Diana Gabaldon- Outlander Series - the whole series!

Fiery Cross was a tough read. But there is soooo much important information. The next book has a lot, too. It was actually the hardest for me to re-read because I already knew what was going to happen. Mercy.

Fiery Cross

I can tell there's a ton of important info in this book. I have read a lot of passages that I can tell will be significant later, and I'm sure there's a bunch more I haven't picked up on. If I remember 10% of it, I'll be surprised. As for the rest, that's the joy of this message board! Ha!

I didn't read very far last night but far enough to want to high-five Bree! That was even better than giving Roger a shot. I do have a horrible feeling that Bonnet isn't gone yet. That would be neat and tidy, and best I can tell so far, Gabaldon doesn't write 'neat and tidy'. And this is also like KMM's Fever series - there needs to be irrefutable proof of death before you can assume a character is gone.

Germaine is going to be a juvenile delinquent! Throwing horse manure at carriages and telling his mom to shoot Bonnet! Definitely takes after Fergus, and I absolutely love the kid!

Fergus is one of my favorites. What a study in the life of a man who has lost an arm. Even with the power and protection of Jamie, life is very tough for Fergus. Marsali, who I didn't like at first, has become a true heroine to me. Her love for Fergus and their kids is just inspiring. And she works so damn hard and never complains.

And she and the kids is the only good thing that came from Leghair....LOL
FC is a long read but I think important. It gets much more soap operalike in the next one, but it is heartwrenching as well and you;l be back to not being able to put the book down for long.

In SP Jamie hears the voices and sees things in the bog with lots of fog as well when he is trying to return the cup. (wow rhyming not intended :P )

Oh, that's right. The bog was spooky!

I'm more suspicious of Marsali being a changeling than anyone else. Theres none of her mother in her personality.

Ahem....I think Marsali is a lot like her mother. They never, ever let go. Can be a good thing, can be a bad thing.

I always wondered my exactly Murtaugh knew in that he pledged himself to Jamie when he obviously love his mother as well. I always suspected Geneva may have something special like maybe fae in that Willie seems to have some strange things about him. I always suspected little Ian may have some skills either in the way Jamie is the red man or maybe toward fae side as well. Collum also had some unCanny skills. Do you think the seer in his castle was something fae? Keep your mind on the stones that are around and which they still have or not. We never could keep good track of that and think it may be important. Maybe there is more to the "red man" like Raymound called Jamie when Claire almost died after losing the baby in France. I think they must be meant for each other or balance themselves out or something. I also wondered about the saying of auld ones as "little people" and then think of all the dwarves we meet in this series and if it means magic or fae or something.

Marsali at least will change her mind and admit when she is wrong instead of acting like a stuck up bitch forever. That charade only lasted so long on the boat in Voyager. Leghair once her mind is set she is unmovable...just like we all know Jamie must have tried to make her a little more amiable towards him because he is loyal and when he married her he knew he was stuck so I;m sure he tried to make the best of it and if you can't like Jamie then there is something seriously wrong with you. Whether he didn't love her as much as Claire, he would have treated her with respect and protected and provided for her. In those days that was more than most and she of all people should know that after the bad men she was with before him.

I guess I stand corrected - Marsali is headstrong like Leghair. But she lacks that selfish streak that colored all of her mother's actions.

It would be hard to believe that Jamie wasn't a good husband to Leghair, and when it didn't work out he gave her distance and continued to support her.

True, Dopple.

Finished! Woooooooooooooo! Feels like quite an accomplishement. LOL

I was a bit disappointed by the nonending. I thought we'd get some big resolution or something.

Fiery Cross

We did find out near the ending that Jemmie is Roger's biological son. Maybe this is supposed to be the big deal ending, but I've never understood why this was such an issue. Roger loves Jemmie and has pledged to care for him. He's married to Bree and he's the only father Jemmie has ever known. Why the hell wouldn't that be enough?
It is funny that they figured it out because Jemmie inherited the inability to fold his tongue. Poor Bree! LOL

And the matching birth marks on their heads.

They have matching birthmarks? I think I suffered from information overload! If I caught 20% (retaining ~10%), I'll be pleased.

So should I read Breath of Snow and Ashes or LJ and the Private Matter for my next Gabaldon fix? Decisions, decisions...

Don't you remember the lice and when they shaved Jemmy Rogers asked his head be shaved (oh that luscious head of hair going away )

ick.....they had a lot of lice problems. ick ick

and supposedly it's back on the rise along with bedbugs since the stopped using those harmful pesticides.

Having spent years working in schools I can honestly tell you lice are still around.

