Product Description

In the wake of a devastating fire in the mountains of North Carolina, Highlander Jamie Fraser and his English wife find themselves homeless and without family, in the midst of the gathering storm of revolution. And thanks to his time-travelling wife's information, he knows what the coming spring of 1778 will bring. But then Jamie's illegitimate son, William, arrives in North Carolina, a young officer in King George's army. Jamie has sworn two things to himself: his son will never know his true paternity - and he himself will never face his son across the barrel of a gun. Between the mountains of North Carolina and those of the Scottish highlands lie blockades and battlefields, storm and shipwreck, privateers and politics. The one thing that sustains the Frasers in their struggle is the hope that their family has reached safety in the future. They have. The Frasers' daughter and her family have returned safely through the standing stones that guard the passage through time, and to Scotland. But something mysterious looms over their new home. Something whose secret may draw them back to what they fled from...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127 in Books
• Published on: 2010-01-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 848 pages

About the Author
Diana Gabaldon is the internationally bestselling author of many historical novels. She lives with her family in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Customer Reviews

Outstanding (may include spoilers if you have not read the rest of the series)
This latest instalment in the Cross Stitch (US-Outlander) series is as good as Gabaldon gets.

Fast paced, it switches a lot between viewpoints of different characters and sometimes you have read a couple of paragraphs before realising that the action has moved to a different location and who is talking. I really liked that aspect of it. The whole book was incredibly entertaining and will re-unite you with just about everyone you love in the series.

For the first time we have extensive sections about Jamie's son William and especially towards the end of the book he becomes more fully integrated into the storyline. Lord John, too, is back and whilst everyone will understand his storyline, those that have read the Lord John books will have the perk of picking up on some cross referencing to events in those. Some events involving those two will leave you gob smacked, promise. One section is appropriately named 'A series of short, sharp shocks'.

After finishing the previous book in the series, I had been concerned that maybe this book would mainly consist of us getting told events through the letters found in the wooden box. I am glad to say that whilst yes, they do appear, they are only a small part of it and we mainly see 'live action'. Talking of letters, the only part I found a little boring were a couple of letters written by William to his step-father, mainly because details of military campaigns are not a favourite topic of mine.

We do get to hear a lot more from Brianna, Roger and the kids, something I think most readers were very much hoping for. If you have read the excerpts that have been available pre-publishing, you'll be surprised at what turns out to be the danger lurking in the tower at Lallybroch, the explanation for which in turn, leads to a whole series of events that towards the end leaves you with a rotten, and I must say in my case, not anticipated cliffhanger. But there is balance as several events come to pass that we have anticipated for quite some time.

I am extremely grateful to Diana Gabaldon that whilst Jamie and Claire are still 'at it', the sex scenes are still neither repetitive, nor overdone, nor do you get the impression they are put in as page fillers or to add some dubious shock value to the book. If only one or two other authors would take note.

On the negative side, Williams letters apart, there wasn't a great deal. I was on such a constant high that I had no trouble dealing with the inevitable battles in-between (which as mentioned, aren't my thing). The worst thing is, I now have to wait however long, for the next book.

A solid addition to the series - Warning! a few spoilers!
I bought this from the American Amazon site, partly because of the cover design (I wanted all my copies to have the same cover theme) but mostly because I couldn't wait until January.

While I was waiting for the book to arrive I made the mistake of reading others' reviews of the book, again on amazon.com, and a large number of those reviewers were disappointed with the book for varying reasons, some of which I will comment on below. As such I started reading feeling very apprehensive about whether I would enjoy the book. Luckily my fears were unfounded and I found it just as good as, if not better than, the rest of the series.

Many have said there are way too many 'voices' in the book, which detracts from the Claire/Jamie story. To those people I would say - did you actually read any of the other books? The only book which had the one voice in it was Outlander (Cross Stitch), and ever since then Diana has been using multiple viewpoints, and IMO, to great effect.

One of the wonderful things about Diana's stories is the level of detail she goes into - I love detail - and given the multi-faceted nature of the American Revolution it makes sense to tell a story about it in a multi-faceted way. If Diana had just concentrated on Claire & Jamie, I think the story would be boring. I love Lord John, I think he's great; as such I really don't have any problem with the amount of the book he occupies, nor William, nor Brianna, Roger et al, nor Ian.

The whole story - meaning all the way from Outlander to An Echo - is about the married life and experiences of Jamie and Claire - they have a daughter, they were separated for 20 years, Jamie has a son, they adopt Ian as almost a foster-son - these are all people who influence these two people's lives - why should they not join in the story and have their parts in it?

Many romances (books AND films) are dulled by the fact they spend so much time and energy on all the intrigues that go on in getting the hero and heroine to the altar at the end (which isn't to say I don't like romance) - I'd much rather start with the wedding and go on from there. So what I love about this series is that it paints a portrait of the whole course of a marriage, all the joys and all the suffering too; we aren't just left to imagine that after they got married they lived in that mythical state of 'happily ever after' - after all they didn't exactly get married in conventional circumstances. For me it is fascinating, and means you see a whole lot more into the minds and hearts of the main characters, which is why I didn't find Claire's actions with regard Lord John at the end overly surprising, and vice versa.

Another criticism of An Echo was the level of historical detail described by the author - if you don't like history, why are you reading a historical novel? The history helps to explain a great deal about the motivations and opinions of the characters - becoming almost a character in itself. We ourselves can obviously never live through time periods like these, but being able to participate in the American Revolution through the eyes of Jamie, Claire and friends paint a much more interesting and personal (if entirely fabricated) point of view than reading about it in sterile history textbooks.

Warning - spoilers! I only gave it four stars because at the end when Claire thinks Jamie is dead, but we know otherwise, I didn't feel that Diana adequately developed the overpowering sense of grief and tragedy that Claire MUST have felt. Knowing her as we do from earlier in the series when we've seen a lot more emotional outplay on lesser events, if Claire really had lost Jamie (which from her point of view she had), she truly would have felt that her life was over, and I felt Diana glossed over this a little too quickly, looking at it more from the reader's perspective than Claire's.

I don't want to wish the next 4 years or so of my life away as we wait for the next book, but I will be looking forward immensely to its arrival on my bookshelf; the way there laid by a very solid addition to the series in An Echo in the Bone.

A disappointing sequel
In anticipation of An Echo In The Bone, I re-read the previous 6 books in the Jamie & Claire-series. Long awaited, I thought this 7th book in the series a big disappointmend: long-winded, slow, and in the end too many open questions.
For about the first 2 thirds of the book, nothing really much happens. We learn about Brianna and Roger and a little bit about Jamie and Claire. Mostly, however, new characters are introduced - what ever for? Plus, Ms. Gabaldon switches from past to "present" and back and forward and from one setting to another which is very tiring and frustrating to the reader because the story can't really develop.
Towards the end of the book it gets really bizarre. I do not want to spoil your fun if you haven't yet read this book but no way.....!
Well, regarding the ending of An Echo In The Bone, I am quite sure that there will be book #8 along some time in the future. I just hope that Ms. Gabaldon will revert to her old style of writing which is funny, witty, and exciting and will refrain from throwing in all sorts of historical figures and mishaps.