Voyager - Diana Gabaldon

Voyager
Diana Gabaldon
Seal Books
Copyright: 1994
978-0440217565

The amazon.com product description:

Their passionate encounter happened long ago by whatever measurement Claire Randall took. Two decades before, she had traveled back in time and into the arms of a gallant eighteenth-century Scot named Jamie Fraser. Then she returned to her own century to bear his child, believing him dead in the tragic battle of Culloden. Yet his memory has never lessened its hold on her... and her body still cries out for him in her dreams.

Then Claire discovers that Jamie survived. Torn between returning to him and staying with their daughter in her own era, Claire must choose her destiny. And as time and space come full circle, she must find the courage to face the passion and pain awaiting her...the deadly intrigues raging in a divided Scotland... and the daring voyage into the dark unknown that can reunite—or forever doom—her timeless love.

Voyager is the third book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, following on Dragonfly In Amber. For those of us who are picking up the story ahead of the third season of the Outlander TV series, don't be surprised to discover that you are already familiar with parts of the first third or so of the book. They briefly covered that part of the story in the concluding episode of season two. Personally, I hope they come back and give this section of the story a deeper treatment in the new season as it's one of my favorite parts of the book.

Detailed and at times a bit gruesome, Voyager grabs you by all your senses and sweeps you along in unexpected directions. This was a bit of a transition book, closing off the Culloden storyline which filled the previous two books and carrying the characters into new adventures, as well as introducing us to new characters along with the return of some unexpected characters from the previous books. There are also some new hints as to how time travel and the stones work.

I read Voyager over the course of the last several months - somewhat sporadically I must admit, but even so, the book was easy to pick up again each time and it consistently pulled me back into the lives of Jamie and Claire.

It will be interesting to see how the third season of Outlander compares to the book. For the previous two seasons, it had been years since I read the books. This time it'll only have been a few months.

Currently, I'm looking forward to really getting into Drums of Autumn, the fourth book in the series, although with the reading speed I've been going with on the last book, I can be expected to have it finished sometime in 2017!