Book Review | Just One Damned Thing After Another #booksky

Just One Damned Thing After Another gives me my J for the Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge. I realised this when I checked out more Jodi Taylor titles after reviewing Smallwood and Pennyroyal in the spring. The first in her St Mary’s Chronicles was already on my list, tick for the TBR reading challenge! And of course, as a result of reading this, it’s a case of one off, fourteen on, my TBR, that is :O That’s not including short stories in the series. Prolific, or what?

Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St Mary’s #1)

by Jodi Taylor

If the whole of History lay before you, where would you go?

When Dr Madeleine Maxwell is recruited by the St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, she discovers the historians there don’t just study the past – they revisit it.

But one wrong move and History will fight back – to the death. And Max soon discovers it’s not just History she’s fighting…

BOOK 1 IN THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING CHRONICLES OF ST MARY’S SERIES (goodreads)

My Review

If you check the blurb there’s another line of the end which starts ‘for fans of…’ That was not a good sign. I don’t like most of them, and actively dislike one… and I avoid everything he does. But I enjoyed Smallwood and Pennyroyal so much… and I was right. It’s much much better than any of those clowns mentioned in the blurb.

It starts at the beginning, with Max drifting along after her school days, and getting a push from a former teacher to apply for this job. It sounds interesting, historical research with on site activity… a bit like archaeology, really, Max thinks. She could do with more jobs like that. Not the damp sleeping bags, though. I paraphrase. As a result of the weirdest interview she’s ever known, she gets recruited… and then the fun starts.

One layer at a time

Jodi Taylor treats this book like an onion. She peels away one layer at a time, revealing more complexity at each level, and giving the reader plenty of food for thought as to where all the twists are coming from. The next layer teases a little more, but lands you in an exciting adventure that you are sure Max will not survive. Not sure how she does, really, but as she’s coming back in book 2, You can read on with hope.

And yes, we get to go back to historical events with her, and see what really happened. The descriptions are superb. Whether it’s the Somme in WW1, or the Cretaceous period (dinosaurs), you can be sure of full disclosure of the sights (gross/amazing), sounds (deafening), and smells (nauseous). Some little teasers of red herrings are picked up on later… some are glossed over, which makes me wonder whether they’ll come out again in future.

Stupendous adventure reading, engrossing, intriguing, very funny, lots of gory fighting, full-on sex occasionally (NSFW), and I’ve just bought the next two in the series. And checked my library, who have, er, most of them listed for borrowing. Hm.

How come it took me so long to discover this series (and the dozen and more short stories associated with it)?

PS Apologies for repeating myself with the onion analogy. But only you will know 🙂