Book Log 33/2016 - Jodi Taylor: No Time Like the Past - Chronicles of St Mary’s #5

More Max Maxwell and the chaotic bunch from St Mary's who explore history via time travel. It’s the aftermath of the battle with the Time Police, but everything is settling down until Dr Bairstow announces that there’s going to be a fundraising open day, and St Mary’s acquires a ghost that only Markham can see. Max confronts Isabella Barclay (almost disastrously) and finally makes a commitment. About time too.

This was a very engaging book. I’m still loving the Chronicles of St Mary. This one read a little more like a series of incidents rather than a complete novel, but even so it hung together well and delivered the usual mix of humour and mayhem.

Book Log 34/2016 - Jodi Taylor: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? - Chronicles of St Mary’s #6

The sixth St Mary’s novel – only one more to go before I’ve caught up with all of them – and they’re still not getting old. After the incidents in No Time Like The Past, Max is on light duties for six months while she fully recovers from various injuries, so she swaps departments with Petersen and takes on the mantle of head of training. It should be easy because there are no trainees… until there are, and Max has to not only devise a new training programme but keep her unruly charges under control, preferably without killing or injuring them. If that’s supposed to be light duties I’d hate to see what she’d end up doing on normal duties. She has five students, some of them almost as bolshy as she was herself, but it turns out to be the quiet ones you have to watch. From the Valley of the Kings, the burning of Joan of Arc, a meeting with Herodotus and the opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge to the Battle of Bosworth Field, Max has to protect the timeline and if that means making some harsh decisions, she knows she’ll have to do it. If she doesn’t History will. I’ve enjoyed all the St Mary’s books. After No Time Like the Past, which was episodic, this one returns to form.

Book Log 35/2016 - Jodi Taylor: Two short stories - Chronicles of St Mary’s

Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings
Chronicles of St Mary Short Story
In which Max, how happily married to Leon and somewhat pregnant, goes haring off to ancient Egypt in search of a modern gun that one of her team members has left behind – a cardinal sin.

Christmas Present
Chronicles of St Mary’s Short Story 4.5
I managed to read this out of order. It introduces the character who causes the big problem in Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings. St Mary’s prides itself on never leaving anyone behind, but that’s without the interference of Clive Ronan who has come from the future and plagues them up and down the timeline. This rescue is either ten years late or right on time, depending on your perspective.