I hate remembering which book was which. Damn. I really should blog when I finish but I finished this a few days ago and jumped straight into Drums of Autumn, seemed like such a good idea because I was completely in the mode of must find out what happens with Jamie and Claire but now um I can't really remember what happened where. To quote Gilmore Girls "Oy with the poodles already!" And to add to the confusion, I've finished Drums of Autumn and have now jumped into The Fiery Cross I'm only on page 7 so I shouldn't mix that up with anything, I don't think!
Back to Voyager; this is the one where Claire goes back again! Ok I slightly remember. Ohhh dear. I'm not perfect with this especially when they all get muddled. At the end of Dragonfly in the Amber, Roger Wakefield tells Claire that Jamie did not die at Culloden and we discover that he awoke on the field with Black Jack Randall on top of him, dead. Jamie is carried to a farmhouse and they are discovered by English forces and told that they will be shot. However, it turns out that the guy who is in charge is Harold Grey an Earl, brother of Lord John Grey. Now he knows that he has a debt to "Red Jamie" and he lets him go. Jamie goes back to Lallybroch and deeds the house to his young nephew Jamie, so that the land won't be seized because he's a traitor or Ian's a traitor. He then goes to hide in a cave. He becomes known as Dunbonnet, a Scottish legend, because he wears a bonnet or a hat to cover his red hair; known as "Red Jamie" because of his redhead, he's going to have to hide himself someway. This legend is a way of tracking Jamie Fraser for Claire, Roger, and Brianna; Brianna quickly realizes that he would have wore said hat because of his red hair. Having red hair herself and knowing that it would have made him quite visible, makes her claim that Dunbonnet must be Jamie Fraser.
Eventually Jamie gets turned in so that his tenants will get the gold and therefore they will not starve. He arrives at Ardsmuir prison and is reacquainted with Lord John Grey, who believes that Jamie knows where the French gold is. They strike up an odd kind of friendship and Jamie tells Lord John that he does know where it is but says that after an escape that he threw it into the ocean. Later turns out to be the truth, or partially the truth. Lord John then has Jamie sent to a friend of his in England, when the prison closes up and the rest of the men are transported to the USA or the colonies in this case. Jamie's time at Lord Dunsay's is ok but the elder daughter Geneva becomes quite infatuated with him and she is betrothed to an elderly Earl, Lord Ellsmere. She blackmails Jamie into spending the night with her when she takes hold of one of the letters that he sends home to Jenny. Geneva then marries the Earl and nine months later gives birth to a baby boy named William, who is the son of Jamie Fraser. Geneva dies in childbirth and Jamie kills the Earl when he threatens to kill Jamie whne he realizes that the baby is not his. Jamie stays with his young son and with the family until it is wise for him to go because the boy is resembling him too much. He asks Lord Dunsay to give him the pardon that was offered to him six years before and then returns to Lallybroch.
Roger and Brianna track Jamie through Scotland, prisons, caves, and England and once Claire actually comes to terms with the fact that he did not die in battle like he wanted to, she starts to struggle with the feeling that she should go back and tell him that he has a daughter. Brianna and Roger support this and on Halloween night, Claire goes back. She finds the printer Alex Malcolm that she knows is Jamie and is reunited with him, Fergus, and the rest of the merry crew. Young Ian comes along and gets them all into a tangle along with Mr. Willoughby, Jamie's little chinese friend. A smuggling mission goes wrong and it brings Ian, Jamie, Fergus, and Claire back to Lallybroch where there are mixed feelings on Claire's return. Ian, the first Ian, seems to be ok with it but Jamie's sister Jenny, not so much. They accept the story that Claire returned to her people in France when she thought that Jamie had died but Claire soon realizes that a lot of things have changed since she's been gone. One thing, Jamie's married to Laoghaire and she's none too happy that Claire is back and calls her a lot of nasty names. Now to be honest, if I were Claire I would have drawn back and smacked her in the face. How dare she call Claire names when she knows that she nearly got her burnt however many years ago with Gellie Duncan. What a skank! Laoghaire clearly shows the quote "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" because she comes back and shoots Jamie. Claire leaves Lallybroch after finding out that Jamie had married the trollop and is called back after Jamie had been shot and is dying. Now he's dying from an infected gunshot wound and Claire has sneaked some penicillin in with her and stabs him in the arse and away with him! He deals with the tramp (how many words do I have for lady who gives freely of her pleasures...good question) by telling her that he'll pay her 1200 pounds until she gets remarried.
