Disclaimer: This is basically a review. Yes, of course there are spoilers.
Those of you who know me know that when I undertake a review, it is generally not to praise the work. If I find the work praiseworthy, I generally start by analyzing it, as I have with the Hunger Games series, and with a few volumes of the Outlander series as well. Generally, for me, 'review' means 'critique.'
The Outlander series, written by Diana Gabaldon, is on Book 8 now. I have written extensively on this blog about three of the books: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager. I became stuck in Voyager because there is so much to say about the themes that interest me--I became bogged down, finished my reread without writing out everything I thought, and moved on. When I started rereading The Fiery Cross with an eye to blogging it, I realized that I just wasn't that interested in that particular volume, which had a lot to do with Jamie and Claire's daughter Brianna and her intended, Roger, with establishing "Fraser's Ridge," and with a minor peacekeeping skirmish that just wasn't terribly heroic. Also with preventing pregnancy (a theme that was on the rise from the second book on) and the unlikely parentage of Brianna's son Jem (you will never convince me that it is more likely for a child to have been conceived when the couple practiced coitus interruptus than when she was raped by a pirate the next day). In spite of The Fiery Cross, and a few moments when it was impossible to suspend disbelief, I was still enjoying the series, and waiting, perhaps not as anxiously as Diana's fans, for the next installment.
Written in My Own Heart's Blood became known through the author's conventions of abbreviation as MOBY on social media and on her web site. And boy, have the past couple of years been exercises in social media promotion. I am not certain how any author could sustain such a campaign and not emerge with utter contempt for her fan base. For much of the last year and a half of her writing process, she (or her PR person) has been posting "Daily Lines"--sneak peeks of the forthcoming volume meant to titillate fans (sometimes literally). Having just finished An Echo in the Bone, which I enjoyed, but which had a cliffhanger ending or two, I did eagerly consume these snippets. Then, I tried to read them more carefully, avoiding the fan feedback, which was often in the form of "Oh, Diana, I LIVE for these books!" and "Oh, Jamie! Oh, Claire!!" or "I just ADORE [character of choice]" or "When is the book going to be out?" or "WHY does the publication date keep moving? I can't STAND this any more!!" or "Why are you DOING this to your fans who LOVE you?" and other ludicrous forms of praise and complaint. Throw in the commentary on the casting of the Outlander Starz series, and it was truly nauseating. I know, I know. Don't read the comments. But the comments were part of this whole dog-and-pony show, since the whole Facebook page was designed to promote the book(s). Eventually, I still consumed the snippets, but with less relish. There were too many details revealed. The snippets were repeated, or a slightly different paragraph break was posted, but essentially the same part of the story. I began to fear that when I actually read the book, I would feel like I was reading all of the posts from Facebook, strung together. This did happen to an extent. And by the time the book came out, I was no longer eager to read it. I waited at least a whole week before buying it (it may have been a month, actually), and probably would have waited longer had I not simply needed a book to read that would last through my husband's week-long conference in Switzerland.
That's the backstory. But it's more than that. It influenced how aware I was of the writer's writing process. I did get the impression that the writing of this novel was a long, tedious haul--or at least, the combination of the Facebook campaign and the novel itself led me to that conclusion.
So before buying the book, I read a few Amazon reviews--something I rarely do. I started with the negative reviews, because having seen fanbabble for the past 18 months, I rather knew what drivel would be in the positive reviews. I wanted something honest. What I learned is that some people--even self-described die-hard fans--were disappointed. Even bored. Here's a sampling:
I'm sad to say that MOBY was a major disappointment! I'm a huge fan of the series and have read every book, novella, etc available. Pre-purchased this book and counted the days until delivery.
Plot lines were repetitious and somewhat boring (found myself skimming to get to point). Book lacked the flow that its predecessors possessed; in prior books I couldn't put the book down because the action was so intense. Stories seemed choppy and lacked relevance to each other, in some cases.
Overall, for a book that took 5 years to write, it felt rushed, thrown together and lacked the authenticity that the 1st 7 books made look so simple. I didn't believe this journey...it felt forced.***
The book was so disjointed and did not flow with the poetry of the other 7. It made no sense that so many KEY, nay CRUCIAL components to this 24 years-to-compose series are not answered. Too many new characters were introduced, and I believe the author, Miss Galbadon, forgot to include many, many things alluded to in the story lines of the previous seven novels. Is this because she focused that information in her novellas?***
A few things that irritated me.Jamie, raised in Scotland educated in France and now 20 years later.. In this book he talks more Gaidhlig than he ever has. Yet his sister who has never left Scotland, talk 99% great English. Felt like DG Learned some new words and had to include them. They didn't fit and it was SO over done.
