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It’s the end of Drought-lander! Season 5 of the Starz series Outlander began this weekend and I am thrilled to have the Frasers and Mackenzies back in my television rotation. Episode 501 was supposed to drop on Sunday the 16th, but those with the Starz app were able to stream the episode early starting on Thursday night. Happy Valentine’s Day to us, indeed!

As Nikki teased during the Masterpiece post last month, I am a die-hard Outlander fan. After 4 full seasons of the show, 8 completed novels, numerous novella collections, 2 Outlandish Companions, and an entire spin-off series of novels featuring fan favorite Lord John Grey by Diana Gabaldon, there is more than enough story to consume during the drought between TV seasons.

I do not intend on spoiling any plot details, but by this point in the saga if you haven’t read or watched, it’s not my fault if you continue reading and spoil things for yourself. Before I start discussing the newest season, however, let’s travel back in time, 19 years in the past…

In the fall of 2001 (or winter of 2002, I’ve slept since then), Diana Gabaldon toured the country for the release of The Fiery Cross, the fifth book in the Outlander series. Please imagine 5 high school girls filling a minivan to be driven by one of their fathers the 30 minutes to Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville. (A local bookstore which closed in 2010, after 30 years in business.) It was my first author event. We listened greedily to Herself (the title all true fans call the authoress) read an excerpt from The Fiery Cross and then proceeded to stand in line to have books signed. We were, without question, the youngest readers in attendance. We had started reading the Outlander series two years before at the beginning of high school, so by the time The Fiery Cross was released we were all ready for the saga to continue.

So far, every season of the show has followed the timeline of the first four books, one book for each season: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, and Drums of Autumn. The producers and writers have remained as true to the plot and majority of the details as possible, and have constantly consulted with Herself through the entire process of re-creating a much beloved book series into a television phenomenon. I have rewatched all 4 seasons over the course of the past two weeks and am always awed by the stunning cinematography and superb acting skills of even the most minor of characters. The cast is loaded with talent: Maria Doyle Kennedy, Tobias Menzies, Frances de la Tour, Dominique Pinon, and Simon Callow to name just a few! I adore the entire soundtrack which is composed by Bear McCreary, of Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead fame. What I really have learned to appreciate is how the opening title of each season reflects that season’s plot in the arrangement and lyric of the Skye Boat Song.

For those who do not know the basic premise, click on the arrow below for slight spoilers.

We follow WWII English combat nurse Claire Randall through the standing stones of Craig na Dun from 1945 and arrive in 1743 where she meets and falls in love with our favorite fictional highlander, James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser. They meet and dine with kings and princes, fight in battles, swim in deep political waters, and pretty much avoid living a boring life. They end up living in two different centuries for 20 years, following the battle of Culloden and the failed Scottish Jacobite Rebellion, so that Claire may raise their daughter Brianna in her own time with her first husband, Frank Randall. Following Frank’s death, and with Brianna’s blessing, Claire returns to 1767 to live with Jamie, after finding out that Jamie did not in fact die during the battle of Culloden as she had previously thought. Brianna then continues the historical research of her mother’s life in colonial America, and travels back in time to save her and Jamie from a deadly fire which would happen just a few short years after their long-awaited reunion. Brianna’s great love, Roger Wakefield Mackenzie, follows her through the stones, drama ensues, but now we are prepared to celebrate their wedding in the mountains of North Carolina on Fraser’s Ridge.

I am going to throw out my spicy take on the whole Jamie and Claire love story: I prefer Bree and Roger. For those of you more familiar with their story maybe you won’t be surprised, or can at least appreciate the difference of opinion. It has nothing to do with Jamie and Claire getting older, having a 20-something-year-old daughter guarantees that. And I can’t quite put into words why I find the love and union between Brianna and Roger to be just as powerful, if not more so, than Jamie and Claire, but I certainly see their growth as characters as central to the later books’ pull for me.

For those who are put-off by your typical romance book trope, these books are not that. Filled with more historical research than some non-fiction works, they still manage to enthrall readers and watchers of the show alike, with battles, political intrigue, social justice, and, as always, the love scenes. I’m certainly going to continue to consume any piece of work that Herself puts out into the world, or that brings her world into a visual medium. (For a complete, historically chronological list of reading material, click here.) I love both versions of Outlander for different reasons, and I will continue to read and re-read, watch and re-watch until my eyesight gives out. And even then, there’s the audio!

~Ashley

What are your favorite movie or TV adaptations and why? Or, do you avoid adaptations because the movie is never as good as the book? Let us know in the comments!