Drums of Autumn

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Genre: Historical, Romance, Sci-Fi

Rating: A-

The fourth instalment in the Outlander series, Drums of Autumn takes our heroes Claire and Jamie Fraser to the American colonies just before the American Revolution.  While Claire knows what is going to happen she's not certain an all the details and knows that she and her family must walk a thin line so as to survive the Revolution with their lives intact.  Newcomers to the land, the Frasers must establish themselves and Jamie dreams of gathering up the men that he was in prison with.  Meanwhile, in the mid-20th century their daughter Brianna is coming to terms with now essentially being an orphan, having lost her mother and the father that she has only just learned of.  In order to come to terms with this, Brianna and the historian Roger Wakefield seek out information about Claire and Jamie, with the hope of discovering what happens to them.

The question that I always have here is just why Claire and Jamie decide to settle in America, at least knowing what they know.  Regardless of their allegiance to the British crown (which does exist for Claire if not her husband), being somewhere largely unaffected by the war just seems kind of safer and in the long run smarter.  Once they commit to making life work in America I get why they chose to stay, but I always wonder why they decided to make that commitment in the first place.  I don't even buy that Jamie wouldn't have had friends or family in Canada to help him establish himself - Jamie seems to have friends or family just about everywhere he goes.

That being said, I did like the general story of Drums.  Things get a lot more complicated in this part of the series than they ever seemed to be in the first two (or three) books, but it's an enjoyable complicated.  I am never too sure about Brianna and Roger as characters, and even less so as time travellers.  Claire seems to have fit in both the 18th and the 20th century, while Brianna and Roger seem to only fit in the 20th, despite their travelling to the 18th (and Jamie, who is stationary in time, doesn't seem as though he would fit in the 20th, although if given the opportunity and need I have no doubt that he would make it work if it meant being with Claire).  I do like the overarching villain of Stephen Bonnett, though, and find the threat that he adds to things to be really interesting.  I grew to kind of hate Geillis in the earlier books, and not in a good way, so I was glad to see that they were really done with her and had moved on to a new threat - or to at least be given that feeling.