Because of this the French gold comes back into play, turns out it's buried on an island that you have to swim to and Jamie can't swim because of his injury. Ian goes to do it and gets kidnapped by a ship. I swear to god Ian is a tangly (Someone who is always in trouble) because if there's a scrape, then he's in the middle of it. Between smugglers and getting kidnapped by unknown ships, god help him. Now Jamie and Claire have to go looking for him because they're the ones who got him made off with. So they head to France and with the help of Jared, find out that the ship is headed to the West Indies. They board a ship and are not long on her when another ship comes, Claire gets taken to take care of the sick and Jamie follows her but she doesn't know this. Claire deals with the sick and the dying and is told that the next Governor of Jamaica is on the ship and he cannot get sick. She has a break down over the amount of men dying and meets this man who soothes her. It's none other than Lord John Grey and I will say that this is the best that they get along for a while because Claire finds out that Lord John has a thing for her husband and it's not in the bromance way. But that's besides that point, he never abused his power in prison though he could have and honestly, I like him and I'm looking forward to reading his books because I have them! Claire finds out by searching the young Captain's cabin that there's someone looking for Jamie and because he was a smuggler and if you get caught smuggling you get hanged, she jumps overboard to warn Jamie. Only problem is that Jamie is on this ship, The Porpoise, with her she just didn't know it. More tangles, she meets a Naturalist and a then a priest on this island and is rescued by Jamie who had been captured but gets out of it. As always.
They get to Jamaica, there's drama because Mr. Willoughby might have killed someone and they can't find Ian. They get their best idea that Mrs. Abernathy might be keeping young boys hostage and they discover that it's none other than Gellis Duncan who isn't dead. Turns out that she is delighted to find out that Claire has a child in the future because she needs Brianna for some satanic ritual that she wants to go through. She needs the last of Lord Lovat's line and so far, that's Brianna. She summons Brianna and then there is a huge struggle, Brianna talks through some missus that Jamie knew in Culloden and Claire treated in Edinburgh, Margaret something or other, she's mental it doesn't truly matter. Gellis/Gillian and Claire talk about time travelling and Gellis is surprised to know that if you concentrate on someone you can go to their time because she was working with stones and the blood of her husband. Gellis wants to travel to the 20th century to get Brianna because of her connection as being the last but Jamie and Claire interrupt this and she threatens to kill Ian, she tells them not to come any closer and when he does, she shoots him and then Claire takes her head off with an axe. They end up being shipwrecked and end up in Georgia, which is where this ends!
My Thoughts
Well let's be honest, if you got through the first two books and didn't want to continue and see what happened then this book wouldn't be for you. There's drama and at times I had to reread because I became confused, a lot happened in the end and I came out still unsure. I thought that Gellis was dead but I had to wikipedia it to be sure. Now mind you she'll probably turn up again, the snake. I don't believe anyone is dead. Although she is the body that Claire and Joe were examining so we can think that she probably is dead. I liked this book though. It goes the way of the rest of this series, if you don't like sex and violence this will not be the book for you. If you can deal with all of that and the sort of wacky turn of the plot, then it is the book for you. If you don't like time travelling and can't focus out of reality, not for you. I don't like that there seemed to be so much crammed into the end of this book but I understsand that the book couldn't go on forever. I have problems with ending things too and I like cliffhangers so I can see where Gabaldon was going with it. I like that Claire went back and I like that she took pictures of Brianna so that Jamie could see her. I hate that Jamie married Laoghaire but I loved seeing the word fetch in it. Not in the Mean Girls way but I grew up believing in fetches and if you saw them walking toward you that was fine or if you saw them face on it was fine but if you saw them walking away from you that it meant that the person was going to die. Jenny saw Claire facing her at the wedding so it would seem to me that she should have known that Claire was still alive. Now all of this makes me wonder who Frank saw at the start of the book, was it Jamie himself? He's never travelled as far as we know but it could be a ghost. The ghost of Jamie Fraser knowing when Claire would come to him. Creepy as it seems, that would be a bit cool as well. I'm sad the way that things turned out for Claire and Frank and I'm sad that he found out that he was sterile and that he could never have children. I wonder how things would have gone for them if Claire hadn't been out among the stones. Would there have been bitterness about the lack of children? Who knows. There's not an alternate reality, at least not yet! I give this book 7.5 virgin teenaged boy sacrifices out of 10. Bad boy Ian! Thankfully Fergus kept an eye on him. Oh I never mentioned the Fergus drama!
Fergus
There should be books just about Fergus and the Fergus was of life, I swear I love him more in each book. He takes Jamie's stepdaughter with him, from the trollop, when they went to france and later the Indies. They want to get married and Jamie eventually allows it despite the age difference and the fact that Fergus has no hand. All turns out well because of course it does. Fergus reappears in Drums of Autumn and we discover that he's going to be a Daddy, therefore there will be more Scots/French Fergus like children in the future! The world is better for it! And Jamie gives him Fraser as his last name because he didn't have one! I might have shed a tear!
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