The Exile is a graphic representation of Diana Gabaldon's first book, Outlander. The basic premise of the story is that a mysterious woman, Claire, travels back in time in Scotland and gets caught up in events that force her to marry a young Scotsman named Jamie. They are constantly managing to get in trouble but tend to fall in love with each other despite themselves as well.
Since this is a graphic novel I'll focus on the art first. While the pictures were very very pretty, they completely don't fit my original thoughts on what everything would look like. Gabaldon tries to explain this with a footnote at the end explaining why some things had to be the way they are, but my thought is that if you can't make it like the book and true to it, why bother? I was mostly disappointed in Claire, who really did look like a tart throughout the whole book and who's cleavage grew larger and larger with each page. I was half surprised she didn't float away. Jamie was ok, but still didn't really look like I pictured him to be.
Because this book boasted that it was from Jamie's perspective, I was much surprised to see that it really wasn't. It had scenes primarily with him of course, but the whole book was just a very scant retelling of Outlander with no new information that I could see. And since it had been awhile since I've read Outlander, I even had some trouble lining up the storyline for a bit. There were also side stories involving other characters and in this type of a book I thought they were out of place because there wasn't enough information shared to keep it from being confusing.
I just wasn't impressed by this. It had the opportunity to be something unique and it just didn't seem to pull it off real well. The artwork was nice but that was about the only thing that was done well in this book.
The Exile
Copyright 2010
I am not a typical Gabaldon fan -- I read the first three books, but stopped after VOYAGER, and I don't have EVERY single character, love scene, setting, and plot point memorized. Nevertheless, I thought this little graphic novel was a lot of fun. Jamie and Claire are drawn much sexier and more fresh-faced than I pictured them in the book. In a way that's not so good for Claire. She's a tough, smart, worldly woman, and in this graphic version she's too cute to be a minute over seventeen!
ReplyDeleteBut I adored the humor and the light-hearted romantic moments so much more, like when Jamie is holding her on his lap and he says out loud "I will protect you always" but inside his head he's thinking, "she has the most wonderful round bottom!" Diana Gabaldon is a genius, and in 500 years people will still be reading OUTLANDER and comparing it to ANNA KARENINA and ULYSSES. But the lady has a sense of humor too, and this little book was a real treat for her fans.
I'm glad you liked it. You're right, some of the pictures were funny, but I think that a graphic novel Outlander just wasn't for me. Thanks for stopping by my blog!
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