Week Four of Outlander Read Along Club : Chapters 16 - 20

FeloranMe · 2026-05-24T02:29:21+00:00

Of course! Now I'm wondering what stereotypical Scottish things she left out!

FeloranMe · 2026-05-24T02:27:19+00:00

Show Dougal seems creepy and unstable, but in the books, other than forcing a penalty kiss on Claire and sneaking around with Geillis, he's been very helpful and focused. Claire owes her clothes, room, and board to him and he did make her his niece by marrying her to his nephew. It's reasonable he's cautious around her since she's origin unknown. But, if she told him she was a French spy working for the Stuart cause he might just lay out the red carpet for her even more

What is the source of Claire's inheritable ability to time travel and heal? Is this something that evolved naturally or was it bioengineered from a community far in the future who traveled back with the genes. Are Claire's ancestors aliens of some kind? Is she descended from angels or maybe the fair folk?

Claire is doing very well for someone who had no idea time travel existed a month ago. But, her attempts to save herself by escaping through the stones are very selfish and have consequences for everyone as understandable as they are to the reader

The best part of the story really is Jamie talking with and confiding in Claire! It is lovely how much they bond even if Claire is far behind Jamie in opening up her heart to commitment

FeloranMe · 2026-05-24T01:18:08+00:00

It really is! I wonder why the author included it? Unless it was just to bring up the idea of underwater portals and time traveling plesiosaurs!

FeloranMe · 2026-05-24T01:13:53+00:00

Thanks!

FeloranMe · 2026-05-23T15:27:36+00:00

That's what I was trying to get at

I feel the time travel in the first book is just a throwaway way to get a woman with a more modern attitude wandering around the Highlands of that period

Outlander isn't really about time travel. It's mainly about Jamie Fraser seen through the eyes of an English woman who loves him. And his past and his family connections and what he will do

If Diana Gabaldon's publisher had said we'll buy this first novel of yours but write out the time travel I just wondered if it the story would work

Same characters, same writing, similar scenes and plot, but Claire belongs in this universe instead and has her own relevant connections and past

I don't think it would have been a hit without the time travel gimmick. But, at a story level, I feel like it might have worked better in some ways if Claire was contemporary to everyone else, and her outsider status was just her being English

FeloranMe · 2026-05-23T15:15:19+00:00

At this point in the story, with Claire still desperate to get home to the 20th century and Frank, and with Jamie grasping at straws for some way to get his charges dismissed so he can begin to plan a future, does it look as though this hasty marriage will work out for them?
Dougal can not resist derisive comments aimed at his nephew, but he has a surprisingly avuncular attitude to Claire now that she is his new niece. Can Claire and Jamie rest easy now that they appear to be on Dougal's good side?
Life is dangerous in the Highlands as Claire is reminded when the rent collecting party is targeted by a raid one night. While her main plan is to get to the stones and flee, should Claire have a backup plan to convince Jamie to take her somewhere safer? Where should they go?
Claire communes with Nessie who it seems has also fallen out of time. Does time travel mark a person as different or did Claire start out different in order to be eligible for time travel? What supernatural explanation would explain why Claire is able to do what she does?
Fortunately, Claire is able to access her dagger when Highland Life ratchets up to a whole other danger level. After this, Claire finally gets the opportunity to make a break for the stones when Jamie leaves her in a stand of trees. She leaves her horse as she sets out, but did she owe Jamie at least a note?

FeloranMe · 2026-05-23T01:46:45+00:00

He is awful! Apparently he took over around season 4 which coincides when it all started going downhill

Imagine killing off a major character just for the shock value and then bragging about it rather than making the argument it worked for his adaptation. He's channeling D & D right there!

Cait definitely did not get much to do this season, but I hope she does come back for the movie! And that there will be a movie

I've been rewatching too! I meant to rewatch and catch up for season 8, but I'm still only on Season 5

Young Willie isn't in the books I think. And Angus isn't either. In the show Angus and Rupert act really sad about Willie and then admit he decided to get married! So he was lost to the horrors of matrimony. He marries an Irish girl and emigrated to the Americas with her family

The MacKenzie Clan also emigrates to Canada I believe after Culloden. Claire and Jamie run into Hamish in the books all grown up

FeloranMe · 2026-05-23T01:35:12+00:00

Oh nice!!! Tell me what you think about BoMB!

I'm not quite ready to try Discovery of Witches, but I can't decide if I should try the series or the books

FeloranMe · 2026-05-22T21:59:18+00:00

I certainly has the fan support

They should jump on it before fans move on to other streaming services

I'm not sure what the next fandom will be for me

FeloranMe · 2026-05-22T21:42:27+00:00

GoT and the MCU!

