A Symphony of Echoes (Chronicles of St Mary's, #2)

by Jodi Taylor

[MurderByDeath]

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Just One Damned Thing After Another when I read it several weeks ago; I generally feel pretty 'meh' about time travel and usually pass it by.  But I was swayed by the academic bent of the time travel and the humor and liked it so much I  pretty much immediately ordered A Symphony of Echoes.   #2 was fun; fun enough that as I write this my head is throbbing and my neck is stiff, because I spent all afternoon with my ass on the couch and my head in this book.  But what was a fresh and novel idea in one book can often stale quickly in the second, and I felt some of that here.  I loved reading about the history hops, and even the melodrama between Max and Leon wasn't bad, but I'm tired of the arch villain and the idea that these guys can't ever complete a jump without something catastrophic happening is fast approaching a stretching of disbelief I'm not sure I can pull off.  And I have no idea what she was doing with the whole Jack the Ripper thing, but it felt gratuitous.    The dodos were fun, but ultimately fleeting (the scene, not the dodos).  Definitely not Pickwick quality.   I'm not against reading the third one (although I'm lukewarm about Troy), but I'm not going to rush out and order it.  I'll wait until I feel like stepping back into St. Mary's again and go from there.   This book works for the Kill Your Darlings game card Victim: Ariadne Oliver.   It was written by a woman, and set in the UK.