Outlander Book Club: Voyager Chapter 8 breakdown

Outlander Book 3, Chapter 8 is the first chapter from Lord John Grey’s perspective

Outlander Book 3 continues to open the perspectives of the story in Chapter 8. While we do get a little from Jamie’s view, we get a much bigger look at Lord John Grey as a character.

This chapter takes us to 1755 with Lord John Grey arriving at Ardsmuir Prison. It may surprise many to learn that Lord John Grey gained a lot of focus so early on in the book. After all, the previous two books had mostly been from Claire’s POV (with a little Roger in the second book) and we’d only just started to see things from Jamie’s POV.

The book remains written in third-person although from Lord John’s eyes. It’s an important chapter too, giving us a look at life at Ardsmuir Prison from the eyes of a newcomer. Lord John is just as surprised to hear about the state of the prison as we are.

We also get a sense of why Lord John has been sent to be the Governor of the prison. It’s clear that this is a punishment, but we only get a hint of why he needs to be punished and that it could have been a lot worse.

This is a relatively average length when it comes to Voyager chapters, coming it at around the 45-minute mark on Audible. It’s packed with information that couldn’t all make it to the TV series. However, we got enough to get a sense of Lord John being punished for something and Jamie’s life behind the walls.

Of course, there was one major change to the story in the series. We’ll get into that.