Fantasy
![Diana Gabaldon - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_diana_gabaldon.jpg)
Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone: A Novel (Outlander)
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Diana Gabaldon returns with the "vast and sweeping" (The Washington Post) new novel in the epic Outlander series.
War leaves nobody alone. Neither the past, the present, nor the future offers true safety, and the only refuge is what you can protect: your family, your friends, your home.
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years of loss and heartbreak to find each other again. Now it's 1779, and Claire and Jamie are finally reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children, and are rebuilding their home on Fraser's Ridge-a fortress that may shelter them against the winds of war as well as weather.
But tensions in the Colonies are great: Battles rage from New York to Georgia and, even in the mountains of the backcountry, feelings run hot enough to boil Hell's teakettle. Jamie knows that loyalties among his tenants are split and it won't be long before the war is on his doorstep.
Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s-among them disease, starvation, and an impending war-was indeed the safer choice for their family.
Not so far away, young William Ransom is coming to terms with the mysteries of his identity, his future, and the family he's never known. His erstwhile father, Lord John Grey, has reconciliations to make and dangers to meet on his son's behalf and on his own, and far to the north, Young Ian Murray fights his own battle between past and future, and the two women he's loved.
Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser's Ridge. Jamie sharpens his sword, while Claire whets her surgeon's blade: It is a time for steel.
War leaves nobody alone. Neither the past, the present, nor the future offers true safety, and the only refuge is what you can protect: your family, your friends, your home.
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years of loss and heartbreak to find each other again. Now it's 1779, and Claire and Jamie are finally reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children, and are rebuilding their home on Fraser's Ridge-a fortress that may shelter them against the winds of war as well as weather.
But tensions in the Colonies are great: Battles rage from New York to Georgia and, even in the mountains of the backcountry, feelings run hot enough to boil Hell's teakettle. Jamie knows that loyalties among his tenants are split and it won't be long before the war is on his doorstep.
Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s-among them disease, starvation, and an impending war-was indeed the safer choice for their family.
Not so far away, young William Ransom is coming to terms with the mysteries of his identity, his future, and the family he's never known. His erstwhile father, Lord John Grey, has reconciliations to make and dangers to meet on his son's behalf and on his own, and far to the north, Young Ian Murray fights his own battle between past and future, and the two women he's loved.
Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser's Ridge. Jamie sharpens his sword, while Claire whets her surgeon's blade: It is a time for steel.
Editorial Reviews
"Grasping the fat new volume is an unbearably delicious moment."-The Seattle Times
"Vast and sweeping . . . so intricately plotted and peopled that one is amazed [Diana Gabaldon] could conceive and write it in only seven years. Despite its scope, many of the finest moments are small ones, especially those that depict Claire and Jamie's enduring love."-The Washington Post
"Vast and sweeping . . . so intricately plotted and peopled that one is amazed [Diana Gabaldon] could conceive and write it in only seven years. Despite its scope, many of the finest moments are small ones, especially those that depict Claire and Jamie's enduring love."-The Washington Post
Readers Top Reviews
snowzzKallie Harr
No doubt diehard fans will have a great time with this book (and I did enjoy it) but I was very disappointed after such a long wait. There were so many separate plot lines in the book that it felt like there was no real arc or climax to Claire and Jamie’s story. I think it’s a thing that happens with authors when a series becomes a smash hit and the balance of power shifts away from the editors and lies totally with the writer – It happened with Harry Potter and the Game of Thrones books - Harry Potter books kept getting longer because they were stuffed with self indulgent detail that was not necessary for the story, and on GoT so many additional plots crept in and were given so much page time that they diluted the time and attention from the main storylines and characters. I do love the other characters Gabaldon has created, but constantly leaving Jamie and Claire to deal with the others at the same level of detail, and having to create endless coincidences (you can suspend disbelief once or twice, but too often becomes tiresome) to link the many sub plots to the main characters, distracts from enjoying Claire and Jamie’s story which didn’t progress much at all and was the weakest part of this book. Personally I think it would have been better for the author to stick with Lord John and Hal’s story in the separate series and give us a whole lot less of Bree and Roger apart from the aspects of their story that add to Jamie and Claire’s story. No wonder each book takes so long to write when the author is writing 3 novels worth of characters at the same time and trying to string them all together. I’ll be really disappointed if the series ends with a book like this.
