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Booklog 29/2019 - Jodi Taylor: Hope for the Best – Chronicles of St Mary's #10
Anything by Jodi Taylor is buy-on-site, or pre-order as soon as news of a new book is released. The Chronicles of St Mary's are funny and serious in turn. The historians of St Mary's take their time travelling seriously. Their purpose is to observe historic events in real time, never to interfere. Though generally they are disaster magnets and something always goes wrong. Told from the viewpoint of Max Maxwell, whose droll, dry delivery is half the fun of the books, the whole series seems to have been working up to this point The early books were lighthearted, but without losing thew drollery, things have become more serious.
Several books ago, Max got together with Leon (one of the engineers) and they had a child, Matthew who was kidnapped by the long-running villain, Ronan and dumped in the Victorian era as a climbing boy for a chimney sweep. Time travel being what it is, it took Max and Leon several years (in Matthew's timeline) to find him. Matthew is now (for his own safety) staying with the Time Police in the future while Ronan is on the loose. Ronan is public enemy number one, having killed a number of St Mary's staff over the course of a few books, and nurtured a personal vendetta against Max, Leon and St Marys, so in this book, Max hatches a plan to finally trap him. She involves the Time Police, even though they've caused a lot of problems for St Marys in the past – the two organisations being natural opposites. Here we have time jumps to a Tudor period where history has gone wrong and to the Cretacious period where everything is trying to kill Max (the fauna, the weather, two gangland crooks, and Ronan). It's difficult to know who to trust.
I love the characters, the voice and the complex, fast-paced plotting. Highly recommended.
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