Dragonfly in Amber (Diana Gabaldon)

Genre: Historical fiction (with a touch of fantasy)
Year Published: 1992

The first paragraph of the prologue of Dragonfly in Amber reads thus:

I woke three times in the dark predawn. First in sorrow, then in joy, and at the last, in solitude. The tears of a bone-deep loss woke me slowly, bathing my face like the comforting touch of a damp cloth in soothing hands. I turned my face to the wet pillow and sailed a salty river into the caverns of grief remembered, into the subterranean depths of sleep.

And if you think that prose is purple, you should read one of the multitude of sex scenes.

Then why read Dragonfly in Amber? Well, I have to give Gabaldon this: for all she natters on about destiny and love and honor, she also concocts some fascinating plots. As for myself, having read Outlander, I couldn't content myself with leaving the story where it ended; I didn't rush to get my hands on the next book, but the next time I made a run to the library, I picked up this one (as well as the next one . . . which I doubt I'll finish before its due date). Then, once I began it, I took it with me on the train to work and to lunch every day until I finished. As I mentioned in my Outlander post, Gabaldon is a compelling author above all else.

And whereas Outlander starts off rather slowly and only picks up momentum a couple hundred pages in, Dragonfly hits the ground running; I felt rather like I was being yanked along by the wrist on a cross-country race. The story is framed -- we begin and end with Claire as a woman of fiftyish in late Sixties Scotland, while the huge bulk of the middle is Claire at about thirty in the 1740s -- and this gives the reader an acute sense of just how far the story in the past will progress before dumping us back in the twentieth century. At 743 pages, though, the finish line seems like a long ways away . . . until you realize, all of a sudden, that you've reached it, and it's not a happy transition.

This is not to say that what lies at the end is unexpected. Both because of the inherent nature of the genre and because of the framing device, some of the subplots' resolutions are abundantly clear to the reader long, long before the pieces fall into place for our heroine. At first, I thought that Gabaldon was undercutting her own book by essentially telling us how things would turn out, but when I reached the end, I revised my opinion; knowing that Claire goes back to her own time lends the book a poignancy that outweighs the importance of the reader's foreknowledge.

And yes, the prose is occasionally purple. But it's in-keeping with the genre and plot, so don't be surprised if you become rather attached to her ornate turns of phrase.

Recommended? It's a long, long book. If you feel that your time is better spent reading real literature, I wouldn't hold it against you. But you'll have more fun reading this.