Title: Dragonfly in Amber (#2 Outlander series)

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Pages: 947

Hi all,

The second book takes a new turn how the author starts off with the book, but it compliments how she ends the book off, because I believe it will read well when you want to start with book three.

This book is broken down into the following sections:

• Part 1 – Through a looking Glass, Darkly 1968 (page 1)
• Part 2 – The Pretenders 1744 (page 87)
• Part 3 – Malchance (page 315)
• Part 4 – Scandal (page 393)
• Part 5 – “I am come Home” (page 527)
• Part 6 – The Flames of Rebellion (page 601)
• Part 7 – Hindsight 1968 (page 895)

In both parts 1 and 7 of the book Claire is in the year 1968, accompanied by her daughter. She has returned to Scotland since moving with her husband to America when she mysteriously returned in 1945/46 after her honeymoon with Frank ended with her disappearance. Her daughter, Brianna, is 21 years of age and they head for the lodging of Mr. Wakefield, the clerk who helped her and her now-deceased husband back in 1945 looking for ancestral records. Unfortunately Mr. Wakefield has since passed away, only to be succeeded by his adoptive son Roger Wakefield. He accepts the request to assist Claire to search for historical records. The records she wishes to find are about the death dates of the men from the clan Fraser, particularly from Lallybroch.

Roger tries to assist them, but is curious to find that Claire has quite a record of names of people from the era of the Jacobite 1745 war than many of the records the reverent himself collected. In particular her search is for a Jamie Fraser.

In the process Roger stumbles on newspaper clippings that write about the mysterious reappearance of a lady in 1945/46. Claire’s return. She had been in shock and hospitalized, and had been pregnant. Counting down he notes that Brianna is 21 and deduces Claire is in search of her lover from 1945 when she vanished.

Claire is confronted by Brianna after she noticed some of this information, which is when Claire decides to tell her story to Brianna and Roger. She tells her of the events in book one (briefly here in book 2) and then goes into more detail of the events from when they left for France until she returned to Scotland. This is where we pick up in Parts 2 – 6.

Jaime and Claire had fled Scotland because Jaime was a fugitive from the British crown, and they thus searched refuge in a monastery in France, where a cousin of his was a monk. There he recovered from his extensive wounds and they make their plans for the future. They could go to Italy or France since the Frasers are well represented in both of those kingdoms. Currently Prince Charles (Bonnie Prince) is housed in Italy and his attempts to reclaim his birthright do not seem that they will bear fruit. The two of them thus decide to make their way to France instead. Their plan is to do everything possible to avoid the war from realizing. Thus, being in France, they will attempt to ruin every chance of Prince Charles from getting the needed support and finance to raise a big enough rebellion to return to Scotland and start his war.

As a cover, they work for a cousin in France. Jared Fraser is a wine merchant at one of the harbours and imports wines from all over the known world to sell it to the local people at a profit. Jamie will take over the responsibilities of Jared for a moment since Jared wants to go to another winery/distillery and get it into proper order to start operations in near future. Thus, Jamie takes over the business (at a salary) and engages with the network (people that are of import) from France to gather much information that might in some way help to find out more of Prince Charles, as well as learn who he needs to keep in mind who could potentially be someone that could provide the prince with resources for his planned war. In the meantime Claire has volunteered some of her time p/day to a local hospital where she assists the staff with her know-how.

She doesn’t overdue herself of course since she is also pregnant, thus the help offered at the hospital is to those that have have wounds only and not infectious diseases.

One of the contacts they get to know is the Duke of Sundringham. He is from the higher regions of Great Britain (maybe close to the Lowlands of Scotland) and is believed to be a spy-organizer for the British crown. In book 1 they believed he had assigned Jack Randall with the responsibility to find out whether the local populace in Scotland were collecting funds for the Jacobite cause. In book 1 they were told that in their attempt to free Jaime Jonathan had been trampled to dead by a herd of cows. Thus, making the acquaintance with the Duke was not without some anxiety. It is also at one of these dinners that they meet his goddaughter, Mary Hawkins, who Jack had traced to be his the wife of Jonathan Randall. Thus, Mary became of particular interest to Claire.

Part 2 – 4 they attempt to block all attempts for Prince Charles to acquire the resources he needs for his war. He has also since moved to France in the hopes of persuading the cousin, King Louis, to assist him, but at the moment with no success.

Then, a two scandals happen, one with Mary Hawkins and one with Jaime. The latter being that they learn Jonathan Randall is very much alive and Jaime had challenged him to a duel. The duel resulted in the imprisonment of Jaime and the loss of their child. Miscarriage.

With some luck Jaime receives a pardon, with the condition that he must leave France. Another stroke of luck is that the Duke of Sundringham had managed to get Jaime a pardon from the British crown as well for his prior accused crimes. Thus, they make their way back to Lallybroch. ]

Part 5 – 6 they start to get comfortable back home when they receive news one day that Charles is making his way to Scotland with needed resources to start his rebellion. In that announcement (which was made public) he calls for his clan chieftains to assist him in his endeavour. Included on that list is a Jamie Fraser. Thus, all their attempts to stop the prince from mustering the needed support have faltered. Now, the only way they consider themselves able to succeed in avoiding the massacre of his people would be in winning the war instead. Therefore, Jaime accompanies the prince in his small wars to different parts of Scotland and they manage to win those areas back. They have managed to retrieve the Scotland regions under the Scottish kings name. However, Charles is not satisfied with this victory yet. He deems it his right, his birthright, to rule over all of Scotland and England. Therefore, he plans to continue his war efforts further south, maybe even as far south as London.

Jaime is requested by the king to muster the support of some additional clans, the Mackenzies and the Frasers since those wars will require many more men. Since the two of them believe the war effort won’t end successfully they agree to go and call for those two clans’ support. However, in secret, the men from Lallybroch are to disappear from the regimen. Jaime manages to convince the Fraser clan (his grandfather to his father Brian) to offer some men for the fight. On the Mackenzie side Colum dies, and the the rule goes over to his brother Dougal who, without hesitation, joins the war.

The war is in progress and the two of them see that the hoped-for victory of Prince Charles may not happen. Thus, Jaime decides that he will continue fighting since the prince had called upon him and he couldn’t back out without being branded a traitor. Claire would return to her own time through the stones since she is with child once again, and her chances of raising the child were much greater than the unknown that would soon follow the defeat of war.

Part 7 we finally come back to 1968 where Brianna (female version of grandfather Brian, in case you didn’t pick this up yet 🙂 ) hears the story as it is and takes time to digest all this. Another piece of information that Claire reveals is about the heritage of Roger Wakefield, who was adopted, but came from the line of Mackenzie. She tries to help him find his mother, which leads them back to the ancient druid stones and finally helps to convince both Roger and Brianna that the story Claire has told could in fact be true.

Summary:

The bridge between book 1 and 2 is well done and the reader picks up easily from where they left in the first novel. The book is quite a page turner since so many different things happen in France and Scotland. Not only the in-between plots by some secret people against them, but also the curiosity of whether their efforts will change the course of history, and if so, what will happen to Claire? The ending is quite appropriate since Claire told her story to Brianna in Part 1, but only in Part 7 she truly accepts that this story may hold validity. I’m curious to find where book 3 will take us since we have now gone through the Jacobite war of 1745. Where will the tale go from here?

The book is very long and you cannot but want to continue reading since you just have to know what happens next. Therefore the book will receive a review of 4.55/5.

Have a good one!