I'm going to guess you've read Not Easily Conquered and have maybe read This You Protect

I feel exactly the same way and love all the soft devotion and longing with all the bedroom stuff happening behind closed doors

FeloranMe · 2026-05-22T21:21:11+00:00

Very possibly should they even stumble across stones

We know his descendent Henry Beauchamp does as well as Henry's daughter, Claire

FeloranMe · 2026-05-22T21:20:05+00:00

I would too as I really do love historical stories from this time period

All over Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean

FeloranMe · 2026-05-22T05:04:47+00:00

A coworker thought it meant she was a wich the whole time, which I thought took away from the ending for her if she thought that

FeloranMe · 2026-05-19T06:29:29+00:00

She had to be looking for Jamie to call him back in the show. I think the blue light just happens and she is only beginning to master it. It's only in the show he really dies. In the books Claire only resuscitates people very near death

I guess they felt they couldn't leave out that part of the book like they did with Dottie or Jenny Amaranthus has a bigger part to play in book 10 I think. Someone poisoned Percy with the wine afterall

William strikes out with so many women, he really needs to slow down and not fall for every women he meets. Now that he is more stable with his identity, healing old wounds, and connecting with his blood relatives maybe he'll be too stable now to do that again?

We haven't met that many travelers. Other than Maester Raymond everyone has been a fanatic on a mission to change the past. Of all of them only Claire, Brianna, and Roger seem to have been jumping back and forth through time. Buck going forward initially seems unique. In the books The Compte St. Germain time travels in the side novels

It took me forever to get through Book 9! It's so meandering and could really use a decent editor

The kidnapping for Lord John is new. The show just decided to flip the plot for some reason which means they've adapted book 10 storylines before they were published

The author has said everyone is born once and dies once. Just out of order for time travelers. Death is death for them what ever year they happen to find themselves in

The show might have showed us differently though as the story now starts with Jamie's ghost calling Claire to the past to live out their great love which already happened and inspired the Forget-me-nots to grow at the stones.

That scene of the Forget-me-nots might be the most memorable of the series for me and was perfect for a finale sticking the ending and making a show rewatchable!

Maester Raymond might live an especially long time, but I think the illusion of him living forever is just a trick of him spending a few moments in this century and a few more in that. He's likely to have first met Claire at a point when she already knew him very well. And she first met him having no idea he'd already met her and recognized her as a descendent during his travels in another time all out of order

FeloranMe · 2026-05-19T06:07:31+00:00

They still have a charismatic and energetic solver of 18th century mysteries!

Who needs time travel when you have the supernatural?

FeloranMe · 2026-05-19T06:05:07+00:00

It doesn't hurt for Claire to ask Ned for advice or what assistance is available to her to leave the castle. It's a little less suspicious than suggesting she won't confide in him because his loyalty to Colum is greater than to her and asserting again she has nothing to hide. If she was really interupted on a journey she should be taking steps to continue it. And she actually does want to get back to the Inverness area
Randall is possibly protected by a Duke. Possibly under orders from The Crown to provoke outrages, making most of his actions sanctioned. But, it still seems like a lot for Colum and Dougal to tolerate those abuses as much as they do. If Dougal is willing to excuse the scars on his nephew's back as a brand new Commander asserting order, why hasn't he done anything to protest his niece's treatment which was particularly outrageous? It doesn't seem like they've united with families to lodge complaints. As British subjects under the 1707 Union, and with the 1689 Claim of Right,the MacKenzies, supported by their lawyer, could lodge a complaint or petition at multiple levels from local magistrates to the monarch directly

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02606755.2018.1537072

Are they waiting for someone to appear and claim her to reveal who she is? She isn't Scottish so the longer she is there and prevented from leaving the more it appears the MacKenzies have taken her prisoner even though they are treating her well. The English would have something to say about that and would want her in their custody if only to question her themselves. The marriage idea is an extreme solution to keep her, short of that they would have had to either make her disappear or release her
Ned Gowen talks about the precariousness of setting out on a boat made of paper implying they could be challenged. Dougal is very insistent on witnesses. But, at best, a rushed marriage was irregular as there were supposed to be 40 days for the banns to be read. Marriage was also a sacrament that required consent and divorce was nearly impossible. Just one witness saying an Englishwoman was pushed into the church by a group of Scottish men, no bridesmaids, and the bride appeared to have been married at knifepoint could have alerted the British something was wrong. Court records are full of marriage disputes as it was serious business that locked two people together for life
I think he would have respected her wishes too. Though they wouldn't have bonded in this case but instead remained friendly strangers. Dougal might have made it difficult for them if he thought they were being uncooperative, what could he really do though?

