Just One Damned Thing After Another

This review accurately describes my feelings towards this book. Read it, it is spoiler free: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1714173439?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

This book has a serious issue with causality. Things just happens, without any indication of what might have lead up to it. It also has no plot. Again, things just happen. There is no character development, they just do whatever.

I did like this book enough to give it 2 stars. It is very well written, prose wise, in spite off all its flaws. It is like if there is 5 traits an author have to master in order to write a good book, this one got 3 out of 5 in an acceptable level. She missed the class regarding the other ones.

What follows are some of the things I didn't like about the book that made it loose 1 star. I never expected to give it more than 3 anyway. Very few books earn that score on my ratings. Also, although there are some serious offenses, none of these reach my ‘must stop reading' meter, as it was the case with so many other books.

So, any semblance of a plot starts after 1/3 of the book. There is no single hint of what this book is about until then, other then time travel is involved. Here are some of the things that annoyed me mostly because they came completely out of the blue. The protagonist name is Max by the way, and she is a historian. Her antagonist name is Barclay and her love interest is Farrel.
- a blind date where the author decided that she had 3 female characters and 3 male characters, therefore, they should mate.- Max's boss says he is from the future, and that he loves her, and she shouldn't trust him. None of these facts makes any difference to the story.- after that revelation, Max has a new mission, to travel back to the Cretaceous period. Why this period? Why her? Because, history.- while on this assignment, her close colleague and friend of 5 years (5 years??) tries to rape her.- Max has a miscarriage and decided not to tell her lover. Two things (at least) stands out about this situation: 1) while telling her doctor about her lost fetus, she was overheard by everyone in the sick bay where she was being treated. Apparently, the walls are very thin and everyone hears everyone at every time. A big fuck you to doctor/patient confidentiality. - one of the persons being treated at the same time as her was Barkley. She hears that Max has no intention to tell anyone about the incident. So she tells Farrel about it, in order to hurt her. 2) when Farrel finds out about this, he has the most out of proportion reaction ever described. He accuses her of being a slut and an evil bitch. He then offers her to any man that wants to have her. Following that, one of the guards decide to take on that offer, and we have yet another attempt rape scene.- soon after that, Farrel says he is sorry. She says it is OK, because it was kind of her fault anyway.

As if the author then realized that she has to give some sort of explanation for the things that happens, some events are written in a most obvious way.
- when the crew is left to die in the Cretaceous period, Max says 'OK, now that we're back and safe, lets reorganize and go back with more fire power and rescue our friends'. Barkley says 'No they're dead'. Repeat this back and forth 4 times in a row. And Max still had no clue that she was lying. - In a rare case of plot/character development though, Max did had reasons to suspect her as she had already made the connection that in previous occasions where other historians have traveled to the past and were killed in suspicious situations, Barkley was the one that gave the dead members instructions that got them killed.- the character of the Muse keeps giving Max hints as to what she should do. Example: 'Max, do your laundry'. Repeated 3 times, then Max finds something in her laundry that saves the day.

Other things that bothered me:
- Out of place eroticism: there is maybe 5 sentences in the book that make it R rated.
- The most amazing discovery of the world, time travel, is in the hands of rednecks and teenager-behaving adults that constantly get into physical brawls with each other and gets hammered with beer. Because that is what some of the most brilliant minds of the world do.
- History is the most important thing in the world. If a precious book is about to take a bullet, you should throw yourself in front of it. You should even risk the lives of dozens of people and the whole time-travel initiative if the book is important enough.
- Historians are OBVIOUSLY the most suited people to travel in time. They receive some James Bond like intensive training and after a few weeks they're good to go.
- Ronan, another one of the antagonists, is always one step ahead of them. And nobody bothered to find out why.
- Max is a prominent historian, maybe one of the best in the country. After being fired from St. Marry, she finds no job, has no money and is about to die of starvation. She accepts the fact that she is about to die and does nothing about it.- History is alive. If you try to change it, it will try to kill you. In the end of the book there is kind of a way out of this. History is actually protected my a Muse, and she might be the one orchestrating these killings.- Ronan has a chance to kill max, but he is using a blaster, that takes time to charge. While it is charging, he is attacked and looses the opportunity.

DNF at 27%

Real, actual quote:
The courtyard was full of smoke, from which ghostly figures appeared and disappeared like ghosts.

I literally would not let my 10-year-old turn in a story with that sentence in it.

The main character is pretty much a Mary Sue - pretty, unusual hair color, insufferably brilliant at everything, vaguely Tragic Backstory, etc. etc.

Most characters are given names and actions, with no descriptions or characterization, never mind actual character development. The deepest characterizations are as follows: red-headed, awesome at everything, and emotionally reserved; red-headed and mean; blue-eyed; tall; tall and blonde.

Nothing about the time travel program makes any sense. What it's for, how it's funded, how it's staffed, etc.

There's also what appears to be a central tension - Historians can observe, but if they try to interfere, History will protect itself by killing the fuck out of them. This gets triggered by the mere interest the protagonist shows when a man gets followed by some thugs - she barely takes a step toward them, and a rock literally falls out of the sky to try to squash her.

And yet! In the next chapter, she spends weeks doing medical triage in WWI, deciding who will live and who will die. (Needless to say, she is FANTASTIC at it.) And her senior colleague gets all butthurt at their companion because he laid low and tried not to change things.