I didn't like Clair in this book, she took on the character of a know it all, always reminding us of how amazingly educated she is. We get it! So many useless filler stories that drag on and on, over detailed descriptions of surgery. Who cares when surgery are done on strangers, that have nothing to do with the continuing story. So many retold stories. Same Story different day.. War. war and.. the burning of a print shop again... At times I thought the story was about to pick up, only to find my hope die. The book is just a filler to the next book. I guess DG is dragging it out to make as much money as she can from this series.
Ian had some great moments, His story could have been so much more with his fear of the baby's birth. Only to read Rachel water broke one page and 3 days later, Clair tells Jamie Ian has a son. Wow really, No excitement, no joy, no enjoying Ian's moment?The Greys have their own series and they should stay there. How stupid 70% of this book was the Greys searching for Ben. Who cares about Hal, who cares about Ben? I care nothing for William either. DG failed badly. If she spent half as much time building the characters as she did adding languages we didn't need and over detailed medical descriptions.***
I think that the build-up backfired with these readers. But these reviews didn't put me off. I forgot many of the criticisms--other than "boring," "surgery," and "characters."
I did not, however, find the novel boring. Moving through, I could see what the reviewers meant--there were a lot of details of life, but I was prepared to forgive those. More than prepared--I welcomed most of them. One of the strengths of Gabaldon's writing is often that she does infuse purpose and significance into the ordinary... when she's not subverting the ordinary. I did get bogged down in the character list sometimes, finding myself thinking--okay, who was that? and concluding that it didn't actually matter.
The first significant problem I noticed was the repetition of scenes from previous books. Yes--at times, entire scenes. Verbatim. We relived, in brief, many events from each of the other seven books. It felt like filler, and it felt a little insulting--like the reader could not be trusted to remember. Now, this is an author who has direct contact with her readers via Facebook. Many of those readers remember better than she does what happened in each of the books--or assume that they do. In most cases, the flashback was strictly unnecessary, and rather felt like a device that should have been reserved for the mini series versions. This was my first inkling that there was something odd in the relationship that the author had established with her audience--or fan base, since I don't think a "fan base" and an "audience" are precisely the same thing.
The third reviewer I quoted above mentions the Gaidhlig words and phrases in this book. I will second that observation. Though I did not remember that complaint from the review as I was reading, I developed it quite independently. In his old age, Jamie is definitely slipping back into Gaidhlig. Except that... I made up that "old age" part. There is no rhyme or reason for why he--and Ian, who probably should be interspersing as much Mohawk as Gaidhlig in his swearing and muttering--uses the Scotch Gaelic so much more in this particular book. It becomes distracting. But that's not all....
Speaking of vocabulary, I found myself using my Kindle dictionaries to look up obscure words and usages much more often than I have ever done before, and much more often than a casual reader with a Ph.D. in English should have to do. I couldn't help feeling that this was another strategy--or dig--aimed at the fans she had come to know on Facebook. First, the Gaidhlig was there for the fans, to allow them to revel in Jamie's Scottishness, and also to show off and allow them to pick up and puzzle over pronunciation and meaning. Pure crowd-pleasing. Meanwhile, the obscure vocabulary functioned to reinforce authorial superiority and control. Except that the Gaidhlig did so, too. As I read, I found myself getting the distinct impression that the author was reaching in and reminding me that she was smarter than me. There were two things wrong with that--first, anyone can do research. The vocabulary was a product of the nuts and bolts WORK behind the novel, just like the research into surgical techniques or military campaigns of the Revolutionary War. Sure, a novel is work. And in fact, more and more we're told that it's more work than inspiration. Fine. Whatever. But the work should be behind-the-scenes. The author can't imbue the work with the message, "See? Look how much WORK I did!" Particularly when there has been a dialog on Facebook with that very implication--novels take a long time; they take a lot of work. Gabaldon goes so far as to reprimand readers who think she is wrong about word usage in the back matter. I was sort of incensed to read this after finishing the novel:
Owing to the interesting ideosyncracies of the Scots dialect, some words may appear to be misspelled--but they aren't. For instance, while an English cook may have made her flapjacks on an iron griddle, her Scottish counterpart was frying sausages on a hot girdle. (This occasional transposition of sounds results in such entertaining items as a Scottish dessert known as "creamed crud" ("curd" to the less imaginative English). It also results in the occasional inattentive reviewer denouncing the occurance of "typos" in my books. This is not to say that there aren'tany typos--there always are, no matter how many eyeballs have combed the pages--just that "girdle" isn't one of them.Thank you, Mrs. Gabaldon. However, this is a problem for readers, and by adding this note, you indicate that you know that this is a problem for readers, but don't care, because you're too smart to care, and ultimately you are the one in control. (Your editors know that, too, don't they?) But frankly, this damages your ethos as well as your narrative. Because the second problem with obscure words or confusing spellings is that they disrupt the reading process. If I have to stop and puzzle while reading, to look up a word that is too obscure for an overeducated person to know readily, I have suddenly become more aware of my reading process than of the characters and plot. This is a narrative intrusion that is much more disruptive--and possibly more condescending--than the famed "intrusive narrator," a subject of much contempt in certain camps, particularly among children's literature critics. In my case, I did not think it was Gabaldon's typo, but I did think it was a Kindle transciption error. Consider the context:
I had a tiny cautery iron, its handle wrapped in twisted wool, heating on Amy's girdle. I supposed it didn't matter if it tasted like sausages.Given Gabaldon's sense of double entendre, and knowing now that it was not a transcription error, I can't help imagining her chuckling to herself about "girdles" tasting of "sausages" (*wink, wink* *nudge, nudge*)
I have not done as much research as Gabaldon on the linguistic characteristics of Scottish dialects, clearly. But here's a thought. In American English, a naturally occurring linguistic change is for "nuclear" to be pronounced "nucular" or "nuculer." However, this is not something that appears in print. If it were to appear in a narrative, even if the intent was to represent dialect, it would not register as such with readers, and would certainly not pass muster with editors. Let's examine this from another angle. The story. Perhaps you noticed that the character who was narrating this particular chapter was Claire Fraser? Right. The time traveler. The ENGLISH time traveler. From the 20th Century. Why on earth would her internal narrative reflect 18th Century Scots pronunciation? Exactly. So that the author can demonstrate how smart she is. *sigh*
I'm being perhaps more snarky and belligerant than I meant to be. However, this is a natural response to the type of authorial antagonism present in the narrative, and in the note. And that authorial antagonism is, I believe, a natural consequence of knowing your audience too intimately.
On a less personal note...
I do agree that the novel was extremely choppy. It did not, in fact, read as a coherent novel with... okay, a plot. There were sub-plots, but there was not an overarching plot. I don't consider "Get Jamie and Claire back to Fraser's Ridge" to be a plot. That, in fact, was the only unifying problem that needed to be overcome, and it was an author's dilemma rather than a plot dilemma--which points to my other major criticism. After a while, I was tracing the author's writing process, which again took me out of the book. It began to feel like a laborious process, and while I could appreciate the challenges of writing the book, that is not where I wanted to be. Nevertheless, the stories themselves were interesting. Unlike other critical reviewers, I enjoyed the presence of the Grey family throughout the novel. For the first time, that family does actually seem to belong in the story of the Fraser's lives. I was interested in Hal's search for his son Ben and his (purported) widow. Unfortunately, that plot didn't resolve. I was interested in William's... journey, which also didn't resolve, but came to one dead end (no pun intended--more on that in a bit...). The wedding plots were fine, and provided the opportunity for some virgin (and not-so-virgin) sex and some sex ed, which again, is a crowd-pleaser. These scenes did feel a bit forced, but they had to be there. It's all part of the schtick. I did not particularly enjoy the Roger-in-the-too-distant-past interlude, which seemed pointless but provided an intersection with her short story, "A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows" (which was not my favorite thing that Gabaldon has written).
I have not particularly enjoyed the "Bree and Roger in the 1980s" segments, and I almost think that all of their intrigues in MOBY were engineered to get them back to the past (HT: Roger Zemeckis). While in the 1980s (and I would have to say that there was such an incredible imbalance between Roger and Bree time and the 18th C people that the overall impression was that Bree and Roger didn't fit into this book at all), there were, of course, pop culture references. There was Fraggle Rock, which, as a fraggle fan, I appreciated, but which sort of registered along with Disneyland almost as product placement. And then, there was the Tardis. *sigh* And I don't care how many Dr. Who fans are out there, I just think that to drop a Tardis reference into a time travel series is ridiculous--another somewhat pointless fan-pleaser borne of social media involvement. I actually think of Tardismania as a very contemporary thing--I don't remember the Tardis being stressed in the 80s the way it is now, though certainly Dr. Who has many incarnations that (heh) span time.
