REVIEW: The Official Outlander Coloring Book

The gift giving season is nearly upon us, which means gift giving shopping season is basically in full swing. See, there is a reason publishers release brand new items during October (huge months for releases)- because the holidays are just around the corner! But don’t rush out and load up on all the latest stuff without being informed.

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Two huge releases happened for Outlander in October: The Official Outlander Coloring Book and The Outlandish Companion Volume 2 were set out on shelves on the same day, October 27th, and are sure to be a hit with Outlander fans this holiday season.

Now, The Outlandish Companion is a SURE hit- so feel free to gift that sucker all you want! But what about this coloring book? Is it good? Bad? Pricey? Worth it?

Bantam Books

Sit back, relax, and let us review it for you. I got my hands on a copy (which I purchased- full disclosure) and I’m ready to show you what I think!

Price

I purchased my copy at the Barnes and Noble in Leawood, Kansas for the MSRP of $16.95.

On Amazon, you can get it as low as $10, but you should always be sure to check if it’s “used”, meaning pages may have already been colored.

Overall, I don’t think this price is terrible. It’s expensive for a coloring book when you compare it to children’s coloring books, but this is for adults (Although, not X-Rated). You could easily make copies of coloring pages to reuse the book over and over, and save from buying multiple copies of the actual book. There are 45 images in the book, which roughly breaks down to .37 cents per picture.

Cover

The cover is… okay. The image on the front is a half-colored in image (that is included inside, by the way). The “Outlander” type is in foil red, which really stands out against thew white/ blue-green plaid background. Jamie’s face, though, it’s just weird. I’m not the only one who thinks this, right?

Materials

I’m a sucker for good paper, and THIS is VERY nice paper. The cover is light card stock , but still sturdy and has a glossy finish. The pages on the inside are nice, thick pages which I hope will keep my marker pens from bleeding through to the other pages. I did a Sharpie pen test and those *did* bleed through slightly, so I would beware the Sharpie pen.

Pictures

There are 45 pictures, as stated above.

26 of those pictures are “scenes” and not, say, main characters.

Bantam Books

There are 19 pictures of characters, including several of Claire and Jamie, then some of the smaller/ ancillary characters.

There are a few pictures I don’t care for, or that don’t make a lot of sense to me- One is a picture of just Claire’s chest/ collarbones, showing off the pearl necklace she wore on her wedding day. No head. No body. Just her torso, basically. Sorta strange…

The other I don’t care for is one of just a stone room with a table and chair… It’s very plain and not at all exciting. Which sort of bummed me out.

Bantam Books

Final Thoughts

In general I think this is a really cool and unique thing to add to an Outlander lover’s collection. Even if they don’t color in it, it’s cool to have.

The other cool thing about this is that the BACK of each page is not another coloring page. To save you from bleeding through to the next picture, they’ve put text on the backs of each picture, so it’s sort of like a picture book, with words to go along with each coloring page.

More from Claire and Jamie

I also think that the levels of coloring difficulty vary from picture to picture. There are some that look extremely difficult, but others have fewer small spaces to color, so a child may be able to color along with mom, or whatever.

All in all, I think this is a cool thing for the Outlander addict, and would make a wonderful gift along with a nice plaid scarf or blanket, or maybe a dram or two. Happy coloring!

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