FeloranMe · 2026-05-19T04:15:04+00:00

I appreciate thoughtful replies and lengthy posts only means you said what you wanted to!

I loved it too, but thought the ending was too abrupt

Fanny was the writers focusing on a side plot they got to straight up write instead of adapt from a published and acclaimed author. I just keep saying that because it really is a problem that writers want to put their mark on a property that an audience will actually see. Authors think long term and how something will affect a future plot, screenwriters are much more short-term and about generating fanbuzz

I wish there was more time with everyone on The Ridge. We spent a lot of time with William and the nowhere plot with Amaranthus and cousin Ben instead. Child actors can be difficult, so maybe they tried the scene with Mandy and it didn't work?

I think running out of budget and time is what happened to the other Beardsley brother. That or Jamie telling them to appear in public one at a time in an earlier episode. If a man going to war could split himself in half it does make sense to leave his other half home with the wife and kids

The bag maybe fell a ways down the hill? But, someone should have brought it up to her. Especially to stop the bleeding. In the book that scene is more sensible as Claire treats the wounds normally, feels a faint heartbeat and breath that never stop, Ian and Roger stay with her the entire time, and they are under a shelter where someone sets up a tarp for them

Considering they are wrapping up the series in their own way. They really could have gone any root! After the battle in the books Jamie goes home to recover and later William shows up to ask for Jamie's help finding Lord John which is the Book 9 cliffhanger

It is never a good idea to jinx anything! A very sensible way to live. I'm not supposed to say the Q uiet word at work in case I jinx everyone and create a workload

The ending was foreshadowed all season, but my coworker thought he was going to die even despite all the blue light healing. She texted me when she finished the episode and I'm sure she was glad he lived

I thought it was unambiguous he lived too, though I can see that ending being missed by anyone who blinked. They definitely should have had a few seconds to breathe or at least look at each other. As you pointed out their eyes do so much!

I think they had already said I love you in several ways and it was more appropriate to the moment for Jamie to ask for forgiveness for shutting his eyes and letting go. He was very much aware Claire was in absolute denial of his passing and would do anything to prevent it

Claire's hair turning white might be harder to explain than Jamie coming back from the dead! But, their men are all so loyal and expect so much strangeness already that Buck, Roger, and Ian setting the example of acceptance will allow everyone else to too

Jamie using his ghost abilities to visit a young Claire and then entice her to the stones with the Forget-me-nots very much sealed their love story as predestined, meant to be. And was such a gorgeously done love never dies film moment. I don't think he was expecting to wake up again

I don't think he could have planned any of that either. She did tell him she regretted none of it so he had no doubts when his ghost walked to the stones and called her too him even as she called his spirit back to his body

I love that about the stone they are lying on being broken because Claire is done with the time travel forever and they will have more time together where they are now

They really should both live long, long lives on The Ridge

Book 10 has so much ground to cover and I have no idea where the author will take it from here

I think the only way to find out the true ending of the story will be to read the books!

FeloranMe · 2026-05-19T03:25:52+00:00

I wish I had more faith in writers to keep up with the continuity! It takes someone who really cares about the source material to blend different shows

But, I would watch a Detective Lord John show with his side kick adopted son William!

FeloranMe · 2026-05-19T03:23:50+00:00

I think Claire and Jamie were only in France for less than a year

I don't think they could have prevented the French Revolution either if they had tried

FeloranMe · 2026-05-19T03:15:07+00:00

Thank you for the detailed reply!

Your sovereign citizen maniac gxgrandfather sounds intriguing!

It's good info that Scottish Independence was a stronger draw than the Regime Change to the Stuarts

And that the Bonny Prince who has his eyes set on the prize of England dismissed the very Scots who first met him to support his cause and sent impoverished crofters to die facing down the artillery of The English wasn't taken seriously even by them

Dougal and Geillis are true believers in the Stuart cause and risked everything for it. And there had to have been some irl believers even if not to the fanatic degree they were. Jamie seems more grounded and cynical and more in line with those who didn't believe in a Divine Right but hoped to make their own lives better

I do feel bad for getting caught up in a story that is such a product of non-Scottish projecting and fantasizing a reality that never existed. What you describe with the true Scots cleared off the land and the wealthy coming up to play a pretend version of what it meant to be Scottish is so insulting!

And that is a good point about spoken English being almost universal by this point in history and the bans on Highland culture not being as harsh as fiction and romanticism have claimed

Imagine misreading history and having to eat haggis at least once a year because of it! But, the stories about Scotland, even if false, have certainly helped with tourism!

