Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon is the fourth in the time travelling historical fiction series following our protagonists Claire and Jamie Fraser as they attempt to start a new life in the American Colonies. Weighing in at nearly 900 pages, or 44 hrs and 54 mins of audiobook, this is a real behemoth of a book. It’s also the book on my shelf that’s taken me the longest to read. GoodReads tells me that I finished the previous book in the series, Voyager, back in April 2015, and I started Drums of Autumn around that time. This means that Drums of Autumn has taken me almost a year to finish. I read it in chunks. I would read a large section – usually when the Outlander TV series piqued my interest again – and then struggle to continue and put it aside for other books. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it; I simply struggled to maintain my interest to read 800+ pages over a short period. What I liked The characters. I love the characters in the book, particularly Claire and Jamie and their unconventional romance. Gabaldon has said that she wanted to show a mature relationship…
The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak is a historical fiction novel based on the early life of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Through the eyes of bookbinder’s daughter turned lady-in-waiting Varvara it tells the story of Catherine’s arrival at court and of her navigation through Court politics to the Imperial Throne itself. Now, historical fiction is not a genre of which I read a lot; however I was intrigued by this one and it turned out to be the perfect antidote to my waiting-for-Dorothy-Must-Die reading slump. I don’t know a great deal about Russian history and I found myself checking Wikipedia from time to time to learn more and to help me separate fact from fiction. What I liked Engaging protagonist. Although the novel is about the rise to power of Catherine the Great, we follow her story through Varvara’s eyes as Varvara herself goes through her own journey. Varvara is intelligent, resourceful and has a keen eye for observation. Although she starts off relatively powerless, by the end of the book, she has amassed considerable wealth and influence, making hard choices along the way. In that respect her journey mirrors Catherine’s. The vivid picture Stachniak paints of court glamour…