Customer Reviews

Echo in the Bone

5 star:		(246)
4 star:		(146)
3 star:		(140)
2 star:		(97)
1 star:		(63)

 

 

I never in a million years thought I'd give DG less than five stars. She's one of three authors on my release-date auto-buy, and I've been eagerly awaiting this book for years. But having spent the last couple of weeks reading it, I really don't even know what to say (I know I should take that back - I ALWAYS have something to say and I'm about to say it).

Problem one: It took me several weeks to read. I'm a compulsive reader. I can't sleep with a story unfinished, and yet Echo never grabbed me. I went several days without evening picking it up because I didn't feel like it. I never felt emotionally engaged. A good lot of the time, I just didn't care what was happening. And even worse, I felt bored by the story.

Problem two: The book is so physically big that it hurt to read. And I mean that literally. I had shoulder and elbow pain from holding it up. It really, really needed to be cut. There was a point where I wished DG had cut out the last 150 pages and replaced them with "Six months later." There was just too much of mundane life and while beautifully written, it had no presence, no force, no suspense. The book overall needed more focus on story and less on how to fix a collapsed lung using nothing but tar and a bird feather. Many of the elements got lots of story didn't end up leading anywhere (such as Ian & the two orphan girls. I expected them to show up again.)

Problem three: Timing. The book is really three different stories. Jamie & Claire in 1777 America (mostly), William (Wee Willie) Ramsome in about the same time period, and Bree & Roger in 1980's Scotland. But the timelines didn't happen evenly and so I was often rather confused. For example: William is leaving to go find Dr. Hunter in the rebel camp. Then we switch to Jamie/Claire and cover 7-8-9 months time in a hundred or more pages. Then we go back to William who has found the doctor a day or so later. This went on throughout the book, and made me crazy. Since one of the main foreshadows of the book is that Jamie & William would meet again, I could never tell if they were even in the same time / same place.

Problem four: Pacing. The book has more of an episodic plot rather than linear. It unfolds around smaller incidents that contribute to a greater whole. Many of the smaller incidents involve the William, Lord Grey, and the battles of the American Revolution, Jamie & Claire trying to make it to Scotland, Roger and Bree making a life in more modern Lallybroch. Things move slowly, but beautifully. I have learned to expect that from DG, and she is so good at it that I enjoy the details and the history and the true-to-life characters (knowing that she is as historically accurate as possible). But in this book it was way TOO slow.

And the last couple hundred pages (the ending?) were just strange. First things slow down so much that pages and pages are devoted to reminiscing and revisiting the past and death and... (well I can't tell you everything!) Then it switches so that the story & people move so fast I can't keep up. And the turn-about surprises are SO surprising that I have a hard time believing them. I'm left with a feeling of `where did that come from?' and `why did that happen?' and `you've got to be kidding me!' The end was hugely dissatisfying, and yet that was (to me) where the real story was. The good stuff was glossed over.

So while DG is still one of the masters of the written word and I will probably fork out another $30 for her next book, I overall am rather disappointed. I feel like she is more interested in showing all the neat historical details she has learned than in telling a story. She has lost the story. And that makes me so sad because I have spent something like 16 or 17 years following these characters and being invested in their final outcome (we all know it comes back to that ghost watching Claire brush her hair). Please DG, go back to telling us their story rather than showing us what it was like to live in the eighteenth century.

OMG! I just got to the end of the book... I can't say I finished the book, I'll just say that I got to the end of it.

Loose ends are loose ends, but Diana.... what is this about? I read this on my e-reader and I kept paging back and forth, trying to find the rest of it, thinking, "This can't be over. There's no ending!" It leaves far too many characters hanging with life or death situations, far too many conversations in mid-sentence. It's worse than a soap opera!

And let's talk continuity, here. Does she even have an editor? At the end of the last book, Jamie stood with John Grey, watching Brianna and William in the street. In this book, Jamie claims not to have set eyes on William since he was 12. There are about a half a dozen major continuity conflicts in this story that would have been really easy to fix, if anyone was paying attention.

