This is another series I’ll be revisiting just as soon as I can and comes highly recommended. As I was reading this one, I was thinking just what a great TV series it would make – there are plenty of plot twists and unexpected reversals that kept me engrossed throughout and I’m delighted we have the next book in the series. Though this being an adult book, there are a couple of fairly graphic sex scenes.
This is definitely a time-travelling adventure with a romantic plotline, rather than an unfolding romance in a time-travelling setting. The plot surges forward, along with an unfolding love story, which has to be negotiated amongst the challenging projects the St Mary’s team are constantly being asked to carry out. One of them is that History has its own impetus, so that if anyone tries to bring something back, or affect the course of events already laid down, they quickly meet a sticky end… There isn’t a lot of technical chat as to how or why the pods they use are able to travel back in time, but there are solid rules. But Max’s spiky first person narrative is all about gritting her teeth and moving forward from an abusive childhood, when she is recruited by the folks at St Mary’s to help study ‘historical events in contemporary time’. Well this is fun! Though that’s not to say there aren’t regularly tragedies – the edgy sense of coping with the steady attrition of dying historians reminds me of the war stories I’ve read. And, as they soon discover – it’s not just History they’re fighting. But one wrong move and History will fight back – to the death.
Their aim is to observe and document – to try and find the answers to many of History’s unanswered questions…and not to die in the process. Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. Maintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power – especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet.
They don’t do ‘time-travel’ – they ‘investigate major historical events in contemporary time’. “History is just one damned thing after another.” Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary’s, a different kind of historical research is taking place.
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