The Fiery Cross (Book 5)

I know the first bit with the longest day ever might not be

but after that it seems like a lot of intriguing stuff happens.

Opinions vary on this one. I like the book a lot and actually liked it better than Drums of Autumn. In Drums I love the part where Jamie and Claire go and start living on the Ridge and then when Brianna arrives. I really don't like the whole Brianna/Roger/Bonnet drama though.

In Fiery Cross a lot of people hate the first part and I seem to be one of the few, who loves it. It's about a million pages of one single day  (I don't know the exact number, but it is indeed very long).

There're very dramatic things also happening in the Fiery Cross later on. One part is so traumatic, that I haven't completely read it so far, it was just too horrific! I know what happens and I skipped through it, reading part of it, but I didn't feel able to read it all, so feel warned.

My ranking of the books is:

1. Voyager
2. Outlander
3. Written in my own heart's blood
4. Fiery Cross
5. Drums of Autumn
6. A Breat of Snow and Ashes
7. Dragonfly in Amber
8. An echo in the bone

Of all the books in the series, "The Fiery Cross" and "Echo in the Bone" were the most difficult to get through. In fact, The Fiery Cross was a horrible slog to get beyond just the Gathering that took like 500 pages to get through a couple of days in the story. If you ever wanted to know the minutia of 18th traveling away from home, with small children in diapers, breastfeeding mothers and other feminine maladies...this first hunk will satisfy you immensely. Or make you want to poke your eardrums with knitting needles... YMMV

That said, the book does introduce Adso, the cat that Jamie gives Claire when they get back to the Ridge, Major McDonald, Adso's obsession with Major McDonald's wig, and the War of Regulation - of which I knew nothing, and am now glad I do.

I don't hate this book, but it's not among my favorites, either.

I liked the whole book and there is quite a bit of humor in the "longest day ever" section.

There are battles, a couple of will he/she make it parts and lots of the ridge.

Just recently finished it. I thought it was slow going at first, but seemed to pick up after a while. Quite a few places where I laughed. Mainly at parts with Germaine or Jemmy in it. Especially toward the end of the book. Won't spoil it, but picturing Jemmy doing the one thing when Jaime & Roger were building a pigpen, & a little while after that when Claire was trying to explain genetics & Jemmy joined in asking what the one word meant. Thought both parts were hilarious.
Don't know how many others who've read the book have teared up, but I was misty eyed at the pigpen part & just after. You'll know what I mean when you get to it. Even being a guy, I just couldn't help tearing up a little.

When people said it started with the longest day ever, they sure weren't kidding. Some of these scenes are so inconsistent that they don't even make sense. And DG repeats herself with explanations. It's as if she wrote this book in chapters, as I'm sure many writers do, but forgot about what she wrote in the previous one. Or maybe hadn't even written the previous one yet, because I also get the sense she wrote it all out of order.

The Fiery Cross is one of my favorites, but I have to admit that I've learned to love it, and really, I only love the second half. The first half is a bit of a slog, and I despise the section with the abused wife and her stricken/bed-ridden husband.

But this isn't a book that can be skipped. There's really a lot that happens in this book that resonates in later books.

I noticed that a lot of you rank Echo last on your list. I do, too. It's too fractured of a book for me, too many storylines. And too far away from the Ridge. I may be different from other readers, but I like the domestic stuff, and I like it when the Frasers are on the Ridge. Jamie self-describes himself always as a farmer. He knows he's many things, but "farmer" and "laird" is how he always thinks of himself. When they're away from the Ridge and gallivanting all over the place, I feel like it takes him away from who he is at the core.

Plus...I really don't like William. I keep hoping I'll warm to him, but I really don't like him, and there was too much of him in Echo.