Now I love Diana's characters and her writing and I get so wrapped up in her stories that it threatens the rest of my ability to function in life, but this ended so strangely that I'll be jarred and marred for days!

I enjoyed reading this book and I'll buy her next one, but I recommend that no one read this one until the next one is available. Leaving us hanging here, for possibly years until the next one comes out, is too upsetting.

SPOILER ALERT: THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS

I found the book a wee bit slow to get started, and a tiny bit choppy. But that's because the main character's lives have changed dramatically, and the whole *family* is no longer on *The Ridge*. But once I got into the flow of the story, I found myself reading faster and faster to find out what happened next, which means I'll have to go back and reread it to catch nuances.

But there were some story lines that left me thinking *why*? Why reintroduce a character and then not have that character have any more to do in the story ( I am not naming that character so as not to spoil it for others#.

Another reviewer mentioned why adding Lord John and William into the mix, and not just concentrating on Jamie & Claire's story. Well, then we'd only have half the book we have now, and probably half the total number of books to begin with if their lives aren't fleshed out. And once into the full series of book you want to know what's going on with the extended family, who was doing what with who. And Wlliam isn't just a nobody.

But as I read faster towards the end, I began to think that all the time & effort spent on the story around Ft Ticonderoga, while interesting, left the ending not as well fleshed out by comparison. As if the ending was rushed in the writing. I really felt there ought to have been another 200 pages to flesh out what was happening.

And then the ending. There are quite a few *cliff hangers* at the end. But. But, I am still hooked. And beg Ms Gabaldon to start the next #will it be the last?) book as soon as possible. Cause I need to know!

All told, I love The Outlander series. I love books that are this long and this interesting. That we get to see a love story and lives fleshed out as well as Ms Gabaldon does. Hopefully she will continue the great work.

(will cross-post to goodreads and amazon)

Hmmmm.....I've been trying to sort out my feelings about this book since I finished it last night. I really am confused and feel somewhat betrayed I guess. As a devout fan of this series, I feel that Gabaldon is just stringing her fans along with no real respect for them, and it irritates me.

1. Obviously I love this series. No one gets to the 7th book in a series, each book being between 500-800 pages long, and each book being published 3-4 years apart, without being quite the fan.

I love Gabaldon's straight-forward writing style. I love her attention to historical and medical accuracy. These things are what make her books stand out for me. I continuously try to explain to people that this series is NOT a Time Travel Romance series. It is SO SO much more. This last installment HAS all of these elements, which is why I gave it a three star rating rather than something lower. I also had to respect my status as a huge fan, and Gabaldon's obvious hardwork and research that goes into her writing.

BUT.......

2. I probably shouldn't have read an excerpt on Gabaldon's website a few years ago, because the excerpt (involving Jamie's return after being supposedly dead) colored my expectations of the action in this book.

Throughout the reading, I kept waiting to get to THAT part, and everything else just felt like filler until those big plot points in the excerpts.

So, I'm waiting for these elements of the story to arrive, and all the characters to converge as I felt they eventually would. But they never did!!!

There was so much excruciating detail about things that it seemed the reader should care about, but I just didn't. Lord John's spy business. Percival Beauchamp. Why do we need to care? If it's important later on in the series, I don't know WHY. William lost in the fog. TWICE. And the excruciating minutaie of his experiences. His experiences do eventually become interesting, but in the meantime, I skimmed MANY MANY pages. This book easily could've been 500 pages insead of 800.

So, as I skimmed pages, looking for the events that I knew were coming (a la the excerpt) I found I had quite reached the end of the book. The details in the excerpt DID come to pass, but not until the final 50 pages, and everything was not the same as it was in the excerpt. Then, the ending (I'll get to THAT later).

3. Jamie and Claire are always the main thrill in these books. They actually didn't have a big part in this novel. The skipping around of POV was highly irritating. Just when I became interested in William, POV would change to Bree and Roger. Lord John's role was never interesting.

