Hello everyone!
Yes, I'm on a sort of Outlander binge, and not just with the television show.
I've been re-reading the books (although in random order since I went with The Fiery Cross, then doubled back to Outlander, and now I'm chewing through Dragonfly in Amber while contemplating starting Voyager instead) and of course the series includes the massive chonks as well as the shorter novellas, and Lord John Grey stories.
I'm telling you, people: you have not lived until you've witnessed the chaos that is Grey's life on a daily basis. I HIGHLY recommend that series.
I still have to review them all on here, and I swear I will!
Meanwhile, I sat down to a prequel yesterday.
I'd known that Diana Gabaldon had written a sort of story-before-the-story covering Jamie's time in France, or part of it at least, and I'd been dying to read it for a while now but never got the chance.
Of course we're in quarantine now, so what else is there to do but catch up?
And you're definitely catching up with Virgins.
And now, onward!
Virgins begins pretty much right in the thick of it: Jamie Fraser is an outlaw; his father has just died, he's been flogged by Black Jack Randall, and they've spirited him out of Scotland to France, where he meets up with one Ian Murray and a gang of mercenaries.
The best part of this entire thing, all seventy pages of it, is the relationship between Jamie and Ian, in all honesty, because Ian takes one look at the Laird of Lallybroch, drags him to the side, and tells him he's not letting go. Ever.
Take THAT, Rose!
Ahem.
The two of them tag along with the mercenaries who are escorting a wagon of goods to a Jewish merchant, and of course the group gets attacked, but thankfully the lot are actually good at what they do (except the priest, who's as blind as a bat, and has to ask Jamie whether he thinks he's dead or not).
One rug short, and with information that someone's giving brigands notices about where the group will be heading next, they bring their stuff to Bordeaux, and it's there that Jamie and Ian get dragged into another scheme by their captain.
See, Jamie had attended the Université in Paris, so he has a much better education than the lot of them, for which he gets ribbed quite a bit in the book, but he also speaks Hebrew, so the captain takes him and Ian along (Ian's sin being that he can read Hebrew, too) to a possible new mission, where a wealthy Jew wants them to escort his granddaughter, Rebekah, and the Torah to Paris where she will wed the son of a rabbi there.
In due process while this is being discussed, the Jew (who happens to be a doctor) notices that Jamie's flogging scars aren't healing properly, so he drags him off to have his back cleaned and tended to, which is probably the only reason why the kid even survives to show the marks to Claire some day, too.
He and Ian then head over to an inn where Jamie proves he needs a healer in his life when he dumps some healing herbs out of which he was supposed to brew tea into his ale.
Yup.
And after that illuminating, er, action, he and Ian witness one of their group sexually assault a whore from the establishment, though obviously she doesn't cry rape but kicks the living daylights out of said guy, and then our duo spend the rest of the book wondering how one goes about even asking a whore to go with you, and what happens after.
I'm telling you, virgins are THE BEST in these books.
That said and done, Jamie and Ian proceed to escort Rebekah, her maid and the Torah to Paris, but of course their luck isn't going to hold because they get attacked on the road (again) and have to backtrack to an inn they'd already passed.
Where Rebekah proceeds to give Jamie opium (which we already know gives him weird dreams, so hold on to your horses) and seduces Ian to knock both guys out so she and her maid can escape.
Being the stubborn Fraser that he is, Jamie sets off in hot pursuit, and the two of them arrive just in time to witness Rebekah's marriage to a Christian-turned-Jew whom she'd been betrothed to four years prior.
Here's the full story: Rebekah's mother ran off with her father, a Christian, so her grandfather (the doctor, natch) considered her dead, but when Rebekah was left alone in the world he took her in and disregarded everything her father might have arranged for her, making his own arrangements. In return, Rebekah has been spearheading a gang of thieves to make sure she and her future husband (of her own choosing, mind) would be able to live well.
Jamie's fine with that - but he wants the Torah to take it back to her grandfather, saying the old man probably knows he's better off without her. He pleasantly explains what happened to the one Jew who got interrogated and what her actions have caused, and then he and Ian walk off.
And because Jamie is now finding his footing in this strange new world, he goes back to an inn he frequented right at the beginning and where a pretty barmaid mistook him for a Jew so that he can correct that assumption.
Only to find her at the mercy of that idiot who likes to force his women.
A brawl ensues in which pistols are fired, dirks come out, and Jamie kills the bastard - but unfortunately, a pistol shot goes wrong and the pretty barmaid is dead, too.
Devastated, Jamie's in shock, and Ian drags him into a church to light a candle for their dead, and where Ian prays for Jamie, too.
After which the duo decide the King of Prussia could probably use some able-bodied men, so why not?
Emotional, witty and extremely poignant, this short story introduces us to Jamie as he is before stumbling into Claire (and having her doctor him!): wounded, in body and soul, and his remembrance of his father is something that could make a stone weep.
Ian of course is spectacular, as he is in the main series, and I enjoyed seeing the two of them bicker back and forth as brothers should.
All in all, a read well worth your time!
xx
*images not mine
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