Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (Outlander #9) by Diana Gabaldon

Amy  

historical fiction, fantasy

Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, the ninth novel in the Outlander series, is the novel that never needed to be written. It picks up after the eighth novel left off so I won’t bother with the description—you should only read this novel if you’ve read the others and, if you have, then you know what to expect from this one.

I have to start this review with a disclaimer. As with all except the eighth novel in the series (Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, which was a perfect novel!) I have complaints. It’s not new for me to have issues with Diana Gabaldon’s books. Yet, despite the fact that her novels are not flawless, I still love the people within the pages. Being able to spend more time living in Jamie and Claire’s world thrills me and I will always read anything Gabaldon writes about this cast of characters.

Okay, now for some of my many complaints. This novel spent a LOT of time reminiscing about memorable and significant scenes from the prior novels in the series. In many instances, this was a great thing to refresh the reader’s memory since it’s been 7 years since the prior novel in the series was released. However, there were also many instances where these memories were not necessary to understand the situations in this novel.  As a lover of all things written by Gabaldon about these characters, I enjoyed the opportunity to reminisce. However, in a really long novel, I felt that there were way too many of these. I'm reading a new novel and I want new content! 

Another complaint is that this storyline felt forced at times. As I mentioned earlier, the overall Outlander story arc really ended comfortably with the last novel. I know that Gabaldon's method involves writing lots of shorter stories and then finding ways to weave them all together into a novel. But this method felt so evident in this novel. I could see where she had to kill off a character in order to fit in one of the new stories, for example. I was able to predict a sense of what would happen later based on things happening earlier. I don't recall that feeling in any of her prior novels. Go Tell the Bees did not have a natural flow to it. Rather, it felt very manufactured.

And then she ended the novel with a mild cliffhanger. Firstly, I never like novels that end in cliffhangers because it makes me feel manipulated, as a reader, to be pulled into reading another book. But I was especially disheartened in this case because Gabaldon does not publish a new book every year like most authors who end their novels with cliffhangers. (And I always feel a year is too long a period from which to remember what happened in the prior novel!) I can only hope that the tenth novel will not take another 7 years to be published since it ended this way.

Even with those criticisms, I still cherished the additional time I got to spend with these characters. I adore them so. And I also have to say that I love the gift that Brianna brought Jamie from the future! Although, I wish Gabaldon had written more about his reaction to it. I also loved the Sachem as a new character. He brought something interesting to the story.

I listened to the audiobook until the library audiobook loan time ran out (and I finished reading on Kindle). It was narrated, as are all the other Outlander novels, by Davina Porter. I thought this was the best narration I’ve heard from her. She really owns these characters now. She has a great voice repertoire and accents, did a great job with the voice acting, and seems to have gotten rid of her past saliva problem! I give her an A.