You know, guys, I am in the chemical business. Honestly, there has never been a safer and more effective chemical than DDT. Ahhhh......except for birds. It is still used practically every where on the planet but here. All the way through Vietnam the military used it to fight lice, bedbugs, fleas, ticks, mosquitos....actually sprayed it or sprinkled right on cots. The diseases spread by insects aren't much better than an outlawed pesticide. Our chemicals now are much safer for the environment, much more species specific and much more expensive. Still, I don't want to go back. We still have chemicals that are bad for birds.....the pesticide in your dogs flea collars is one of the main chemicals used in field spraying and has virtually no mammalian toxicity...very broad spectrum.....and is really toxic to birds.....strange, huh? Pyrethrins/pyrethroids.

Interesting. And here I go overboard using cock a doodle doo and all organic gardening because on Long Island there are all these chemicals in the ground water and breast cancer is the highest rate in the world. As long as the s[raying of DDT before I was born kept black widows and brown recluse and lice and bedbugs away during most of my lifetime I am grateful. Yuck. I hate spiders.

2shay I am reading the book of the month now.

Yup as a former Long Islander I concur with UA highest breast cancer; I think mostly because of all those abandoned Super Fund sites!!! nasty
Lice creeps me out but I think bed bugs might be worse because you're feel so vulnerable when you sleep.

Dopple I'll try and read ABOSAA when you start!! We might need eachothers shoulders to cry on apparently!!

sabby wrote:

Dopple I'll try and read ABOSAA when you start!! We might need eachothers shoulders to cry on apparently!!

Sounds like a plan to me!

Ewww ewww ewwwwwww! Every single year my kids have been in school, I've gotten at least one letter from the school saying that lice was found on a student and we need to check hair and wash jackets. Yuck. I don't even want to think about bed bugs. I prefer to live in blissful ignorance of their existence.
We do have brown recluses in Kansas, have killed lots of them in the house. I'm not a squeemish girl, but those things scare the hell out of me. That's why none of our beds have bedskirts - I can't get past the image of them crawling up the fabric onto the bed. *shudder* I know they could just climb up the bedposts but that doesn't matter. WE WILL NOT HAVE BEDSKIRTS. And hell yes we spray pesticides around the house to kill the little fuckers.

I have zero recollection of the head shaving/lice incident in Fiery Cross. None. I must have been in a reading stupor that chapter! I might do a word search and see if I can find it. That bugs me now. (lame pun totally intended)
You know, there were a lot of insects in FC. Moths, fireflies, sand fleas, dragonflies, mosquitos, grasshoppers, cicadas, maggots.
Perhaps a secondary reason for lighting the cross was to repel the insects!

LOl...supposedly mosquito can't see Led lights..just a stupid FYI. Ugh if there were brown recluses in my house I''d spray, too. That's like Arizona with black widows. Ugh...got the willies now! (lol now thinking of poor Willie)

You guys, don't be so freaked by spiders. Spiders eat other insects, including other spiders. The black widow female is well known for eating the male after mating. That's not all. She eats all kinds of other spiders and insects. One of the black widow's favorite meals is wood lice. If you know you have wood lice....old buildings and wood piles that have been stacked for a long time...., be careful of the black widow. There are a couple of species of spiders that are great in cotton fields if you have enough. It takes a lot of spiders to avoid spraying for bollworms or budworms. When the various predator species in the fields, including spiders, can no longer keep up with the damaging worm populations, alas, we are forced to spray. We have a zillion little funerals for the predator bugs, though. And.....good news and bad.....few commercial insecticides are truly effective against spiders. Diazinon would kill them but it was taken off the market several years ago. HELLO! Many more spider bites in the last few years. A few kids have actually died. Oh, well. They took that dangerous chemical off the market. grin...kidding....There really was way too much Dianinon being used. Because it worked.

All I know is that when I have to open my pool, I bomb my shed because it is full of spiders and creepies and I am too scared to go in there otherwise. And I hate killing things and using pesticides so not to upset the balance of things, but I am petrified of spiders from being bitten by a huge orb weaver on my forehead in HS when I walked through a web that went well across my friends driveway. I had a fever and it hurt and such and have been fearful ever since. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

It does remind me of the funny scene in one of the Lord John books while LJ is in the West Indies and a spider is on him and they freaked. After they got rid of it they said it was very deadly. There was also a snake, too, but he befriended that little fella.

I am afraid of them too. Fine little helpers in a crop. Terrible in my yard or house. Even fairly common spiders are dangerous for small dogs and puppies.

Did anyone see this mornings daily line? It was a sweet one!