The Bree and Roger POV was interesting to me. I did love the emotionally heart-rending scenes when they read letters from Jamie and Claire. I loved to see them reintegrate into modern society and how they dealt with the knowledge of time travel. THEIR action got REALLY interesting in the final scenes of the novel.

Jamie and Claire. Love them. But I feel that Gabaldon took PAST scenes in past novels and just replayed them for Jamie and Claire. Claire preforming surgery on Jamie. Jamie and Claire involved in piracy and sea battles. Claire following Jamie to battle and performing medical procedures on the battlefield (over and over again to much excruciating detail). Really, there was more than one occasion when I had an acute since of deja vu, and I didn't like it.

4. THE BLEEPIN' ENDING!!!! ARGH!!!!

This is where my feelings of betrayal come in. It takes Gabaldon many years to publish these books. As a show of good faith, it is not right to leave the reading with SERIOUS cliffhangers. I mean, literallly, in the middle of the action, CLIFFHANGERS. Mid-scenes. Ugh.

AND--I did not care AT ALL for what went on with Claire and Lord John at the end. The reunion of Jamie and Claire should've been touching but it was made inappropriately comical. It felt wrong. The entire, rushed, ending felt wrong.

The revelations William came to....just all wrong. Too fast. Too horrible. I'm very upset and disappointed. Now what? Another four years? Hmm

So disappointing. I don't think my star rating would be so long were I not an addicted Outlander fan.

Claire and Jamie are the reason I fell in love with the series. Where the heck are they in this book? If I wanted to read about John and William, I would read Lord John's series.

I don't want a bridge to another series about different characters. If you're done writing about Claire and Jamie, then finish their series and start a new one for the new characters. It's as though the author spent the last few years working on 3 different books and then thought, "Oh crap, I'm supposed to be writing an Outlander sequel", combined the seperate books she'd been working on, and hastily wrote Claire&Jamie portions to *try* to tie it all together.

I'm very sad. I feel like I've been waiting years for a reunion with long-lost friends only to find they've skipped town and sent their cousins to meet me instead.

I've waited 4 years for this? What a disappointment! It's an 800 page sales pitch to get us to read her Lord John books. I was hoping for that magic that you get when you pick up a book and the world slips away like it did with the first books in this series. It felt disjointed, horribly slow in some parts and rushed in others, like the ending. Don't get me started on the ending! Sorry Diana I think I'll let this series end here for me. I'd rather read your previous books over again.

I know there are rabid Gabaldon fans out there who would gladly read her shopping lists and give them rave reviews, but I just can't be one of them for this book.

I've been reading this series since the beginning. I've been involved in the online message boards, raved to friends and strangers alike about them, but it's Jamie and Claire's story I am interested in. This book is, what, 1/4 Jamie and Claire? I haven't read the Lord John books, and am not interested in them at all. I want to know the rest of the Fraser's story, and am really pretty sick of being strung along while we wait for Lord John books, companion books, picture books..

The story is choppy and difficult to stick with. The events toward the end of the book show Claire so out of character I found myself rolling my eyes and wondering what the heck was going on. The ending..gah. I'm all for having some suspense for the next book, but this was just nuts. I'm not the only one who was wondering if the printer messed up and cut off a chapter. It was like that jolt at the end of a movie that ends badly, the kind that has you looking at your date going "um..okay?"

We're not reading a story that comes full circle, just an ongoing soap opera that more and more things get added to. We're literally going on 20 years of this. Wrap it up already. Many of your die hard fans are flat out losing interest.

If this book was less than the 800+ pages it is, I would have thrown it across the room and into a wall! To say that I am angry and disappointed would be an understatement. I have the feeling that the author simply doesn't care any longer for the characters and is simply writing for the money. I have always felt that Jamie, Claire and other members of the immediate family were fully developed personalities, for whom I truly cared. The author now has these familiar people doing things that are against their developed personalities. Come on, Claire sleeping with Lord John and giving him a tender hand job! Give us a break! She agonized for years over having submitted to the French King in order to save Jamie's life and now she hops into bed with with a man whom she knows is a homosexual in love with her husband. I don't like the Lord John Grey character and have failed over the years to understand why the author seems so taken with him. The John Grey stand alone series, does just that: stands alone among the other remainders.

