Just One Damned Thing After Another

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.