Kimberly Josnowzz
After a 2,723 day wait (nearly 7 1/2 years), Go Tell the Bees I Am Gone is finally here. I've never wanted to finish a book and also not finish a book so much, since Book 10 will surely take another half a dozen years. I savored Bees as long as possible and spread it out over 10 days, with the bulk of my reading happening over the past few days. It was hard for me to put down toward the end. In interviews, Diana has described the shape of Bees (all of her Outlander books have a shape in her mind) as a snake. I could see it and feel it as I read; the plot is sinuous and curving with the head of the snake at the end. Diana also gave some hints as to the events in Bees in interviews. I wouldn't go so far as to call them spoilers, but I was correct in my predictions as to some of the events based on her comments. It was probably a good thing that I had a hint as to what was coming, because my anxiety was high enough while reading parts of this! Here is the Prologue: "You know that something is coming. Something--a specific, dire, and awful something--will happen. You envision it, you push it away. It rolls slowly, inexorably, back into your mind. You make what preparation you can. Or you think you do, though your bones the truth--there isn't any way to sidestep, accommodate, lessen the impact. It will come, and you will be helpless before it. You know these things. And yet, somehow, you never think it will be today." Is it referencing death? The war? Both? This prologue has stuck with me more so than the prologues from other books in the series. My grandma whom I loved dearly passed away this year. Maybe that's why these words resonate so much with me. Bees has a sentimental tone to it with a sense of reflection to lives well lived and many roads traveled. It feels like a book for Outlander book fans; there are so many nods toward events from past books, events that only someone who has read the books recently or multiple times may remember. (If that makes me sound like a book purist, then so be it.) It isn't essential that you re-read the series before reading Bees, but I think it would be much less touching and evocative if you don't remember past events well enough to pick up on all the nuances. Reading Bees is much like reading Echo: Echo was enhanced through reading the Lord John books/novellas prior, and I think Bees is best served by a past knowledge of both the LJ and Outlander books. Jamie and Claire are 60ish in Bees, and Diana's writing reflects that. They don't rise as easily as they used nor do they think about life as they did when they were younger. Diana talks about how she writes what she knows; she will be 70 on her next birthday (God willing), so she knows what it's like to live to Jamie and Claire's ages. Not being of that age myself, I can only imagine that once you've lived three-...
Short Excerpt Teaser
1 THE MACKENZIES ARE HERE
Fraser's Ridge, Colony of North Carolina June 17, 1779
THERE WAS A STONE under my right buttock, but I didn't want to move. The tiny heartbeat under my fingers was soft and stubborn, the fleeting jolts life. The space between them was infinity, my connection to the dark sky and the rising flame.
"Move your arse a bit, Sassenach," said a voice in my ear. "I need to scratch my nose and ye're sitting on my hand." Jamie twitched his fingers under me, and I moved, turning toward him as I shifted and resettled, keeping my hold on three-year-old Mandy, bonelessly asleep in my arms.
He smiled at me over Jem's tousled head and scratched his nose. It must have been past midnight, but the fire was still high, and the light sparked off the stubble of his beard and glowed as softly in his eyes as in his grandson's red hair and the shadowed folds of the worn plaid he'd wrapped about them both.
On the other side of the fire, Brianna laughed, in the quiet way people laugh in the middle of the night with sleeping children near.
She laid her head on Roger's shoulder, her eyes half closed. She looked completely exhausted, her hair unwashed and tangled, the firelight scooping deep hollows in her face . . . but happy.
"What is it ye find funny, a nighean?" Jamie asked, shifting Jem into a more comfortable position. Jem was fighting as hard as he could to stay awake, but was losing the fight. He gaped enormously and shook his head, blinking like a dazed owl.
"Wha's funny?" he repeated, but the last word trailed off, leaving him with his mouth half open and a glassy stare.
His mother giggled, a lovely girlish sound, and I felt Jamie's smile.
"I just asked Daddy if he remembered a Gathering we went to, years ago. The clans were all called at a big bonfire and I handed Daddy a burning branch and told him to go down to the fire and say the MacKenzies were there."
"Oh." Jem blinked once, then twice, looked at the fire blazing in front of us, and a slight frown formed between his soft red brows. "Where are we now?"
"Home," Roger said firmly, and his eyes met mine, then passed to Jamie. "For good."
Jamie let out the same breath I'd been holding since the afternoon, when those four figures had appeared suddenly in the clearing below, and we had flown down the hill to meet them. There had been one moment of joyous, wordless explosion as we all flung ourselves at one another, and then the explosion had widened as Amy Higgins came out of her cabin, summoned by the noise, to be followed by Bobby, then Aidan-who had whooped at sight of Jem and tackled him, knocking him flat-with Orrie and little Rob.
Jo Beardsley had been in the woods nearby, heard the racket, and come to see . . . and within what seemed like moments, the clearing was alive with people. Six households were within reach of the news before sundown; the rest would undoubtedly hear of it tomorrow.
The instant outpouring of Highland hospitality had been wonderful; women and girls had run back to their cabins and fetched whatever they had baking or boiling for supper, the men had gathered wood and-at Jamie's behest-piled it on the crest where the outline of the New House stood, and we had welcomed home our family in style, surrounded by friends.