That was where I gave up. The author is a bad writer and isn't even trying at internal logic for her world here. Time to go read some more Connie Willis to see this done much better!

Fun, light, and fast-moving story about an institution, known as St. Mary's, that has harnessed time travel and used it to observe history directly. I liked the idea of combining science fiction, history, and humor. These are a few of my favorite things.

I wish there had been a bit more of the sci-fi and history; at times these took a backseat to the more soapy aspects of the plot, such as romance and jealousy, other interpersonal drama.

Because the plot moved so fast, there was a lot of superficial character development. Most of the staff of St. Mary's blend together and some of them fill a role rather than have life of their own. There's the Boss (mentor), the Chief (love interest), and Isabella (nemesis) for example. Everyone is a satellite around the sun—protagonist and narrator Max.

I like Max, don't get me wrong, but she's the only one with enough substance for me to like. She's clever, she's plucky, and she has all the brilliant ideas for St. Mary's success. Max gets all the funny lines and is the only one with the nerve to rescue her colleagues, and so on. Oh, and she's attractive, but not unrealistically attractive.

I don't want to use the M-word but I do think Max is a fantasy of Taylor's, and she was more concerned that the readers should love Max rather than writing a few more well-rounded, interesting characters to balance things out.

This creates a lot of jarring moments where supporting characters do things to move the plot along/create drama instead of as an inevitable part of where their character development was headed. For instances, the Chief's sudden, raging emotional outburst and Sussman's out-of-nowhere rape attempt. I'd say these moments were “out of character” but I don't get enough personality out of them to say it's that, exactly.

I did have a good time reading this, but I'm not racing for the rest of the series. I'd be mildly curious to see if the character development ever improves in the sequels.

Dull. Really dull. 
Plenty of opportunity for character growth but they are all so flat. The main character does nothing but pine for another character. I feel like I know nothing else about her. 
The entire premise of the story is entirely predictable after the first quarter or so too. I finished it for completion rather than any need to find out how it ended. 
Overall - dull.

After first reading, I thought I could cautiously give this book three stars. After second reading, I'm afraid I'm putting it down to two stars, because I just don't enjoy it enough. I can read my way through it, but I have to push myself.

The writing and the characters are OK, and there's a mixture of humour and seriousness, which is fine. I have more of a problem with the scenario and the story.

St Mary's Institute of Historical Research is a chaotic and rather amateurish organization, underfunded and understaffed, which employs historians to go back in time and check facts or resolve mysteries. The job is intimidating. Past times are generally uncomfortable, unpleasant, and dangerous, and the attrition rate is high. Historians commonly need medical attention on returning, and get killed in action now and then. They're not well paid. No-one in his or her right mind would choose to work at St Mary's; and I feel somewhat alienated from the characters because they're all demonstrably insane.

Time-travel is dangerous; that's understandable enough. In addition, something seems to go wrong with every mission, so St Mary's staggers from one disaster to another, the main characters surviving only through a series of lucky escapes. It also has enemies, both external and internal. So the story does what it says on the tin: one damned thing after another, disaster after disaster, and I'm not keen on that kind of story.

A story in which everything goes right isn't realistic or convincing, but a story in which everything keeps going wrong isn't realistic or convincing either—if only because the people to whom all these disasters keep happening would normally take the hint and find themselves something else to do.

Admittedly, there seems to be a shortage of good jobs in their environment. Britain was half-wrecked by civil war before St Mary's was founded, and the world as a whole has suffered from the side-effects of uncontrolled time travel (hence the founding of the Time Police, which is another story). None of this background gloom and doom endears the series to me; I'm not a fan of dystopian fiction.

From the way it was written at the start, I thought this was just going to be an entertaining and fun story. But man, things got dark real fast.

This story and its main character grab you from the get-go. She's likeable, and you instantly kind of get her as a character. The rest of the characters work really well too, but a lot of these character either have a ~twist attached to them or aren't going to last long.

Events do happen super fast in this. I sometimes had to go back a bit because apparently someone had died and I had apparently missed the sentence in which that happened. It also tends to go from one emotion to another on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, which can kinda throw you for a loop, as it feels like what just happened simply cannot be real (and sometimes it wasn't even real). But don't get me wrong, this book does mess with your emotions quite successfully at times. (Grant :().

Though I am very unfamiliar with a lot of history, a very worthy read. Might get onto the sequel soon.

Good time travel-ly tale. Reminds me a bit of The Librarians and Timeless and slightly more plausible sometimes. The epilogue felt like an idea the author had and wanted to stick somewhere but didn't know where else it fit. It was oddly out of place and left me feeling a little “huh?” The ending was also a little odd. But there are some lovely plot twists and story developments that made this a good first tale for this series. Will definitely read the next installment and see how it keeps pace.

I listened to the Audible adaptation, a fun story. Reminds me somewhat of the Parasol Protectorate series. The vast majority of the time it is a fun listen with great characters.

A content warning: Attempted SA is a repeated theme, at least in the Audible version. One of these scenes is very sounds (foley) heavy, so if SA is a trigger, you may wish to avoid the Audible recording.

Re-read; just as compelling as the first time, with as many snort-aloud and a few put-down-book-amidst-uprorious-laughter moments as the first time. Perhaps because I'm an historian myself and part of an very eccentric, very nerdy organisation, I am utterly charmed by much here. Taylor has got INSTINCTS for HISTORY! I very rarely find myself highlighting quotes that I want to chase people down and read aloud, but: this book!