*****EDIT*****

Holy statistics, batman. A girl gets a little linkage and next thing you know, people think she ain't nothin' but a hater. Read this to understand My History As A Gabaldon Fangirl. And later on I'll blog my thinking on reading, writing, reviewing, and what all of us owe one another when we inhabit those roles. (Or each other. Is it "one another" or "each other"? Does it matter? Paul? You nitpicky sumbitch, tell us which it is, please. Thanks.) End of edit.

***Edit Again***
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. BIG TIME.

**OMG I cannot believe I am editing this again**

But seriously, I have to because people keep linking and reading and gah. Y'all? Strangers? Reading this? You're reading a blog. A personal weblog. Where I sit down after a long day of boring office work and randomly type out the stuff in my head for the handful of friends who enjoy reading it. This is a "review" only in the very loosest sense of the word. Duh. It was never intended for an audience to gather around and discuss its worth and hold it up as an example of anything. This is me. Talking. The way I talk to my friends. Like if someone asked me, "Hey, why'd you hate that book?" - this would be my candid answer to that. If you read further, you're basically just overhearing a conversation/diatribe. For the love of sweet baby ganesh, people, CONSIDER THE VENUE. You're so much smarter than this, I just know you are. C'mon.

[OFFICIAL END OF EDITING]

Okay, Kate wrote a bona fide Smart Bitches Day entry. Bookseller Chica, I shall totally count as SBD because it's all about her trying to serve the romance-reading community and being thwarted by The Man. Please give her a valid email address - help a girl out. Gads, I remember when I worked at the bookstore(s) and being forced to sell that Preferred/Frequent/Indescriminate Reader card thing. It was hell. I think I actually got written up once for not suckering enough people into it. But though I am (really!) moved that his son loves the Infamous Crack-Infested Peanut Butter Cookies, I can't count Doug's entry as SBD. I don't think Doug quite gets the point of the Smart Bitches Day. And Sandy's doesn't really fit, either.

To clarify: a SBD entry isn't just What I Blogged On Monday. The point of SBD is to talk about any aspect of literature (preferably Romance, but it doesn't have to be) you care to, without mincing words. There is no apologizing in SBD. There is little, if any, cushioning of the blow. One does not sit down at one's keyboard and carefully put Kindness before Truth. In short, it's a day for talking (blogging) about your reading material without inhibitions. Stop playing nicey-nice and call it crap if it's crap. Also call it fab if it's fab. Some things are worth gushing about. However. . .

A Breath of Snow And Ashes
. . . is not.

Please know that I am really not up to this post. Am in a Mood and don't feel like saying anything more than "This books sucks the shit out if its own asshole; don't buy it," but I have been promising the internet a more in-depth explanation. And so I shall try.
(And I just finished it and am scrolling up here to tell you that I'm not even glancing over it. I have blurted. It is done. Good night.)

Hmm. What's the best way to go about this? Maybe -- what would I tell Diana Gabaldon, if ever I felt like giving my undiluted opinion to someone who neither asked for that opinion nor forced me to read her book? Because really, it's not her fault. All the warnings signs were there - little droppings (second half of Voyager) and then fat turds (Drums of Autumn) and then wet stinking puddles of it (Fiery Cross), all leading like breadcrumbs to the house-sized pile of steaming shit that is A Breath of Snow and Ashes.

I know y'all are probably thinking I'm indulging in some kind of hyperbole. But I swear I'm not just going for effect, here. It is monumentally Bad. And I saw it coming, and I put my hard-earned money down on the counter and bought it anyway. One fresh cow patty, served up piping hot in one of the most obnoxious dust covers ever.

So if I were taking this straight to la Gabaldon, that's the first thing I'd ask: did you try to stop them from wrapping your book in tin foil? Should hand out sunglasses at the check-out. Neat trick, though, to try to blind the reader. Far more difficult to criticize words when you can't see them.

I'd tell her editor to edit. Or, as Snookie intoned in a Voice Of Dread: "What if her editor is editing?"

I'd tell her that I'm angry that these two characters I loved -- yes, past tense. I loved them. Love, people, and I don't use the word lightly. I'm angry because I spent about 800 of the nearly 1000 pages thinking the traitorous thought: I just want them to die now. Please kill them. Die. DIE. Good fucking CHRIST will you please DIE because THAT would at least be INTERESTING.

