Drums of Autumn vs The Newcomes: Which Should You Read?

Drums of Autumn Diana Gabaldon · 1997 ★★★★☆ 4.4 928 pages · ≈ 17 h 11 m · Moderate

“I heard the drums long before they came in sight.”

The magnificent saga continues....It began in Scotland, at an ancient stone circle. There, a doorway, open to a select few, leads into the past--or the grave. Claire Randall survived the extraordinary passage, not once…

The Newcomes William Makepeace Thackeray · 1853 ★★★★☆ 3.7 801 pages · ≈ 14 h 50 m · Demanding

“A CROW, who had flown away with a cheese from a diary window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.”

The Newcomes is Thackeray's most essentially 'Victorian' novel, generous in its proportions, sharp in its criticism of the moral convolutions of the age, and encyclopaedic in its reference. Set in the 1830s and 1840s, a…