Just One Damned Thing After Another: The Chronicles of St. Mary's series (Chronicles of St Mary's, #1)

by Jodi Taylor

“History is just one damned thing after another” - Arnold Toynbee

A madcap new slant on history that seems to be everyone's cup of tea...

Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do 'time-travel' - they 'investigate major historical events in contemporary time'. Maintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power - especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet.

Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. Their aim is to observe and document - to try and find the answers to many of History's unanswered questions...and not to die in the process.

But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And, as they soon discover - it's not just History they're fighting.

Follow the catastrophe curve from eleventh-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. For wherever Historians go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake ...

• ISBN13: 9781783756353
• Publish Date: 20 February 2014 (first published 12 September 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
• Imprint: Accent Press Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 420
• Language: English

Reviews

[mrs_mander_reads]

So, so good. I'm excite to read the rest of the series.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

St. Mary’s is a historical research facility attached to Thurst college. It’s a small institution, remaining under the radar. The application process is quite rigorous. The training doubly so. These historians aren’t studying archaeological evidence. At least, not in the traditional way. St. Mary’s is in possession of six time machines, and it is the job of the historians to go back in time and observe history, then report their findings back to Thurst in the form of extraordinary presentations supported with technical evidence.

History occasionally disapproves of this process, of course, and there is the odd casualty.

Erm. Okay, the very common fatality. But the historians know what they’re getting into from day one.

This novel absolutely captured my imagination. There’s not many people captivated by history, but those of us who are, are very passionate. Max is a new trainee with St. Mary’s, but she is by no means a green student. She has a doctorate in history with a focus in Ancient Cultures (have I mentioned I love Max? I love Max.) She is a bit of a loner, but not a Rebel Without A Cause. She gets in so many scrapes and tumbles throughout the novel that I spent a lot of time in high angst, scratching my head and wondering how the bloody hell she was going to get out of this one. She’s smart, but horribly unlucky. She trusts too easily and acts a bit rashly.

Have I mentioned the dinosaurs? There are dinosaurs in this book. I won’t discuss that more, because I was *delighted* when I discovered there would be dinosaurs and I don’t want to give too much away. Think all the best of Michael Crichton’s imagination with the charm and spark of a witty British heroine.

One of Jodi Taylor’s strengths is that she follows through on her choices. As a writer, I appreciate the fine line between dictating the direction of your story letting the pieces fall in place. As I listened to this audiobook (small aside, excellent narration on this one), I felt like Max kept leading the story herself and I would imagine Miss Taylor in front of her computer downing glass after glass of robust red wine and violently cursing her headstrong characters as she struggled to make them follow her outline. I *adore* books like that. You feel an internal struggle, and since this book has comedic elements, it was perfect.

Along with that, the writing was shocking and funny. There were moments of great stress, but there were also moments that made me laugh out loud. Which wasn’t awkward at *all* on a bus filled with edgy Americans en route to Paris.... I loved it, even if I felt a bit foolish.

Just One Damned Thing After Another falls within the range of New Adult. Max is just post-doctorate, but the tone is light (a la Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams) and doesn’t feel properly like an adult book. It has a few mature themes - there’s a brief, tasteful sex scene - but nothing too gruesome or graphic for the YA audience.

For what it’s worth, I loved this book. I’m so glad there’s 8 more in the series so far (not including short stories). Also, I’d like to be Max when I grow up. That is all.

[MurderByDeath]

The tl;dr version:  This book was a lot of fun; almost nothing was taken seriously, even during the serious parts.  Not in a disrespectful way, mind you, but not a word was spared for angst or melodrama. BrokenTune called it a romp, and a romp is exactly what it is.   Given my outspoken dislike of science fiction and dystopia, it's probably no surprise that I generally dislike time travel books too, but something about the setting of St. Mary's (which I originally thought was a school and therefore that this book was more YA - could not be more wrong) and the characters pulled me in anyway.  The title probably helped too, giving me the impression that this was not a book that was going to take itself seriously.   And it doesn't.  St. Mary's is a post-grad version of Animal House and the dialog is mostly of the banter type.  Honestly, I loved it; if they never left the grounds I might have adored it, but they do leave and that's when everything goes very pear shaped.  If I were Max, I'd have refused to go so far as the front gates after the first 100 pages or so.  But every trip through time ends disastrously in furtherance of the plot (a series arc, by the way; this was never meant to be a standalone book).  The pace is fast and constant, the action packed in.  A total romp.   But, romp though it may be, this is not a book for the delicate.  There's a surprising amount of violence, death and sex.  Nothing descriptively graphic in detail; the death isn't gory (much) and the sex isn't explicit to the point of erotica, but they are both blunt enough to feel a tiny bit confronting at times, relative to the snarky, madcap adventure surrounding them.   This is not high falutin literature, but it's highly entertaining escapism.  The only thing I purely hated was the scene in the Cretaceous age.  The human race just sucks.  But I raced through the rest and I'll happily devour the next one.

