Diana Gabaldon's Drums of Autumn (Outlander Book 4)

This was definitely my favorite installment so far. 

As always, don't read unless you've finished the book or want to be slightly spoiled (I'll try to keep it to a minimum).

Here continues the story of Claire and Jamie Fraser, tossed into the wilds of 1760s America. As a parallel story, we also hear from Brianna, Claire and Jamie's grown daughter living in late 1960s Boston, and her bashful beau Roger Wakefield. Normally I don't like the addition of more points of view in a series that was originally from a single viewpoint, but I feel that expanding this universe was worth any confusion. Gabaldon is very clear at the start of the chapter whose viewpoint we're following, and since most of what Jamie and Claire are doing is less than exciting (e.g. travel, building a house, waiting...) it provides a pleasant interlude to follow Brianna and Roger for a while. 

Like the books before, there are sensual moments interrupted by volatile circumstances, misunderstandings resolved in touching sentimental scenes, violence that, I believe, realistically portrays what our characters would be going through in this time frame. This book, more than the previous installments of the series, led us through the continuation of the story smoothly and seamlessly, without any of the slapstick (and somewhat insulting) comedic happenings of the previous book. 

• Series: Book 4 of 8 (so far)
• Number of pages: 1070 (Mass market paperback edition)
• Year published: 1997
• Days to read: 9 days (only because of a family trip during this time, lol)

Diana Gabaldon's Voyager (Outlander Book 3)

As before, if you haven't finished book 2, you might want to turn back.

Warning ends.

 I'm finding it more and more difficult to review the books in this series without giving away anything, so here goes my first foray into using HTML to hide my spoilerific comments from you poor souls who haven't yet read the book.

 I truly enjoyed the first half of this novel. It flew by in less than 48 hours. It seemed effortless, much like most of the rest of the series so far.

Once Claire finds out that Jamie is a smuggler and hides his business dealings using his print shop and a brothel, things kind of go downhill from there.

In the second half, hijinks ensue, problems arise, Claire never stays put like she's supposed to... in short, I felt very much like I was watching a mixture of Gilligan's Island, the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and one of those middle-of-the-night telenovelas on Mexican TV. Still with the characters I've grown to love and that increasingly adorable wordplay between Jamie and Claire.

 Although this third installment of the Outlander series was quite different from the first two, the characters remain endearing, the story continues, and I gladly travel on to book 4 to find out what new devils (real and imagined) plague Jamie and Claire's happily ever after, while I do wonder at what point the story ends.

• Series: Book 3 of 8 (so far)
• Number of pages: 870 (Trade paperback edition)
• Year published: 1994
• Days to read: 6 days

Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs

Book 4 of the Mercy Thompson series was a redemption for me. It was so much more cohesive than book 3, and although it wasn't completely clear who the enemy would be, at the end it was more rewarding than any of the previous books in the series.

This installment had a very Butcher-esque feel to it: between the vampires who hate Mercy, the fae who can't be trusted, and the werewolves who owe her their allegiance even though some of them shun Mercy for being less than them, our poor protagonist is pulled in so many directions. This book solves at least two minor plot lines, one temporarily, the other maybe longer-term, and comes to a conclusion that is satisfying and sensible. Thank goodness for Bone Crossed; because of it, I may continue reading the series.

• Series: book 4 of 10 (so far)
• Number of pages: 287 (mass market paperback)
• Year published: 2009
• Days to read: 2 days

Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs

I read this, book 3 of the Mercy Thompson series, as a filler, something to tide me over until the next Diana Gabaldon book comes on Monday. So maybe you'll want to take my review with a grain of salt; it's tough going from an epic historical fantasy to something more simple and young-adultish. Not that I don't like this series. It's light, straightforward, and features a love triangle between a pretty normal girl and two powerful werewolves. I'm just saying that it was jarring.

On to the review. Like I said, this is book 3 of the series. I'll go back and review the first two another time; I really like to get these written directly after reading. Since it's been several weeks since I started the series, I think it wouldn't be fair to review books 1 and 2 until I re-read them. And I would recommend you read them also before continuing with this review.

Once again, Mercedes gets herself into a situation that is more than she can really handle. This time, it's a series of murders that the fae ask her to help investigate until they decide that she knows too much, and then they tell her to leave it to them.

You ever walk into a college lecture about something you have no knowledge of? Like, medieval poetry or advanced calculus? And even though you know the professor knows what he's talking about, and what he's saying makes perfect sense to him, you're left floundering to connect any dots to create meaning from the English words he's speaking but that you don't comprehend? Yeah, that's kind of where I existed in this book. Surprising that 280 pages can be so confusing. Although I think I got the general idea, I couldn't help but feel like I was missing something while reading this book, like Briggs had assigned supplementary reading and I missed that email. It really felt as if she had more to say in this story but she ran out of time. If she had given the manuscript to another few beta readers who could point out those odd little holes where more filling was needed, it could have been a very interesting story. It certainly wasn't bad enough to make me stop reading the series, because I still want to find out what happens next to Mercy and her little band of werewolves, but I was sorely disappointed in this book. Here's hoping book 4 brings us back to Briggs' fast-paced, but fully fleshed-out, realistic storytelling.

• Series: book 3 of 10 (so far)
• Number of pages: 287 (paperback mass-market edition)
• Year published: 2008
• Days to read: 2 days