I agree with you completely. I love the STORY, but hate the book.
I watched the first season of Outlander and LOVED it with some exceptions...decided to read the book and was sorely disappointed. With everyone on all the Outlander fan sites raving about the books, I thought I was alone in my summation and that possibly I had not matured into the higher level reader that I thought I was! Ha! As someone who has read steadily for the past 30 years, I feel I am a pretty good judge of a great book from a plot and character viewpoint.
The premise of Outlander is awesome- but the constant rape as a plot device, the weird sadist behavior of BJR wanting to bed anything that had a heartbeat, and the continual torture and beating up of the Hero (Jamie) was just too much to the point of unbelievability. The Wentworth scenes actually bothered me for about 48 hours after I read/saw it. Couldn't stop thinking about how mad I was at the author for messing up a good storyline with that for the plotline. Any other trauma or conflict could have been used, but no....she goes for the weird, graphic, revolting dark stuff. Again, I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me as a reader, that I hadn't grown enough to appreciate this level of "art"...your post and others on here affirm me completely and I'm delighted to know that there are others out there that disagree with Gabaldon's writing/plot/direction, etc. Outlander fan sites elevate her to goddess status and to have a conflicting opinion is nothing short of sin in their eyes....*eye roll* The show is way, way better- which is a first that I have ever thought a show was better than the book (it's usually the other way around!)
I made the mistake in thinking the rest of the book would get better....nope. Only gets worse, and worse, and worse....have stopped reading to I can preserve the good memories of the story from Season 1 & 2.
I watched the first season of Outlander and LOVED it with some exceptions...decided to read the book and was sorely disappointed. With everyone on all the Outlander fan sites raving about the books, I thought I was alone in my summation and that possibly I had not matured into the higher level reader that I thought I was! Ha! As someone who has read steadily for the past 30 years, I feel I am a pretty good judge of a great book from a plot and character viewpoint.
The premise of Outlander is awesome- but the constant rape as a plot device, the weird sadist behavior of BJR wanting to bed anything that had a heartbeat, and the continual torture and beating up of the Hero (Jamie) was just too much to the point of unbelievability. The Wentworth scenes actually bothered me for about 48 hours after I read/saw it. Couldn't stop thinking about how mad I was at the author for messing up a good storyline with that for the plotline. Any other trauma or conflict could have been used, but no....she goes for the weird, graphic, revolting dark stuff. Again, I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me as a reader, that I hadn't grown enough to appreciate this level of "art"...your post and others on here affirm me completely and I'm delighted to know that there are others out there that disagree with Gabaldon's writing/plot/direction, etc. Outlander fan sites elevate her to goddess status and to have a conflicting opinion is nothing short of sin in their eyes....*eye roll*
The show is way, way better- which is a first that I have ever thought a show was better than the book (it's usually the other way around!)
I made the mistake in thinking the rest of the book would get better....nope. Only gets worse, and worse, and worse....have stopped reading to I can preserve the good memories of the story from Season 1 & 2.