Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding (may include spoilers if you have not read the rest of the series), 27 Sep 2009
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.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Where oh where was the editor?, 4 Oct 2009
Echo picks up where A Breath of Snow and Ashes left off as Claire and Jamie Fraser and Jamie's nephew Ian leave life at Fraser's Ridge behind them, head for Scotland to pick up Jamie's printing press and return to America. Of course this _is_ Jamie and Claire we're talking about so there is no smooth sailing and the *road* to Scotland is mired with many side-trips and detours as well. Roger and Bree have returned to the present and settled into life at Lallybroch, although they're also in for a few twists and turns and bumps in the night as well. William is now an adult and an officer in the British army and we see quite a bit more of him - will he and Jamie ever meet face to face? Who is the mysterious man searching for Fergus and what secrets might he reveal about his birth parents?
You'll find new friends among the old from the previous books (and a couple of very surprising returns), although IMHO there are waaaaay too many new friends as well as waaaay too much of Lord John and characters from his books. I'm not that fond of Lord John as a major character and that's why I didn't read the books to begin with and consider it dirty pool to muck up Jamie and Claire's story with Lord John's, particularly that little plot twist at the end. Eww ewww ewww ewww ewww. Diana, how could you?
In the end, I'm wondering if I've changed as a reader, or has Gabaldon changed and/or got a bit sloppy? I've heard many complain about her going on in too much detail in the other books but I was so enraptured with them I wouldn't have wanted to have seen one word edited out. Not so here, the story just rambles on and on with needless plot twists and characters that go nowhere (for shame what she did with Benjamin Franklin), and as for the overly verbose details - I did not need to know every minute detail of every medical procedure performed by Claire and most especially not the removal of Jamie's finger.
Worst of all, was the constantly switching point of views (I believe there are seven) leading to a very uneven, choppy flow and I was always able to put this down and walk away from it - frankly half way through I started another book and finished that before coming back to Echo. Cut a good chunk of the first 2/3 of the book out and flesh out the last and keep it moving a bit more instead of ending it as she did with those maddening cliff-hangers this would be a solid five star read. As it is and I can't believe I'm saying it but - three stars.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A solid addition to the series - Warning! a few spoilers!, 11 Oct 2009
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.
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