You have to be in the mood for a screwball comedy of manners, with more banter than His Girl Friday, and a dash of time travel that doesn’t raise the stakes high; if you are in the mood, this is the book for you. I was in the mood.
It has the same ingredients as Crosstalk, but this context worked so much better for me. Even though, as per usual, I’m told Verity is wonderful, so she annoys me, and I’m told Tossie is annoying, so I think she’s wonderful. Mostly because I saw Baine and her crisis of heart coming a mile off. Like, from chapter six. Which made Verity and Ned seem insufferably oblivious. And obnoxious. And judgmental. By the end, I was rooting against them, which of course didn’t change anything, except that I’d read Tossie and Baine In a Boat, To Say Nothing of Dearums Juju.
So maybe it wasn’t flawless, but it was fun. Time-traveling historians (that don’t think or act the way historians would?) proved to be a swell diversion. 3.5 rounded up.