Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Just One Damned Thing After Another (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 ...

Reviewed by brokentune on

3 of 5 stars

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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.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 18 January, 2018: Finished reading
  • 18 January, 2018: Reviewed