Book Log 30/2016 - Jodi Taylor: A Symphony of Echoes - Chronicles of St Mary’s #2

[jacey]

I jumped into this on the same day I finished ‘Just One Thing After Another’ – the first St Mary’s book – and since it picks up right where the other leaves off it was just like a continuation. Everything that I liked about the first book was echoed in this one. Ms Taylor gives her lead character, ‘Max’ Maxwell (no one ever calls her Maddie) a unique voice, quirky and caustic but with great underlying humanity. In the wake of the attacks in the first book, the same antagonist is still around, or rather, is around for the first time, because when they encounter him in Mary Queen of Scots' Edinburgh they have the advantage that it’s (for him) before their (Book One) encounters in the Cretaceous and at the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The disaster-prone historians from Max’s near future timeline end up going further into the future to help sort out Future St Mary’s which is under attack. Max ends up leading (temporarily) with the aid of Chief Farrell, which whom she still has a very stormy relationship.

I must admit I immediately wanted to go and buy the third St Mary’s book and was only prevented by the arrival of a posse of visitors. I’ve tried starting a couple of other books since but just not been able to get into them… oh, okay, I’ve given in and ordered #3. It’s obviously where my reading brain wants to go.