In general, I enjoyed the surgery--though "enjoy" might be overstating it. Some made me cringe--most decidedly. Some were designed to make the reader cringe--in fact, I would guess that most of the surgical scenes were designed--yes, to show off the author's research, but also to make the reader squirm uncomfortably. A different kind of squirming than the sex scenes, but I do believe that both types of scenes reach out of the book to produce a physical reaction in the reader. And it works. How a reader reacts to that type of forced engagement is another question--I was basically okay with it, though some things did stretch my suspension of disbelief. For example... would incisions under the tongue really stop bleeding in 2 minutes' time with only pressure and cotton? Having dealt with mouth injuries and extracted teeth, I doubt it. Mouth injuries bleed profusely. And would you really want to ply the 13 year-old with whiskey to perform the outpatient procedure, even if nothing else were available? Let's ask 'ol Hippocrates about that one. One surgery seemed placed in the novel for three purposes: to disgust the reader, to stress the importance of birth control by depicting the (historical?) dangers of childbirth, and to introduce the ethics of forced sterilization. I did rather feel that whereas in previous books the author's "out" when she encountered a block in writing was sex, in this book it was surgery. I know people who could not have handled the description or their own visceral reactions to the descriptions, but though I read sympathetically/empathetically, I was able to read through them all. Not all contributed significantly to the novel overall, however. I keep coming back to that, because being able to point to this or that as not really mattering demonstrates why the novel felt choppy and why it lacked cohesion--it could hardly have been more disjointed as a series of short stories or novellas, which seems to be the mode the author might have preferred for the separate sub-plots.
The other conspicuous authorial strategy was killing off inconvenient characters. She does it twice. It is terribly obvious. And only one of the two is really forgivable, artistically speaking. She introduced a character in the last book or two who was born a dwarf. He has no place in 18th Century society outside of a circus, but is a delightful child. Unable to provide for such a character, the author seems to have made a decision to kill him off. It's a pity--he was an interesting character. And the incident is really too random to feel satisfying, and too abrupt to be sad. Gabaldon also introduces a prostitute and her sister as part of William's coming-to-terms-with-his-illegitimacy sub-plot. As he struggles with what it means to have honor, shepherding a prostitute and her sister and shielding them from her professional hazards somehow begins to form part of his new identity. Unfortunately, Jamie Fraser's son--even if illegitimate--and an Earl to boot--could not fall in love with a prostitute. Which means that we can only find out that he probably was falling in love with her after she is dead. *sigh*
Poor William. He has issues. But how could he not, given his parentage? I have to say that in this book, I cease to like the character of Jamie Fraser. He is a barbarian at the beginning, and he is a barbarian at the end. And poor, dear, overstimulated Claire needed to be a bit more defensive of Lord John Grey, who was, after all, trying to save her life by marrying her. But when the red-heided battering ram (and I did not mean that as a double entendre, though it works) shows up again, all is forgotten. Suffice it to say, other characters and certain sub-plots carried me through this one.
Did I like the book? It hardly matters. I was distracted enough by form and function that I don't know that I had the opportunity to like it. When I wasn't thinking about how it was constructed and why, I liked it well enough, but don't get me started on the chapter titles (more crowd-pleasing, self-conscious cleverness). There were certainly things I liked about it. The book has not, by any means, put me off of the series (though Jamie's character came close--both at the beginning and at the end). I guess there are still too many plot holes--and that's it: I want to know what happens next. This one was not a cliffhanger, but in spite of its bulk, with many sub-plots and no overarching, unifying plot structure, it feels incomplete. Things that I still want to know:
- Is Ben Grey really dead?
- What is the story behind Amaranthus--Ben's purported widow?
- Will William ever love again?
- Will Benedict Arnold turn his coat, and why?
- Where are Dottie and Denzell?
- What about that sticky business of someone knowing that Lord John is homosexual?
- Why did Ian try to kill Rachel in his sleep?
- How will the Revolutionary War end?
- Are these characters secretly immortal, and not in the literary sense?
You might notice that none of these relate directly to Claire, Jamie, & co. Well, okay. The last one does. In fact, my curiousity about Jamie's ghost in Book 1 is beginning to wane. The mystery is likely more intriguing than any answer could be.
Written in My Own Heart's Blood is a transitional point in the Outlander story--sustained only by the fact that it is part of a series. I hope that the author works through her attraction to the short story/novella genres before plotting--or plodding through--the next full-fledged Outlander installment. But anyway, I will be waiting for the next installment. In 5 or 10 years, I'll be ready.