I am simply sick and disgusted with this book and although there is a great deal more that I could say, it simply isn't worth the effort.

So farewell, Diana Gebaldon; I thought you were an incrediable story teller but with this book, in my opinion, it appears, you became another hack, out for the money.

I can not in good faith recomend this book to anyone! Had I been aware of the character distruction and content of this book, I would not have purchased it.

(Review by Rebyj)
Echo is VERY full of historical letters and info dumps to insert the fictional characters into the real events. When you get past that, Jamie and Claire's story, their whereabouts and how they get from point A to B gets confusing at times. The fast paced action and dangers got annoying to me early on.

That said, if you are a fan of the books then you will enjoy this addition of course. I did. The last 1/4 of the book makes up for the first 3/4 which hops around from character/ location/time period/ location/location/ location so much that I was hard pressed to keep up. The last 1/4 pretty much ties everything together but only to rip apart at the seams as we yet wait years for the next book.

Frustrating, irritating but OH so delicious. When Jamie and Claire are together, it's as lovely as the other books. When the book goes off to the other characters, Lord John Grey especially, it gets as dry and dusty as the Lord John Grey books do. He's rather a bore, even if he is heroic.

Roger and Brianna, WEAK storyline till the end. They just appear to read the bundle of letters from Claire that they found one at a time and they're just excrutiatingly detailed info dumps. At the end of the book however, their storyline picks up and is where the next book will likely start at.

A nice revisit to all these beloved characters. The author seems to fail at inciting the reader to care about the outcome of the battles with as much interest and passion as she wrote about Culloden in the earlier books.

I'd say all in all it's not as good as most of the other books simply because 500 pages of history could have been condensed and more familiar character story added.

As an avid fan of the Outlander series, I pre-ordered "An Echo in the Bone", excited to be reintroduced into the lives of Jamie and Claire.
I had problems with this book. She introduced way too many minor characters and to tell the truth, I didn't enjoy the book enough to go back and figure out when they had appeared (when did Dr. Hunter meet Dottie in London?) I have, in the past, loved the way D.Gabaldon inserted interesting scientific and historical facts into her stories, but this time, I felt that she had cut and paste battle statistics and chemistry facts from other books into hers. There seemed to be no love of the details, like in her previous books - more just a half-hearted repetition of a style that had worked in the past.
Why did we have to read chapter after chapter about William's spying and his love life and then not have anything resolved? Why didn't she curtail the extended battles scenes with William and why did she introduce the Percy, Beauchamp, Richardson and Randall storyline? That was approx. 1/3 of the book and went absolutely no where.
The ending was so blatantly commercial, it reminded me of a movie franchise, setting up a cliffhanger so we have to come back for the sequel - purely a money making venture. I personally won't be back. I will just re-read the first few books over again. I found that the only time I was really involved and couldn't put the book down was when she was on to Jamie, Claire and Ian. Unfortunately, I also realized there were only about 40 pages left and I thought to myself, there is absolutely no way she can resolve all these issues thoughtfully by the end of the book, so I knew I was going to be disappointed.
Whoever edited this book did a very poor job. There is no reason that the storyline should have been allowed to ramble on through all the battle scenes and then be cut short during the personal connections that we, as predominantly female readers, actually care about. The continuity was very faulty also, an example would be William and Ian's relationship. They went back and forth throughout the book knowing each other, than not knowing each other, and then knowing each other again. I felt that so much of the book was produced shoddily. I wonder what was going on in the author's life these last few years that she wasn't able to construct a book at the professional level that she has in the past. If this had been the first book in the series, I would never have continued on, it felt that amateur to me and I certainly will not recommend it. I wish her luck in the future and thank her for writing the series, but I think I am done.