I had met before.

I’m glad I picked this book up and I plan on going back and forward with this series.

Grade: 4 out of 5

My Most Recent Read

Dark Protector by Alexis Morgan


I find it a bit hard to judge this one. I read a few reviews on Amazon before doing this review. A number of them compared this book, the first in a series, to the Carpathian series by Christine Feehan, the Dark Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon or even the Brotherhood series by JR Ward. I don’t particularly like comparing series so I’m not going to compare this with any of the others.
As I mentioned this is the first book of a series. First off I liked it. I really did. I fully intend to get the second book very shortly – later today even. But I found it a bit sketchy on details for a new series. Devlin Bane is a Paladin, a slightly different group of people than human. They are a warrior class who defend to the death the fault lines of the planet when there is a fissure. They fight another group called The Others, a vicious bunch who would wreck havoc on Earth should they ever enter en masse. And when I say to the death, I mean to the death. The Paladins you see, also have the power to come back from the dead and live to fight another day. But each time they ’die’ they loose a bit more of their humanity and eventually they become one of The Others themselves. Laurel Young is a special doctor called a Handler who works with the Paladins, patching up their injuries or helping them return from the dead. There is a definite but forbidden attraction between Laurel and Devlin. Handlers and Paladins are discouraged from getting close as it’s the Handler’s job to ‘put down’ the Paladins when they ‘turn’. But of course passion can’t be denied and they end up working together to find out who is trying to permanently get rid of Devlin, who is the traitor and what is really going on with the Others. This one had good suspense, good hero & heroine, good secondary characters, good everything I like in a book.
I think Ms. Morgan who also writes Westerns I’ve yet to try under the name Pat Pritchard, has a good idea going here. For those such as myself who like paranormals but aren’t really into the vampire thing, this really fits the bill. But I just have so many questions that haven’t been answered in this one.
How do they know they are Paladins?
Why do they live longer?
Do they age like regular people if they don’t turn ‘Other’?
Can they *ah* *um* reproduce?

I'm thinking some of the answers to the Immortal questions here since I love The Highlander the Series so much.

See – this is a good thing/bad thing. Bad thing because I don’t know the answers and but good thing because I liked this book enough to want to know the answers. Hopefully, as she goes further on, I will get some of them.
So, I quite liked this one and it’s now the next day and as you can see by my sidebar, I went to the bookstore in a small snow storm last night to get the next one, that’s how much I want to continue reading them. Granted the book store is on the way home and I didn’t have to drive out of my way – but still….

Grade: 4 our of 5