I'd tell her that Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser Randall Fraser (really!) deserves better than to be raped for no other reason than her author can't think of anything better to do, and because everyone else has gotten raped so why the hell not. When this beloved character - who has felt like such a real person to me, for years - gets raped, then you as an author are doing something terribly, terribly wrong when my only reaction is to snort, roll my eyes, and say out loud "oh give me a fucking break." It's especially bad when Snookie, who is without a doubt ten times more devoted than I ever was (and that's saying something), reacts to the same scene by actually saying to her book: "Fuck you, Diana Gabaldon. Fuck. You." Because seriously? What kind of bullshit is that? It had no narrative significance. It had barely any effect on any of the characters at all. It had no purpose whatsoever.

I'd tell her that she's getting sloppy, because when Claire was carried off and all she could think about was how she was certain that:
1. Jamie would rescue her, he's bound to track them easily and then she'll be safe, and
2. Marsali must be dead or dying, oh what will happen to the poor pregnant woman they beat up and left for dead?
Then any writer worthy of the title follows up on those two points. You moron. So tell me: wtf took Jamie so long that Claire got treated to three of the men before he showed up? What delayed him? Anything other than your desire to have Claire get raped? And did you think even for an instant that you could've showed the moment when Jamie says Marsali and her unborn baby are okay, instead of mentioning it in a single, tossed-off sentence pages and pages and pages later? Because the only reason I kept reading instead of drifting off into blissful slumber was because I wanted to see if Marsali was dead or not. You made it this big deal. Then you made it not this big deal.

I can only assume you did that because it was oh-so-essential to subject me to the unbelievable behavior of Jamie and Claire. Let's see - Jamie Fraser. Great Guy. Better than great, he's downright perfect. In all situations, he always does and says exactly the right (and frequently unexpectedly right) things. So what's the first thing out of his mouth as he's carrying his wife away from the scene of the beating/rape?

He worries that one of her rapists might have gotten her pregnant.

Yes, Jamie Fraser is worried that his like 55-year-old wife might be pregnant with a child that isn't his. He worries about this as the wife in question is re-setting her own broken nose, by the way. And then he comes up with the solution that he must take her home and fuck her immediately. And she agrees with him. And they fuck like bunnies. Less than 24 hours after she was beaten to a pulp and sexually assaulted by three men.

Hoooooooo-kay.

That to me was really the low point. For obvious reasons. But I'd also tell her that Claire wondering aloud to Jamie if the (very, very honorable and warm-hearted) man who raised Jamie's son as his own only did so because well that guy is gay and he's always been in love with Jamie and maybe he only took in the boy because of the family resemblance and well isn't it just possible that he wanted a mini-Jamie around to slake his lust? Well, see - not only is that not very Claire-ish, it is incredibly non-Jamie-ish that he just takes it in stride and says "no" and that's that. And all of that just smacks of some lazy author going to her own rabid-fan-infested message boards and picking up random retarded conversations and writing them into the book. (Sorry, but it does. It's like if JK Rowling ever decided to have Dumbledore and Harry get it on. It's like "whuh?") Oh, and also - remarkably insulting to equate homosexuality with pedophilia, but that shoud go without saying. Sadly, it looks like no one ever said it to Diana Gabaldon.

Also: please stop writing every single horrible, awful, grisly, depressing thing thatpops into your head. Go become a scriptwriter for CSI if you feel the need to describe the details of babies dying of dysentery;
families hanged and burned in their own homes;
an eight year old girl burnt to a crisp and with hunks of skin missing, bones showing, barely beating heart visible through the skin, big blue eyes roaming as she says only mama? several times before one of our main characters mercy-kills her;
lancing an old woman through the eyeball with a knitting needle;
cutting the fetus from a murdered woman's womb only to have it die in our fair physician' hands immediately. . .
did I miss any? I'm sure I did. The list of atrocities goes on and on and on and on and on and on for so many useless pages, and none of it has anything to do with anything. Diana? I get it. Life was hard back then. There were very tough realities. I GET IT. I have a frikken concussion from getting it so beaten into my head.

Oh let's try to wrap this up. I'm tired and my heart isn't in it and you all probably get the idea anyway.

Other points:

I don't give a flying fig about Claire's experiments with ether or penicillin. I don't care about every patient she sees. If I wanted to watch Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, I would.

Your dialogue stinks to high heaven in this book, especially if the character is just one of those who passes through the storyline and is not a permanent-ish figure. Here's a tip: Nobody says "hot dog!" unless they're a cub reporter in a 1940 newsroom. Also, I think even a 1960s stoner dude who'd gone back in time and spent SIX YEARS living with very rough outlaws in 18th century America? Would stop saying "gnarly" and "groovy" at some point.

