4,0 de 5 estrellas
"You have nay soul!"
Revisado en los Estados Unidos 🇺🇸 el 5 de diciembre de 2022
**SPOILER ALERTS ABOUND!**
My overall observation of AN ECHO IN THE BONE, the 7th installment of Diana Gabaldon's outstanding Outlander series: There is a virtual whirlwind of sub-plots hitting the reader as the 1200-page volume comes to its conclusion. . .several of them not fully vetted. Example: Claire, as she walks the streets of Philadelphia and views the scores of young men being interrogated by British sentries, muses to herself how easy it would be for she, a middle-aged woman, to move revolutionary materials without suspicion; only a handful of pages later, a peer of Lord John Grey advises that Claire is about to be arrested for sedition for handing out forbidden pamphlets. There is absolutely no vetting in the interim.
No doubt all of these story lines will get resolved in the next installment, yet the frustration did not take away from this reviewer's overall enjoyment of the novel. In breaking down this monumental story, I find it falls more or less into four character groups:
A. CLAIRE AND JAMIE. The book begins as Claire and Jamie leave the charred remnants of the "Big House" on Fraser's Ridge to return to Scotland, where Jamie intends to retrieve his printing press in Edinburgh and bring it back to the Colonies for the Revolutionary War effort. Their voyage, however, is interrupted by British treachery and intrigue, thrusting them directly into the Revolution in upstate New York, where they face Ticonderoga and Saratoga. They do, along with Young Ian, return to Scotland, with a bittersweet reunion at Lallybroch; there is still a deep bitterness Jenny holds for Claire, to the latter's constant frustration. Towards the end of their stay, Claire is called away via a letter from Marsali; young Henri-Christian has such difficulty breathing that he must be watched as he sleeps every night--Marsali begs her stepmother to please come to Philadelphia to remove the boy's tonsils. Claire and Jamie are separated, and Jamie's return trip to the Colonies spawns an eye-opening sequence of misunderstandings.
B. YOUNG IAN AND WILLIAM. It's only fitting that a major portion of this book focuses on the next generation: Ian Murray, still reeling from his tragic Mohawk past, and William Grey, the ninth Duke of Ellesmere and Jamie's illegitimate son (although Willie does not know this. . .yet). Ian comes to Willie's aid in Virginia, when Willie is gravely injured working in British intelligence. While Ian knows fully well who Willie's father is, he keeps the knowledge to himself, while both young men compete for the affections of Rachel Hunter, a young Quaker woman assisting her surgeon brother Denzel. The reader is immersed in Willie's wartime adventures; the young lieutenant experiences battle in New York City, and he's literally on the other side of Jamie and Claire at Saratoga. His "revelation" at the end of the book is mesmerizing page turning; as Jenny glibly quips: "Like father, like son."
C. LORD JOHN GREY. From London to the Carolinas to Philadelphia, Lord John moves in and out of the story as he communicates with his adopted son Willie, aids and assists his nephew Henry, who is gravely injured in battle, and looks after his niece Dorothea, whom he's brought with him to the Colonies from London. Lord John also has a counterpart working in French intelligence whom he encounters after many years; this personage is looking for, of all people, Fergus Fraser; the official suggests that Fergus just might have a wealthy benefactor. (Comte. St. Germain, anyone?) And, as the story rushes toward its breathless ending, Lord John does the only honorable thing he can when he learns Claire is going to be arrested for sedition: He marries her.
D. BRIANNA AND ROGER. 1980. The charm of Outlander is time travel, with groups of major characters living simultaneously in different times. Here, Bree and Roger, along with children Jem and Mandy (who has had surgery to correct her heart murmur) renovate and restore Lallybroch in 1980. Roger pursues his career in ministry, while Bree, an engineer, gets a job supervising work at a hydroelectric dam. Bree faces the "good old boy" structure of a male-dominated profession, and she does so with limitless resolve. (After all, she's Jamie Fraser's daughter). Yet throughout this story thread, Jem and Mandy continue to complain about a "boogey man" living in the kirk behind the house--a stranger who eludes Roger's search for him. Ultimately the two find each other, leading to a discomforting discovery: the "stranger" is Roger's seven-times great-grandfather William Buccleigh MacKenzie, who has accidently fallen through the stones to land in modern times. While preparing to send Buccleigh back through the stones at Craig Na Dun, Jem disappears. Has he been abducted, and if so, has the captor taken the boy back through the stones? All these question marks remain unresolved as AN ECHO IN THE BONE concludes.
Obviously, with this installment, there is a lot to chew on. There are a plethora of other characters--some of them historical (e.g., Benjamin Franklin, Benedict Arnold, et al)--weaving in and out of this lengthy volume; this is easily, to this reviewer, the most complex installment in the series. As AN ECHO IN THE BONE concludes, it brings up one incontrovertible fact: The next volume has its work cut out for it.
~D. Mikels, Esq.
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