Dragonfly in Amber

**Book 1**

The beginning of this book threw me for a loop for a bit. Why? Because Claire Randall is in 1968 with her 20 year old daughter Brianna. She's looking for information on some men who were supposedly at the Battle of Culloden, where the Highlander army suffered a crushing defeat and Charles Stuart was denied all hopes of the throne of Scotland and England. Now, Brianna looks a lot like someone we've met before - Jamie. But, this is Brianna Randall, a girl who is raised by her mother, Claire, and her father, Frank. Only, we all know Frank isn't biologically her father.

That fact is quickly proven by Roger Wakefield, a young man who was once a scrawny little boy asleep in a chair in 1945. Roger finds information about Claire's return to her time in 1948, where she was malnourished and two months pregnant. Yeah. Frank couldn't have been Brianna's father.

Anyway, most of the book is told in a flashback. Claire is finally telling her daughter her story. She is trying to introduce Brianna to her father, Jamie.

The story starts in Paris. Claire and Jamie are trying to thwart Prince Charles as he attempts to raise money for a second Jacobite Rising. Claire is pregnant and miserably sick. Jamie is trying to cope with his pregnant wife when she vomits every morning. Jamie takes over his cousin's wine business almost as a cover for his plans (plus, his cousin had business away from Paris). There are a lot of struggles for the couple.

It starts with angering a rival wine merchant when Claire causes his entire shipment to be destroyed. Then someone tries to poison Claire, someone tries to kill Jamie, someone tries to rape Claire. Jamie meets Jack Randall again and swears to see him dead. Jamie and Jack duel (to rather interesting ends), Jamie ends up in the Bastille. Claire has a miscarriage and basically gives up on life until she's pulled back into the world of the living by a sort of creepy apothecarist that Claire has befriended. Claire has to plead with King Louis to free Jamie, although she doesn't actually want to see or talk to her husband because she blames him for losing the baby. Jamie finds her, they reconcile, they return to Scotland.

In Scotland is where it really starts to go downhill. Jamie learns that Charles has forged an oath from Jamie that he will support Charles' campaign to regain the throne. It angers him because he knows how it will end from Claire. He wants to keep his men from dying. But he can't.

Claire almost dies a few more times in the course of the book. It sucks that she's commonly seen as a witch. She just wants to help people.

Overall, I am still enjoying this series and I'm so excited to see where it goes from here.