Rating: 
Summary: A Lallybroch of Their Own
Review: This was a wonderful installment in the Outlander series. Ms. Gabaldon has certainly not let me down. Like the others, The Fiery Cross was filled with the passion, love, and quirks particular to each of the characters I've grown to love. Ms. Gabaldon's talent for engaging and humorous prose was at the forefront of the book. Regarding all the details of daily life rampant throughout the novel, I found them enthralling in that they ARE part of the characters. As Jamie and Claire grow older, as Brianna and Roger come into their own, they are going to settle down. While their lives are still full of adventure, they can't constantly be running full throttle toward disaster only to avert it at the last minute. I, myself, would like to see the characters happy, and Jamie and Claire need to have a Lallybroch of their own, with all of its pigs and manual labor and breast feeding, in order to be content and peaceful. I think Ms. Gabaldon has done an excellent job of letting her characters grow and letting her readers love them yet again. I eagerly await the next novel...and will be re-reading the entire series in the interim.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad Bad Bad
Review: This series started out so wonderfully. DG's earlier "Outlander" series books were the first "romance" books I'd read in about 20 years. What a great surprise they were. "The Fiery Cross," however, is just plain awful. This seems to be a case of an author who has become totally full of herself. This isn't even a story -- it's someone showing off about how much they think they know about life in the 18th century. Get this woman an editor. And can I get a refund?
Rating: 
Summary: Lost: one focus. If found, please return to author.
Review: I truly love the Outlander series, and have happily purchased hardbound copies of each novel as soon as they've been available, eschewing all significant discounts for the joy of adventuring with Claire and Jamie once again. When Fiery Cross came out, I jumped on it with typical fervor.I almost didn't make it out the other end, from which I finally limped, exhausted. Puzzled, too: Claire and Jamie were still charmingly libidinous; Roger and Brianna by turns contentious and intriguing. Why was I so bored? Thinking back over this story and my reaction, I think Gabaldon lacked a compelling reason for this novel. The sex wasn't new enough or forbidden enough. Bonnet wasn't pervasive or evil enough. The Revolutionary war wasn't imminent enough. I didn't care enough about Brianna's emotional baggage--did anyone else? I think this novel was a bridge, and little more. It was like a Christmas newsletter, received from good friends between long-spaced visits. I also believe that the next novel, set (as I devoutly hope it will be) in the midst of strife and upheaval (someone's? Anyone's!), will provide a refreshing antidote to the current story's soporific effects. I'll be waiting--and I'll even give the hardbound copy one more chance.
Rating:
Summary: North Carolinian's view of Outlander
Review: I loved this book! I am amazed at the detail of life in 18th century America. Roger came to life in this book but Brianna's character needs work. I lived and breathed this book until it was finished. I hope there will be a sequal.
Rating: 
Summary: All Filler, No Substance
Review: The long-winded long-awaited saga of Jamie and Claire Frazer continues in this 5th volume of the Outlander series. Whereas the first three books of this epic was chuck full of time-travel, adventure, romance, witchcraft and the gritty but fully fascinating details of 18th century life, this latest offering putters to a stall in the slower-moving wake of number 4, "The Drums of Autumn."
The reader re-enters the lives of the Frazers at the Gathering of the Clans on a North Carolina mountaintop in exactly the moment relayed in the last sentence of the 4th book . . . and sadly is stranded without respite from the gruesome and rather boring recounting of daily life--complete with overly ripe details of infant excrement, monthly bloodflows of both the newly nubile and the peremenopausal, as well as the use and postitioning of herbal poultices for pre-Pill birth control.
Yuck!
The intensely real vignettes that worked so well in the other installments very nearly put the reader to sleep as there does not seem to be any theme or plot to the overall novel. Instead of non-stop adventure, I sense nothing but middle-aged angst in the form of philosophical questions. Here's a typical one paraphrased from Jamie--who is ironically described often as the colonies' answer to the universal Scots laird, instilling all around him with that legendary sense of loyalty and safety attributed to any great leader while equipped with an elephantine anatomy that any woman would lust after---"after Claire stops her monthly bleeding, will she still want me in her bed?" This middle aged nonsense is not reserved for just the middle aged, the book's other primary couple, 20-something Breanna and Roger, ask themselves similar relationship-destroying queries. For what purpose? None, that I can see, except as filler. Simply put, Ms Gabaldon's technique of writing parallel stories and then stringing them together like pearls on a string works only when the pearls are of different sizes and quality. Every little episode related in this huge novel is likened to a small pearl with little value; the necklace produced is mediocre, a mere ornamentation that could have been something much more.
After waiting over two years for this sequel to be published, I must say plainly that I am disappointed. I wondered briefly if that within those two years my reading tastes had matured just a bit and that what I thought fresh, interesting and page-turning prior to this had soured with over-exposure. But, I don't think this is the case, I have come to the conclusion that a 5th book was needed to stretch out the timeline and that the "real" meat of the Jamie and Claire saga will be offered up properly in the last and final book.
Instead of buying and reading "The Fiery Cross", I suggest refreshing your mind by rereading the first three books and perhaps the fourth if time permits. Keeping account of all those characters and their positionings in the plot requires expert bookkeeping skills that sadly dull after waiting two long years!
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Disappointing!
Review: In my 47 years of reading, I have never encountered someone who could say so little so beautifully. I give one star for the beautiful writing, and one star for the approximately 1/5 of the book that was riveting. The scenes about the hanging, the snakebite/buffalo, the wild pig, and Jemmy's paternity were "couldn't put it down" quality. But who needs to wade through proclamations in Old American English vernacular? It was painful. What Ms. Gabaldon needs is an editor that isn't cowed by her fame and can say "enough already." As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to eat right and start exercising so I can live long enough to make it to the end of the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Loved it!!
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It held my interest just like all the previous ones. I know some people thought it dull and boring until the last 150 pages, but if you care about Bree and Roger as well as Jamie and Claire then you want to know what happens to them and will they be able to get back. I enjoyed this book very much. I can't wait for King,farewell.
Rating:
Summary: Just read the last 100 pages-while standing in a bookstore!
Review: Like everyone else I loved the first 3 books, but this was worthless. Readers can easily stay on top of the main plotline by taking my advise in the title - just skip to the last 100 pages and save yourself 800+ pages of the detailed descriptions of Jemmy's soggy diapers. With all her attention to historical detail and accuracy I was longing for one more detail of 18th century life - High infant mortality rates! Can't this kid fall into a well? I hope Gabaldon's publisher will take note of the criticisms in ... and edit future books more strictly.
Rating:
Summary: Wait for the paperback
Review: The book was slowing moving and predictable. I'm unsure why I held out until the end. Maybe I was expecting something to happen, it didn't. The characters I knew and loved became very unrealistic. Jamie takes on godhood. Claire, over 50, is fighting off men half her age. Brianna and Roger seem to have some sort of sexual hangup in one chapter that is suddenly forgotten in subsequent chapters. What a waste of my money and my time. I'm hoping Jean Auel's book is not such a disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Get this woman a new editor, PLEASE!
Review: This book was at least 500 pages too long. Too much trivial info - at least 25 pages wasted on changing Jemmy's diapers & breast feeding. Has the author forgotten the concept of "PLOT"??
This book has way too much padding. Please make the next one shorter & to the point. I'm sure glad I didn't pay money for this book! Borrow it from your public library if you must read it, is my advice!!
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