Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St. Mary’s #1) by Jodi Taylor is one of the most bizarre, riotous, insane, genre-defying, unique, comedic, tragic, bloody, sexy books out there. It’s like Monty Python’s Flying Historians. Because they’re British.
The main character and hero of our story is Madeleine (Max) Maxwell. We follow her around through all these adventures and the story is generally told from her point of view. And an entertaining story it is, since she’s quite a character. Her upbringing is a bit of a mystery but seems to have not been very pleasant. She doesn’t seem to have any family or friends or love interest. She seems to have an introverted yet aggressive personality and has no trouble telling anyone what she thinks without any filters to stop her. Maybe that explains the lack of boyfriends. She’s in her late twenties, short in height, with red hair. She’s not really pretty, but not repellent either. She’s just graduated from a university and is not sure what to do with the rest of her life when she receives an email from an old teacher urging her to apply to St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research.
St. Mary’s is a strange place. It’s a self-contained organization that takes care of everyone who works there as if it was a combination of a medieval monastery and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Not only does the staff all live at St. Mary’s, but they have their own cafeteria, bar, hospital, doctors, security, research library, R&D, I.T., you name it. If they need it to survive, it’s on the grounds. This is necessary because St. Mary’s actually houses a group of historians that do historical research by hopping into their Time Machines and traveling back to the past to see what really happened. Cool.
Clearly, all of this time hopping has to be kept out of the public eye. One of the downsides of working at St. Mary’s is that you can’t tell anyone from outside what goes on there, or you will be terminated with extreme prejudice. And they’re not kidding.
I love time travel stories, especially when there're lots of rules the time travelers have to adhere to. Apparently you can’t go back in time and create a paradox (kill your grandfather so that you’re never born) or do something to change the future since it’s already happened. So no, you can’t kill baby Hitler in his crib to prevent WWII. Worse yet, if you do try to change history, or do something that accidentally changes history, History (with a capital “H”) will smack you down so the change never takes place. Of course, there are loopholes and exceptions to these rules as well which will present our team of historians an incredible opportunity to get into trouble. But really, this book is so much fun, by the end you don’t really care.
Besides Max there is quite a cast to support St. Mary’s and it’s other time-traveling historians. The author lists all the characters at the beginning of the book, who they are, what their jobs are, a little hint about their personalities, what they look like, and who they want to sleep with.
The crew of historians, administrators, engineers, protective muscle and support staff is constantly involved in one plot or another to investigate the past. They have to navigate romance, sex, accidental death, extended hospital stays, betrayal, and murder. These characters are well developed by the author. You will find their exploits fast-paced and interesting. This story will hold your interest and keep you waiting to see what happens next.
There are many descriptions of the past, from London in the 1300’s to World War I, to the Cretaceous Period (dinosaurs!), and all are described in intimate detail. Whether Jodi Taylor did extensive research to be as accurate as currently thought or just made it all up doesn’t matter. You will be sucked into history and the adventures of this reckless crew as they throw caution to the winds to accomplish their missions.
Jodi Taylor apparently takes great pride in saying that her books don’t fit into one specific genre. I suspect the 400 five-star reviews (so far) are a bit of schadenfreude for any publishers that rejected this book because they couldn’t label it (my guess on that). That’s certainly the case.
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Popular Highlights in this book
‘It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.’Highlighted by 254 Kindle readers- Studying history opened doors to other worlds and other times and this became my escape and my passion.Highlighted by 127 Kindle readers
- Silence holds no fears for me. I never feel the urge to fill it as so many other people do.Highlighted by 121 Kindle readers
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Top reviews from other countries
Maura Cerioli
Nice book but it borrows too much from Connie Willis
Reviewed in Italy on July 2, 2022
Dr. Tim Parker
A fun read, very entertaining, and a great start to the series!
Reviewed in Canada on September 23, 2020Guy Hermans
OK but derivative and unfinished
Reviewed in the Netherlands on June 12, 2021Abraham Tharakan
I heartily recommend this book - humor and adventure and...
Reviewed in India on August 26, 2018
Roslyn
Wonderful story and great new author for my library.
Reviewed in Australia on January 2, 2023