Speaking of which, you totally blew it with Wendigo. In every possible way. The character himself, the other characters' reactions to him, his storyline, the potential - all of it. Blew it. Way to go.

You also blew it with wee Ian and the story of What Happened With The Injuns. It's one of the only reasons I wanted to read this book, and while his story was poignant, it fell flat. Maybe because he had no compelling reason to tell it. No, I don't consider finding the half-buried bones of a mammoth a compelling reason to confide in your cousin (and why the fuck would he tell her and not Jamie?) about your lost wife and child.

Your physical comedy sucks. Actually, all your comedy sucks. You're not funny. Stop trying to be. It's embarrassing.

I saw that ether bomb coming a mile away. Actually, I thought of it when they had the house surrounded and Claire was in her surgery and trying to think of weapons as she observed the men in her yard huddle together, and I thought Weapons! Ether! Quick grab it and throw it and they'll all pass out and ta-da! Sadly, Claire didn't think of this incredibly obvious device. Funny, seeing as how that goddamn ether preoccupied every other thought she had for 900+ pages.

Incidentally, they look like total shit-for-brains, what with how they know that they're supposed to die in a fire at home and yet they still keep ether and phosphorous in the house. Fucking keep it OUTSIDE, you idiots. I mean, who wouldn't put that shit out in the snow? You have newspaper clippings of your own death, for the love of god, take the flammables outside and LEAVE them there forever. Sheesh.

Oh, and I remember the other books. You know, the 5 that came before this one. Things like when she and Frank first slept together after (that's after) the baby was born. And Brianna can't be capable of everything (worst character ever) and I don't buy Roger's sudden "calling" for an instant and what's with this huuuuuge rivalry with Brownsville getting all suddenly resolved in about 2 sentences at the end of the book? Why do you think I want to hear the details of the hot sex a couple of almost-60-year-olds are having?
Was there supposed to be a reason that that lawyer guy wanted some kind of revenge on Jamie, because you never mentioned a motivation?
Why the bloody fuck is Jamie going back to Scotland to get his printing press?
And why is he coming back?
And why wouldn't you write the goodbye scene between them and their daughter and grandchildren when they all know they'll never see each other again and that's one of the huge things you've been building toward?
And why did they have like no conversations, any of them, about anything important?
Can you explain to me why I should care about Prince Charlie's gold?
Or why you didn't make this story a little bit about the Revolution in which it's set?

I dunno, can you even tell your ass from your elbow anymore, woman?

To Diana Gabaldon, I'd say: look thee to the hideous example of Anne "I've Gone Totally Insane" Rice and beware the path you tread. Most people already have a god, and you ain't it, sister.

To her editor, I'd say: The book should've started at chapter 76. Yes, that means cutting 75 chapters, and about 700 pages. So? No, seriously -- so what? It's incredibly obvious. You read along and hit the opening of Chapter 76 and there's this little jolt to it; something in the story says click and there it is. Those first 75 chapters are nothing but the writer wandering about the page and trying to figure stuff out, playing around. It's like 700 pages of scratch paper. It's all cutting-room floor stuff, and not the kind that cultural historians lament the loss of, trust me. Then take those last couple hundred pages and expand those storylines and voila - you have what we thought we were paying for. I mean jaysus, if little nobody me can see it, a big deal editor (definition: one who edits) like you should be able to.

To anyone who's thinking of reading it, I'd say: Obviously don't.

But what I'd also say, and what makes me really sad is that I really mean this: I'm done. I'm not reading the next. It's supposed to be the last, but she's said that about the last 2 or 3 of them. I'm really done, because she's made me thoroughly sick of the whole thing. And that's bad, because I am an incredibly loyal reader. Years from now, I'll ask Snookie to mark the Very Very End, the last scene, the story coming to a close. I'll hope it's as graceful as its opening. But I can't greet another thick book from Gabaldon with anything other than a shudder. Where I used to be ecstatic at so much good reading ahead of me, I'm now filled with a weary kind of disgust.

I loved those books. I wish I'd never read these last couple, especially this last one, because it's just soured me unbelievably.

My advice: Read the first. If you must continue, stop at the third. Go ahead and read the fourth if you can't stand it, but don't don't don't ruin it all be going any further.

Someone stole Diana Gabaldon and her wonderful characters and her talent and her skill. And I've given up hoping she'll ever get found again.

***Edit Yet Again: Further substantive commentary/discussion can be found here.