Book Review: Drums of Autumn

Continuing my reading journey through Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, I've now made my way to her fourth entry, the 1996 novel Drums of Autumn.  By this point (sorry for the mild 19-year-old spoilers), the time travel aspects of the story involve not only Claire Fraser, but also her daugher Brianna.

The main thrust of the novel focuses on Brianna's discovery that her mother (who decided to return to the 1700s and her husband Jamie in the third novel Voyager) was destined to die a few short years later in a house fire in the American colonies.  So Brianna takes a journey herself into the past, and it may be my favourite one since the first book.

One thing I have to say about the series is that it's length poses something of a challenge, I'm used to reading a book every two to three days, but at nearly a thousand pages a volume, the Outlander series sometimes takes me a week or more to get through.  Drums of Autumn (880 pages), however took me six days - as the setting of the series has moved from Scotland to France, Jamaica and now the Revolutionary period of the United States, I'm finding that I spend the rest of my month looking forwrd to the next in the series (I've been reading one a month since April), and at the halfway point, I definitely have to say the series is well worth the read.