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A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Outlander) | 
 enlarge | Author: Diana Gabaldon
Publisher: Delta
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $8.00
You Save: $7.00 (47%)
New (30) Used (44) Collectible (1) from $6.48
Rating:  301 reviews
Sales Rank: 3688
Media: Paperback
Pages: 992
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.7
ISBN: 0385340397
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385340397
ASIN: 0385340397
Publication Date: August 29, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Eagerly anticipated by her legions of fans, this sixth novel in Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling Outlander saga is a masterpiece of historical fiction from one of the most popular authors of our time.
Since the initial publication of Outlander fifteen years ago, Diana Gabaldon’s New York Times bestselling saga has won the hearts of readers the world over — and sold more than twelve million books. Now, A Breath of Snow and Ashes continues the extraordinary story of 18th-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his 20th-century wife, Claire.
The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit. Men lie dead in the streets of Boston, and in the backwoods of North Carolina, isolated cabins burn in the forest.
With chaos brewing, the governor calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence — with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie’s death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 296 more reviews...
 6th in the series November 23, 2008
D. K. Stokes
Historical fiction? General fiction? It's really not romance anymore. If you ask me, only the first book, Outlander, was romance, but nobody's asking me.
And while we're on the subject of things nobody's requesting my opinion on--is this not the plainest, most makeshift cover? I have the hardcover, and it's just really dull. Light gray, plain font. I'm the first to complain about cheesy covers with those shaved-chest cover models (okay, maybe not the first), but surely there's something between embarrassing and something this boring and... well... unprofessional-looking.
On to the book. A Breath of Snow and Ashes is the 6th book in the series that begins with Outlander. I suppose you could read this without having read the rest of the series--but why would you want to? The vast majority of my enjoyment in reading this book came from being invested--for over 15 years--in the saga of Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser and James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser.
If you've somehow managed to avoid hearing about this series, Claire, an English nurse in WWII travels back in time via a stone circle to Scotland, just before the 2nd Jacobite rising. There she meets, falls in love with, and marries Jamie. Now, in the 6th book, they're in America--North Carolina--just before the American Revolution, and once again, Claire knows what's about to happen, but is powerless to change anything in a more than individual way.
I'm not really going to say anything about the plot because at nearly 1000 pages, there's not one overarching plot covering the book. I'm guessing that it simply covers a time period, and that the event at the end (no, I'm not going to spoil it, though if you look through the reviews, you'll find what it is easily enough) was the point Gabaldon wanted to reach by the end of this installment. Unfortunately, most of the action was concentrated at the beginning of the time period covered, and toward the end of the book, weeks and months got skipped over to jump ahead to the prescribed date of the climax.
Pretty much every sort of plot thread you can think of in immediately pre-revolutionary America gets covered--from the fascinating but dangerous dilemma of how and when to change allegiances from the Crown to the Colonies when you know what's going to happen, to a disease epidemic, to the plight of women alone at that time. There's the uneasy melding of different nationalities and religions, the heartbreaking story of the effect of birth defects at that time, the changing relationships with the Indians, and a creepy but strangely sweet 3-way romance.
We catch up with almost all the characters from previous books, find out some of what happened with Young Ian, learn who really fathered Jem, discover more time travelers, and see Roger find himself.
And then there are the inventions. I suppose it's inevitable, and that if I were to travel 200 years into the past, I'd probably be trying to recreate as many modern conveniences and life-saving practices as possible, too, but it got a little old. Claire by herself stuck mostly to the medical and sanitary side of things, but now that Brianna's settled in, she's putting her engineering skills to use and inventing things left and right. Poor Roger's only contribution to modernity is to carve "vrooms" (cars) for the children to play with.
I'd be vastly happier with a 300-page episode every 1 or 2 years that followed a single plot thread from beginning to end than these 1000-page meandering tomes every 5 years or so, but the stage was set from the beginning, so there's no point in changing it now. I'll continue to read the series as long as it lasts, and no doubt I'll edit the books in my head, but I'm not going to complain too much, because I do know what to expect.
 Another great story of the continuing saga November 2, 2008
Deborah A. Cogan (South Carolina)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love Diana's style of romance and adventure and this continues. This is worth every minute spent as is all of her other books.
 The bloom is off the rose September 28, 2008
Love to Read Love
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The series hould have ended before this volume. It's bloated, repetitive, boring, and self-indulgent, not a cohesive story but a collection of vignettes, often unrelated to the main characters we know and love. A sharp editor should have sliced this huge book in half.
Fablous Series!!!!!! September 23, 2008
Irene D'Ambrosia (Holland, Pennsylvania)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is book 5 in a series of 6 Diana Gabaldon books. It is a wonderful Love story, with historical value taking place in the middle to late 18th century. I would highly recommend all 6 books. It starts with Voyager.
Loved it! August 28, 2008
L. Cutler (Las Vegas, NV)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really loved this book in the series. I was disappointed with Fiery Cross and was hoping that this one would redeem. It did! It was a treat to read it! Can't wait for the next one!!!
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