First of all, don’t read this review if you haven’t read the previous six books. It won’t make any sense and it’ll spoil quite a bit. The Outlander series is fantastic, but it is not a series you can pick up in the middle. Go find the first six books (and you totally should), and come back when you’re done. I’ll wait.
“True, the body’s easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled – yet there’s that in a man that is never destroyed.”
An Echo in the Bone picks up Claire and Jamie’s story during the American Revolution. They’ve just send Brianna, Roger and the kids back to future (!!) to have Mandy’s heart defect fixed. Jamie’s plan now is to go home to Scotland, pick up his printing press, return to America and continue to fight for rebels using his pen, rather than his sword.
Of course, nothing goes right. Jamie’s nephew Ian kills Arch Bug’s wife accidentally and gets hunted down. Claire and Jamie get delayed going to Scotland when their ship is boarded. They end up Ticonderoga for a while. John Grey and his stepson Willie are featured prominently, too, as Willie has joined to British service in America and John tries his best to protect him. In the future, Bree and Roger are trying to adjust to the change in culture, while both trying to find their places in the world and with each other again.
Like all the Outlander books, n Echo in the Bone is rife with complications, coincidences and misunderstandings. It’s also full of some of the best written characters I’ve ever known, and I loved every moment of it. A special shout out to Rachel Hunter, my favorite Quaker bad ass. I’ve actually read this one once before, back in 2011 when it first came out. I wanted to revisit it before starting Written in My Own Heart’s Blood. I chose it on audiobook this time (gotta love free trials through Audible–choose a Gabaldon novel and you get 45 hours of free listening!) and absolutely loved how it was told. Almost as good as watching the show (which I’m also loving).
I’m an unapologetic Gabaldon fan, and she has yet to make me regret it. I will make a small note about one thing — when you listen to these books spoken aloud (or really any books, I think), you begin to realize how often writers repeat certain phrases, and once you do notice, you can’t stop noticing. But despite the fact that you make a drinking game out of Gabaldon’s references to people shooting up their eyebrows, I love her anyway.
Or the term ‘ alacrity’ – very annoying