Outlander Book Club: The Fiery Cross Chapter 42 breakdown

Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter

There is some foreshadowing in the chapter. It’s all to do with Jocasta and what she had to live through. During the conversations with Brianna, there are some of Bree’s thoughts about the stories of Jocasta’s children and Jocasta makes remarks about it being the first time in decades that she’ll change her name.

There’s more to come about Jocasta’s story and her children. We’ll start to get more over the course of this book and into the next. Get ready for a connection to gold.

There’s not just foreshadowing in the chapter. This is a chapter that involves some plot development for the big murder mystery of the book.

Adapting The Fiery Cross chapter

Brianna remained at Fraser’s Ridge during Jocasta’s wedding, where she and Roger dealt with the locusts. I did like that this happened. It gave Brianna and Roger some time together, allowing us time to see them bond. In the books, we got more time to see them bond. A TV show doesn’t have the privilege of the time a series does, so it means adapting things a little differently.

Because of time, there’s no way this chapter could have been used anyway. It could have been adapted with just Jamie finding Betty and then having Claire get involved, but that would have meant taking up time in the series that it just didn’t have. Even without pulling storylines forward from the sixth book (something that worked well for TV world), there was a lot to fit into the fifth season and the crime mystery wasn’t as important as all the other storylines.

For me, the way the show handled Jocasta’s wedding worked. We got the important moments, and we got to see some bonding between Brianna and Roger.

What did you spot while reading The Fiery Cross Chapter 42? Let us know in the comments below.

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