Outlander Audiobook [Unabridged] by Diana Gabaldon | Historical Fiction Romance Novel | Perfect for Commuting, Travel & Relaxation

REVIEW EDITED - A FEW SPOILERS AHEAD:I hate to give a book a 1 star rating and a long DNF review. I think it disrespects the writer who had gone through so much trouble to publish his/her work.I'm stubborn and I set my mind on finishing it or withdrawing my first review. Let me assure you: it does not please me to give one star long reviews. I'd rather give 5 star passionate reviews.Please, before deciding you won't like the book, read this review until the end. It's just MY opinion.I found out this is a book - IMHO - for YA who are starting to look for historical, biased romances with a bit of action and a lot of beatings and rapes; not for a full-grown woman looking for a bit of steamy historical fictional romance.As I say in the first review (below), I started Outlander with high, very high expectations. Not only due to a recommendation from a friend older than myself (not my daughter) but the enormous quantities of 5 star reviews it has here on GRs [Goodreads].And this was not the best way to approach a book.I'm used to read teenage & YA trilogies (or series) - from Harry Potter to Hunger Games; from Percy Jackson to Twilight ("Ugh!" to the last one) and many others - because I normally read what my daughters are reading, so we can discuss the books' themes.I will leave my first review below, because although I finished the book, I did not change my mind about the rating. Unfortunately, if it could, my dislike got worse.But... Let's face it:This book was hard work, mixed with a few laughs at the absurdity of it all (and many times a retch feeling), but mostly I was bored and finding myself asking 'Really?!'.FOR ME, Outlander started with a few problems:First, I mistook it for an adult romance because of the fierce recommendation as a good HOT romance for me (I'm 44 y-o, so I'm far away from the age of blushing or giggling!)Then, English is not my mother language, so the use of ancient words made me stop to seek their meanings. I'm not one to jump over words I don't know. Even when I'm reading as leisure, I have education in mind, in whatever way it comes.TO TOP: For some romance readers, rape, S&M scenes, adultery, violence are "deal-breakers". I, FOR ONE, TOTALLY ABHOR RAPE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN.I've read books with violent scenes, my problem is when the author romanticizes its perpetrators and their actions.CONTINUING:Typos do haunt me. Or rather, they hunt me. I don't know why but I have sharp eyes for them when I'm reading a story. I stumble upon them and I lose my concentration. Normally, I can overlook them easily if the plot is good enough and depending I can even laugh "with" them.I knew this book was not a classic, nor a non-fiction book. So, the pretentious use of the language took me away from it a bit.Then the story is slow-paced. (I'm okay with this, depending on the plot. It can build, grow itself inside me in its slow pace if it's good, which it's not the case).The repeated and repeated use of Scottish accent, Scottish old words and other different languages, such as Scottish Gaelic (with which I am not that much acquainted) and French (which I speak fluently) seemed unnecessary, again pretentious and with typos - yes! both of them had typos.And it left me closely analyzing words and plot devices, which I just hate and it's inconceivable in a good book.The story picked up its pace a bit around 50%, a bit too far from the beginning for me, but that is okay.I understand this is a series - 10 books!! - but I need at least a bit of passion in the descriptions, the characters' interactions, or even in the sex scenes (but not in rape scenes).Something to make me wish to turn the page and not to throw the book against the wall!I guess others could find something of interest in other points (such as the 'pumpkin bum' of the maid and the 'pumpkin face' of one of James's friends), I did not.The characters:Claire Beauchamp is our narrator.She is almost 28 years old, but behaves as a 12 year-old spoiled girl. Mercurial, selfish, rude, naïve, unexperienced but in sex, gathering herbs and nursing wounds, Claire is a leading female character bordering on the absurd. She is absolutely infuriating, annoying and, imho, the greatest editing mistake in this book, apart of course from the lack of research.The only two good things, assets, I can highlight about her is that she is not spineless and knows how to treat wounds.She tells us she had just wed an older, intelligent scholar, Frank Randall, when the WWII burst and she was a nurse for 8 years apart from him before reuniting again. She has no patience at all for his research and likes to collect herbs in the hills of the Highlands.When she touches a magical hedge is she thrown back to 1743.And so my struggle errrrr... the story begins...James Fraser is who, supposedly, saves the day - or the story for the thousands of 5 star reviews - not for me.In 1743, Jamie is 23 years old, over six feet tall, broad shouldered, charming, witty and an extremely handsome Highlander, with all the predicates that make a real hero: he has problems in his