Hundreds of questions had been asked of the travelers: Where had they come from? How was the journey? What had they seen? No one had asked if they were happy to be back; that was taken for granted by everyone.
Neither Jamie nor I had asked any questions. Time enough for that-and now that we were alone, Roger had just answered the only one that truly mattered.
The why of that answer, though . . . I felt a stirring of the hair on my nape.
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," I murmured into Mandy's black curls, and kissed her tiny, sleep-deaf ear. Once more, my fingers probed inside her clothes-filthy from travel, but very well made-and found the hairline scar between her ribs, the whisper of the surgeon's knife that had saved her life two years ago, in a place so far from me.
It thumped peacefully along, that brave little heart under my fingertips, and I blinked back tears-not for the first time today, and surely not for the last.
"I was right, aye?" Jamie said, and I realized he'd said it for the second time.
"Right about what?"
"About needing more room," he said patiently, and turned to gesture at the...
Fraser's Ridge, Colony of North Carolina June 17, 1779
THERE WAS A STONE under my right buttock, but I didn't want to move. The tiny heartbeat under my fingers was soft and stubborn, the fleeting jolts life. The space between them was infinity, my connection to the dark sky and the rising flame.
"Move your arse a bit, Sassenach," said a voice in my ear. "I need to scratch my nose and ye're sitting on my hand." Jamie twitched his fingers under me, and I moved, turning toward him as I shifted and resettled, keeping my hold on three-year-old Mandy, bonelessly asleep in my arms.
He smiled at me over Jem's tousled head and scratched his nose. It must have been past midnight, but the fire was still high, and the light sparked off the stubble of his beard and glowed as softly in his eyes as in his grandson's red hair and the shadowed folds of the worn plaid he'd wrapped about them both.
On the other side of the fire, Brianna laughed, in the quiet way people laugh in the middle of the night with sleeping children near.
She laid her head on Roger's shoulder, her eyes half closed. She looked completely exhausted, her hair unwashed and tangled, the firelight scooping deep hollows in her face . . . but happy.
"What is it ye find funny, a nighean?" Jamie asked, shifting Jem into a more comfortable position. Jem was fighting as hard as he could to stay awake, but was losing the fight. He gaped enormously and shook his head, blinking like a dazed owl.
"Wha's funny?" he repeated, but the last word trailed off, leaving him with his mouth half open and a glassy stare.
His mother giggled, a lovely girlish sound, and I felt Jamie's smile.
"I just asked Daddy if he remembered a Gathering we went to, years ago. The clans were all called at a big bonfire and I handed Daddy a burning branch and told him to go down to the fire and say the MacKenzies were there."
"Oh." Jem blinked once, then twice, looked at the fire blazing in front of us, and a slight frown formed between his soft red brows. "Where are we now?"
"Home," Roger said firmly, and his eyes met mine, then passed to Jamie. "For good."
Jamie let out the same breath I'd been holding since the afternoon, when those four figures had appeared suddenly in the clearing below, and we had flown down the hill to meet them. There had been one moment of joyous, wordless explosion as we all flung ourselves at one another, and then the explosion had widened as Amy Higgins came out of her cabin, summoned by the noise, to be followed by Bobby, then Aidan-who had whooped at sight of Jem and tackled him, knocking him flat-with Orrie and little Rob.
Jo Beardsley had been in the woods nearby, heard the racket, and come to see . . . and within what seemed like moments, the clearing was alive with people. Six households were within reach of the news before sundown; the rest would undoubtedly hear of it tomorrow.
The instant outpouring of Highland hospitality had been wonderful; women and girls had run back to their cabins and fetched whatever they had baking or boiling for supper, the men had gathered wood and-at Jamie's behest-piled it on the crest where the outline of the New House stood, and we had welcomed home our family in style, surrounded by friends.
Hundreds of questions had been asked of the travelers: Where had they come from? How was the journey? What had they seen? No one had asked if they were happy to be back; that was taken for granted by everyone.
Neither Jamie nor I had asked any questions. Time enough for that-and now that we were alone, Roger had just answered the only one that truly mattered.
The why of that answer, though . . . I felt a stirring of the hair on my nape.
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," I murmured into Mandy's black curls, and kissed her tiny, sleep-deaf ear. Once more, my fingers probed inside her clothes-filthy from travel, but very well made-and found the hairline scar between her ribs, the whisper of the surgeon's knife that had saved her life two years ago, in a place so far from me.
It thumped peacefully along, that brave little heart under my fingertips, and I blinked back tears-not for the first time today, and surely not for the last.
"I was right, aye?" Jamie said, and I realized he'd said it for the second time.
"Right about what?"
"About needing more room," he said patiently, and turned to gesture at the...
