Outlander Book Club: Voyager Chapter 8 breakdown

Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter

We get to know a little more about Lord John Grey in this chapter. He knows all about Jamie. He also now knows that Claire wasn’t an English prisoner but Jamie’s wife. We get memories of his 16-year-old self, who is embarrassed by the deception. It turns out that after John’s attempts to kill Jamie only Hal and Hector, a man John loved, spoke to him.

It’s clear that John gained feelings for Jamie during this time. There’s a hint that there is more to come between the relationship between Lord John Grey and Jamie; a hint of the friendship on Jamie’s side but love from John.

I think there’s also a hint of the jealousy John will feel against Claire. It’s not something I ever thought of from the TV show and questioned why John and Claire were ever really jealous of each other considering the circumstances and the time. However, this chapter gives us a hint of that jealousy and why it occurs. It’s all about how Claire made him feel because of her deception.

Adapting the Voyager chapter

It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that this chapter was adapted. Lord John Grey’s introduction was left the same. For the most part, Jamie’s time in the cells with the various prisoners talking about Grey was also the same.

We didn’t get as much time with Lord John Grey in his quarters, though. There wasn’t the time to delve into Lord John as much, part of why I’d love a spin-off focusing on the character, or time to really look at the state of the cells and the prison overall.

The show got the important elements from the introduction of Lord John Grey. After all, the episode in question needed to cover the next few chapters of the story.

The show did change one thing. During the earlier chapters of Voyager, we learned that Murtagh had probably died. Jamie couldn’t remember what happened, but he was sure his godfather didn’t survive. We were left with questions over Murtagh’s fate in the first episode of Outlander Season 3, but it was in Episode 3 that we found out the truth.

Murtagh had survived. He was now a prisoner at Ardsmuir.

While it did change the loss Jamie felt at Culloden, the show opted for this changed due to the character Murtagh had become on the show. He’d gained more development and Duncan Lacroix became important to the fanbase. There were many happy that Murtagh survived, and I loved how he was written into the Regulator storyline so I felt more connection to that during the fifth season.

What did you see while reading Voyager Chapter 8? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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