[brokentune]

He was calm and soothing and had a reasonable explanation for everything. No woman should have to put up with that.
‘Well, answer me this. How did she get free in the first place?’
‘I let her go.’
I took a deep breath. He took a step backwards. People were edging out of the pod.
‘Hold on. Before you go up like the Professor’s manure heap, I had to let her go.’
I would have raised an incredulous eyebrow, but my face hurt too much. I had to content myself with sipping my drink in a disbelieving manner.

This is not going to be an in-depth review, this is going to be short: this book was a romp.

I still maintain that it is the perfect example of what would happen if you mixed The Eyre Affair with Indiana Jones and based it in Hogwarts - in other words, there seemed to be a bit pastiche at work in the creation of the story.
It worked.
I laughed, I cried, I rolled my eyes a lot.

But I may even read the sequel at some point because the cliffhanger ending (yes, I hated that too) promised another romp with a pertinent question at heart:
Was it really Mary Stuart who was executed or was it, in fact, Elizabeth?

Mostly light-hearted fun ... with a few plot issues ... and lot of dei ex machina.

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

3.25★ Audiobook⎮This story was a hot mess. Just One Damned Thing After Another is better compared with cozy mysteries than the Science Fiction genre. I didn’t realize this until I was listening to the last 30 minutes. If the Science Fiction genre had a lunch table, Just One Damned Thing After Another would not be sitting at it. If I have realized that earlier, I might have been less scrutinizing of the story.

As it was, Just One Damned Thing After Another seemed fully ridiculous to me. As in, “Why am I listening to this nonsense?”. It was humorous at times, but hard to take seriously in any respect. Just One Damned Thing After Another was only 9.5 hours long, but seemed more than twice that length. That’s never a good sign.

The title became frustratingly appropriate as the story droned on. The underlying plot was difficult to find, let alone follow. Taylor threw *ahem* one damned thing after another at the reader/listener, haphazardly stringing them together with the thinnest of connections. And the reader/listener is just supposed to “go with it”… That’s sloppy writing, in my opinion. A writer has to work for my suspension of disbelief. The overall feeling was of chaos and disorder. As for development,… Wait, there was none.

None of the characters were relatable or memorable, probably because they were as flat as paper dolls. They all fell like characters in the story, merely serving the “plot”. I was never able to form connections with them because it was difficult to remember who they were. They were all interchangeable in my mind and were drowned out by the action. The main character (whose name I can’t recall) was an out-of-the-box type who was just as underdeveloped as the minor characters.

The most frustrating thing about Just One Damned Thing After Another was that the writing was better than the storytelling (and the writing wasn’t that great!). Taylor gave the impression of someone who was trying too hard to impress someone else in a “Look what I can do” manner. All flash and no substance.

Just One Damned Thing After Another could have been greatly improved if the story had been better balanced, maybe even broken up into two installments in order to give it breathing room. The action was suffocating to any potential development. Even the non-action scenes felt like action scenes, which became very tiring.

I think I can see what Jodi Taylor was trying to accomplish with this series, but it was just executed so poorly. I cannot fathom why there are 10+ installments in this series. Needless to say, I won’t be going near any of them.

Narration review: Zara Ramm did an admirable job narrating Just One Damned Thing After Another. Her vocal distinctions did more to separate the characters in my mind than the writing did. I am interested in hearing more from Zara, just not in this series. If you are interested in this series, I do recommend listening to it over reading it. ♣︎

[ayla_abbott]

The Oxford Time Travel series by Connie Willis has long been one of my absolute favorite uses of time travel. I don't know if this author was aware of that series when she started out, but either way, Taylor either had, or took, a great idea, put a different spin on it, gave the travel some different rules, injected a lot more levity, added a conspiracy, and uh-- well no I suppose the level of tragic death is about the same-- and created a great read. The punching is really good and cathartic, too. Good touch, that.

I look forward to reading what comes next!