Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor (Chronicles of St Mary’s book 1)

I admit I kept putting off reading this book although several people told me I’d love it. I finally got around to it and I’m glad I did.

This is a really fun book and I enjoyed it. It’s fairly light-hearted although there are one or two quite shocking moments thrown in. The concept of historians travelling back to the past isn’t new but I’ve never seen it handled in quite such detail before.

Jodi Taylor can write. Her characters are entertaining and have enough variety to keep things interesting. The plot is detailed and fairly frenetic – she gets through a huge amount of action very quickly so there is no chance of anybody getting bored.

The things I wasn’t quite so keen on, have more to do with my own personal taste than this book, which I think is great. I admit that on the whole I’m not a fan of first person narratives as I often find the other characters don’t come across strongly enough. I’ve seen it done – the early Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters manage to convey a wide variety of characters very successfully. Jodi Taylor pulls it off some of the time but I would have liked to have gained a better sense of Leon, especially since he’s clearly important. Perhaps I’ll pick that up in the next book.

The other thing that I wasn’t completely sure of was the mad pace of the action – it felt as though there was literally no down time. I’m not surprised that Max was exhausted, I was myself. Great fun, but I’d like to see her get a break occasionally.

Having said that, I loved the book and will definitely read the next one. Perfect holiday reading in my opinion.

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