Gabaldon is well-known for writing romance novels, although I hear that she dislikes the label. I don't know why - although Outlander involves time travel (briefly), and historical aspects, it revolves chiefly around the romance of Claire and Jamie in 18th century Scotland.
Claire travels several hundred years into the past through a stone circle. She seems relatively undisturbed about this occurrence, which irritated me. She very swiftly settles down, and seems to forget entirely her husband whom she has left behind in the future. She meets Jamie when he saves her from being raped and she nurses him from a bullet wound. They progress to madly having sex everywhere, at anytime of day, and having what I found to be a strangely abusive relationship with each other.
I enjoyed the pace of this novel, but various elements of the characters were most unrealistic - Claire's happily settling down in the past, for example. I found the scene where Jamie beats Claire extremely off-putting, and his nickname for her - "Sassenach" - began to drive me crazy about halfway through the book.
I enjoyed the rollicking haphazardness of the story though, and I'll be reading one or two of the sequels to see if the characterisation improves. I'd say this was a 3 out of 5, occasionally verging on a 2.
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