past, is hard-working, intelligent, "a virgin, not a monk", a perfect gentleman who rapes and gets a sexual high from beating his wife, and he makes the readers laugh with the absurdity of the story.He is the one my divorced friend probably fell head-over-heels in love with. (I didn't. Sorry, girls. Too inexperienced and young for my tastes at the beginning... and in the end, I might have jumped his "bookish" bones if I were in dire needs of a rape and a beating... which is not my case.) I'd probably be calling the police - or killing him as soon as I could, as there was no justice for women in that time! I would rather hang than live with an abuser.AND there is so much my suspension of disbelief can endure. It was demolished - again - when only four or five days after a 24-hour exhausting natural labor of a breeched baby, Jamie's sister mounts on a horse and follows, for more than 48 hours, the Watch that had arrested his brother - without stopping but for a night rest! [Uh?! Really?!]How old is the author? Has she ever mounted a horse for 2 hours, much less for 48 hours? Did she ever have that kind of labor? Did she do any research for her book? [Ah, no. She likes pain. I forgot, sorry!!]So, in the end, I filed it under my classification: Books to read and forget and biased YA. But even with hot rapist James, even with those classifications, I have my stars to give. Or take.In short (?):- the marital rape and the homosexual rape, both portrayed as enjoyable (and the homosexual sex is seemed to be only done by perverts!!);- the beatings - Claire's and others' described, if they were deserved or not by the Scottish thinking of the time, shouldn't have alluded to sexual enjoyment of the beater, especially because one is a husband and the other is a father!! Please don't make me quote - it's there written with all the words time and time again!!);- misguided opinions about historical facts, especially the occurrence of the Holocaust;- the slow-pace;- too long explanations;- typos, American and British English mixed, wrongly written words in English (American or British), French and Scottish Gaelic;- total lack of research;- and last, my throughly disgust at Claire's moods, I took 4 stars from Outlander;Because teenagers (and everyone) have to learn:- foreign words as they should be written;- have to understand that politeness - not rudeness - is an asset,- historical lessons, if ever passed on a book, should be told properly and not in chopped, damaging ideas;and, most important,- that a rape is not enjoyable for the raped.Suggestion to the author or to the publishing house: Just stop by your ebook, proofread it either in American English or in British English (if you use "grey", use "traveller"). Proofread the foreign words. Do a bit of research and correct all the typos, commas out of place and missing inverted commas. AND INFORM THE READER ABOUT GRAPHIC "ROMANTICIZED" RAPE AND VIOLENCE!Or unpublished it... No one deserves to pay a high price such as reading typos and mistakes. And I'm not talking about money.--------------------------------------------------First review:I bought this book with high expectations due to the many 5 star reviews.It's 4.40 am in Rio de Janeiro and I have been enduring my way through the evening, watching "rather bleakly" the thin Welch bard take out three flutes of different sizes from his coat, but never use them, as his songs scratched my ears and his stories made as much sense as the repeated and much used words written in a verra accented Scottish English;I have wandered to the paddock to see the fillies and a mare be broken while naught but scraps of uneventful happenings took place and the sun struck the zenith;I have been treating the most boring wounds and watching justice being distributed with Gaelic words and historical words of the 16th century, no more in use, and yon, making me fetch my old, yellowish dictionary, the size of a "pumpkin bum", again and again, as the story "sailed like a galleon", but still and yet nothing that mattered really happened but Claire been thrown two hundred years back in the past (202, in fact) and not going crazy with it, but being very sensible and witty (Uh?!) and turning out to be the trusted healer of the Mackenzie Clan she had arrived on the day before (Really?!).I have walked through the orchard and to the herbal garden, planting garlic gloves and picking up commas out of place and also the most weird herbs, as I learned what Claire would do with them to cure ailments as there was no antibiotics at hand in the 18th century (Oh... There weren't any?! I didn't know that.);I have drunk tea bellow in the parlor of the procurator fiscal's house after an eventful (?) afternoon of drying marigolds or whatever herbs that filled Gillie's stillroom, as the white-faced miscreant tanner's lad was pinioned to the pillory by a nail through his ear and it started to rain.I have accompanied the acts of Mistress Duncan as she fetched a paper and wrote something and "hastily sanded it, folded and sealed it with a blob of wax from the candle, and pressed it" to Claire's hand to deliver only into Dougal's because if she did otherwise Mistress Duncan would not receive the payment due to her "chest - "a sizable wooden box with brass bands" - of dried marsh cabbage and other simples" (yes, simples) she had promised to Ms. FitzGibbons. Ah... That was a bill for herbs.And the "clock, a magnificent contrivance of walnut panels, brass pendulums, and a face decorated with quiring (sic) cherubim, and this instrument pointed to half-past six.";The haunted woods, full of Highland guards and the English Watch patrols, became darker and scared me away, when at 20% I read what is supposed to be an important motto of a clan, written as: " Je suis prest" (sic). [Please, read P.S. 2 - I've made a mistake]Ah... Another typo, I imagined, as many others my poor toes had stumbled upon, sharp as the rocks that where scattered on the yet not-touched, savage Highland grounds of this over-the-top stuffed with annoying descriptions of unimportant faces and buttocks and herbs and ailments; very much prejudiced opinions of important historical facts, such as why people didn't stop the Holocaust before it was too late (The number of highlights on this passage really impresses! Wow! How much people are credible and lacking on information!); descriptions of the Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome and how the Scottish Justice was distributed in 1743.Where was I? Ah, yes, the typo.Sorry. It was just that the night had fallen and I had gonna take a wee nap, do ye ken?But no. It was not a typo.This small, wee sentence that was supposed to be said in a "surprisingly good French" is written twice in a very bad French, and translated!!Ah! Thank God it was translated. It saved me the time to get out of my favorite, big armchair in the living room, wander through my dark dining room and entered my filled of books home-office to pick up my French dictionary to see if I had lost my touch with the language of lovers.COME ON!Isn't this book stuffed with enough accented Scottish, Gaelic and historical words; Isn't it void enough of any action, or interaction, that could have moved the story forward or leaded it somewhere, anywhere?! To top, there is no research or editing or proofread done too?!This is no ARC, for God's sake and this book has been around for some time, selling tons. Someone must have shouted to the unblushing, unashamed publishing house to correct it and update the ebook.I throw in the towel. I lost my trust and faith in the author and I don't know if what I'm reading is worth of my time, anymore.So, as Jamie tells Claire to leave the room because "It's no place for women." and stubbornly she stays and tells us what happens, nothing interesting at all, as modesty is preserved, I bow to his wisdom and I say my goodbyes, Sassenach. I have best books to read.In the face of so many problems and mistakes, I should return the book, shouldn't I? But I will not. First, because I don't believe in returning goods I have bought and also because this review deserves its seal of a "verified purchase".P.S. - I didn't even bother to correct any typos. If this review has any, they are well deserved.RJ, May 18th, 2014-----P.S. 2 - Seems I was lead into making a mistake: "Je suis prest" is the motto of the Scottish clan Jamie belongs to (Uh?! The author is modifying history now? Imho, it's a huge liberty to take without informing previously the reader.).The Frasier clan (an existent clan) translates "Je suis prest" for "I'm ready".It's not modern French, because "prest" in modern French means "hurry", not "ready" (I'm ready is "Je suis prêt").Maybe it is in the 18th old century French... Or even older. I have no such knowledge to say otherwise as I am not an expert in old French.Anyway, I apologize for this mistake (and I won't delete the passage and pretend I didn't do it, I did).Wouldn't it have been much more interesting if the author had said:'Je suis prest', he said in a surprisingly good 18th century old French.Or'I'm ready,' thinks Claire, translating the 18th century old French Je suis prest into modern English.Or something around the lines...The motto is repeated and repeated along the book more than 4 times. Just once, it could have been better explained.IMHO, this is how knowledge should be passed through: good explanations and clear informations.For me, the problem remains because:a- Claire had never heard the Frasier motto before. In fact, she didn't even know Jamie's surname (view spoiler) or to which clan he belonged to;b- Claire, who couldn't withstand the "ramblings" of her studious first husband, and speaks herself a passible 20th century modern French, (I'm not inventing, it's all there on the book) would not be capable of doing such translations (but if better explained, perhaps I would have overlooked this problem...);c- When I am reading a romantic novel based in "magic" (moving back and forward in time by touching a hedge is... what? Almost sic-fi, not pure non-fiction historical romance), I don't like to read distorted historical facts about real characters or clans or whatever, so my annoyance becomes worse when I realize I should had been researching what I am reading for leisure, leisure meaning "no working", "no computers", "nothing but a enjoyable book and a glass of wine".d- I hate romanticized rape! Period.RJ, August 10th, 2014.