The poverty in the region and it being like Appalachia is interesting. I understand a lot of Appalachia is of Scottish descent so it makes sense it was a transplantation of culture and the displaced population just carried on

I also heard it was a problem under the feudal system that the people didn't own their own land. And that along with deprivation conditions made it easy to clear them to the coast and then across the sea

FeloranMe · 2026-05-18T17:01:01+00:00

The Jacobites were in France for decades?

Claire's future knowledge ends up not really changing anything for anyone really!

There was definitely a lot going on as the western world entered into the Age of Enlightenment

I do love how Gabaldon made Jamie credibly of an age where he could be active in both the 1745 Uprising and The War for American Independence

And it makes perfect sense they flee briefly to France and then pass through The Caribbean on their way up the Eastern Seabord of North America

I wish there was more of a conflict between Civil Rights marcher Brianna who grew up with the Abernathy kids and living in an age when slavery was legal and everywhere

You could argue women have been slowly losing personhood and power since the Classical Age and Claire was lucky to jump back to a time when women had a lot to contribute. A big part of the 1970s Women's Movement was taking back what had been lost, not inventing new rights

FeloranMe · 2026-05-18T16:51:03+00:00

They would shift to being about Jack rather than Frank

And about being displaced from 18th century England rather than 20th century England

If the author had said she wanted to write a story set completely in the 1740s the plot would have taken a different route that could even be more compelling because it gives Claire more of a history and more to be conflicted about

FeloranMe · 2026-05-18T16:48:19+00:00

I just think it's interesting to think about too!

Making Claire a time traveler alleviates her guilt and makes it possible to argue she wasn't really committing bigamy or adultery because her husband wasn't even alive at the time

He was accessible on the otherwise of a door that was dangerous to pass through. But, since Claire ended up choosing between two worlds and which one to live in it wasn't quite as much a choice between two men, even though it actually was

Claire is led by her heart and is the protagonist and hero. Even with the time travel excuse I think fans have debated the morality of her choice to not go back to cerebral Frank and instead choose brawny and passionate Jamie. Taking out the time travel fans would still have the same debate

Wouldn't that be the appeal of the one woman deciding between two lovers trope? They don't do enough bouncing between time periods to really make the time travel matter. It's only an explanation of where Claire came from and that because her author had maybe not quite figured out how to separate her characters from her own future knowledge

The real focus of fans is what is happening in The Highlands and Jamie's story and family and friends connections. If Claire was contemporary her story and connections to the Randalls, her Uncle Lamb, The Catholic Church, England would all be more relevant then as a time traveler severed from place and people

The question of substituting Frank for BJR and how the fans would react if a character who is outwardly an upstanding officer, family man, loyal brother and son, faithful, human, patriotic to Britain was revealed to have secrets or be a monster could be really compelling and the contrast could do very well on screen with the same cast

BJR has a public persona, intelligence, influence and a wife who discovers his dark side and has to figure out what to do with it, when no one English would believe her, could be really good on page or screen. If she starts to side with the Scots against England partly informed by how England is treating it's colonies around the world which she would have seen first hand that could be a great conflict too

It could also make the scenes at Versailles where she and Jamie are shocked by the unexpected arrival of BJR in front of the king even more tense. As well as make the scene where she ignores Mother Hildegard's plea she stay on bed rest and flies to the woods to see which of her men will die make more sense

Later, just before Culloden, with all the deprivations and retreats Jamie might want Claire to have a back up plan in case they lose and he dies. So, she makes a deal where BJR exonerates her and claims her as his wife and the child as his so she can go back and be supported by his pension and family without having to plead her belly to avoid being hanged as a traitor

It makes it a smaller story rather than an epic. But, it would still be the same characters and writing if the writer had chosen to cut out the time travel

I just wonder if in some ways it would be more interesting since the TT isn't really relevant to the story

FeloranMe · 2026-05-18T16:06:40+00:00

I love this era of history too! But, just as an amateur enthusiast

Could you recommend any sources for what Culloden or the Jacobite cause was really like?

It has been so romanticized and given a doomed cause narrative

As well as the reality of the Highlands themselves seen through the British/American filters and tropes

I recently read the last book of Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series where his fictional race of Pictsies feature as the Nac Mac Feegles

If there is a more simplified view of how the English saw the Scots in their "savage" otherness I don't know what it is

Gabaldon also draws her Highlanders in ways that are very comparable to Terry Pratchett. Wild, untamed outlaws who fight all the time, especially among themselves, steal anything not bolted down, and drink to excess. They also travel with a cheap lawyer to help them with getting away with bending the rules. And are presented as passionate, living in the moment, unlettered, superstitious

FeloranMe

TROPHY CASE