The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel by Diana Gabaldon

Hardback Edition

I became a fan of Diana Gabaldon's 'Outlander' series back in the 1990s. I was actually introduced to Diana Gabaldon's novels by my maternal grandmother of all people. My grandmother has always been an avid reader, like myself. I do not recall how my grandmother first heard about the 'Outlander' series. All I do remember is that my grandmother shared with me the details of Outlander (the first novel in the series) by Diana Gabaldon. She said Outlander was a wonderful, must read novel. 

So, I read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, along with several other novels in the 'Outlander' series, and have enjoyed reading these novels very much. I am a bit behind in the 'Outlander' series at the moment though and will need to play catch up at some point.

I became aware of The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel by Diana Gabaldon in the past year or so... Yet this graphic novel was published back in 2010. How'd I miss that bit of information I'd like to know!?!? Generally, I do not read a lot of graphic novels or manga for that matter... But being a fan of the 'Outlander' series, I'm surprised I wasn't aware of this graphic novel sooner. 

Needless to say, I decided to read The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel by Diana Gabaldon. After reading, The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, I have mixed thoughts about it.

The artwork rendered by illustrator, Huang Nguyen, is beautifully done. However, both Claire and Jamie are not how I had envisioned they would look... Claire ends up looking too busty and Jamie looks kind of scrawny to me. However, the biggest issue I have with the illustration work done by Huang Nguyen, was that many of the male characters in this graphic novel looked too similar, making it difficult to keep each of the male characters identities straight throughout the novel.

As far as the storyline goes for The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel... It was decent enough to be entertaining and interesting as a spinoff of the 'Outlander' series, but it didn't W-O-W me like I thought/hoped it would. If I'd never read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon prior to reading The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, I'd have been completely turned off from ever reading Outlander or the rest of the 'Outlander' series.

Also, there were quite a bit of Gaelic words and phrases used in The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, which I didn't mind... But after the initial translations of what the Gaelic words/phrases meant, the definitions weren't mentioned again when the word or phrase was used later on. This was frustrating as I didn't want to have to search back through this graphic novel looking for the meaning of the Gaelic word or phrase.

Claire also seemed to have more of a potty mouth than I recalled from the 'Outlander' series. Sure, Claire's feisty and confident, but she's not one who'd have a potty mouth. So, this was a bit of a turn off for me.

The best parts of The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel for me, were the sections written by Diana Gabaldon about how The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel came to be and the actual making of the book itself. I learned that Diana Gabaldon at one time wrote comic book scripts for Disney! 

Below is a book trailer about The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel by Diana Gabaldon, which I found on YouTube:

I am giving The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel by Diana Gabaldon a rating of 3 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!