Diana Gabaldon is a difficult author to classify by genre. Bookstores often like to place her on the romance shelves but do so at their peril as Gabaldon definitely does not consider herself a romance writer. Her novels are very much historical pieces but with a little slice of time travel pushing them things into the speculative fiction realm.

However you choose to classify them, one truth is self-evident. This is an author who can tell one heck of a good story.

Coming from a background of a research professor in the sciences, it is not surprising that there is a lot of research evident in Gabaldon's novels. This myriad of facts and data are woven nicely through the novel without resorting to telling the reader or info-dumping and really draw the reader into the story. For example, exactly what does gunpowder in the priming pan of a musket smell like? I believe I now know, courtesy of Gabaldon.

We also see realism in the book. Our protagonist is a woman from the twentieth century now residing in the eighteenth century. She is a doctor, trained in modern medicine. But there is a limit to how much use that is going to be in, say, 1778, without access to modern medicine and facilities. And how many doctors from our era would actually know the medicinal properties of herbs to make up concoctions that they could use 200 years earlier? Even getting instruments to work with is difficult. For example, surgical scissors need to be especially hand-crafted.

The Outlander series started in Scotland at the time of the Jacobite Rebellion. That was now years ago with the protagonist and her Highlander husband now in colonial America at the time of the Revolutionary War. Yet events from the past are still there, continuing to have an impact.

Where the story is particularly well woven is with the character relationships. They are just so believable to the reader. There is distinct sensuality between some of them, which is possibly why the tag of romance is still applied to Gabaldon's work at times. But anyone expecting blonde virgins, panting helplessly in their torn bodices while in the hands of a tall, dark stranger, is going to be disappointed.

There is a romantic element present. But so too is there in the work of many other authors who are not classified as romance. For example, nobody would classify Wilbur Smith a writer of romance. Yet he has characters in romantic situations, not to mention sex (and perhaps something of a fixation on large penis size, but that's another story).

At the end of the day, the real test is whether or not the reader is drawn into an engaging read, enjoying the experience. Echo in the Bones passes that test with flying colours.

Ross C. Hamilton