Adventures In Time Travel
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When I decided to review the Invisible Library series for the blog, I had about two weeks to get everything done, and since there were eight books in the series (even for me, that’s a lot of books to read in two weeks), I put myself on a daily reading schedule, based on the number of pages in each book. This allowed me to plow through all eight books, take notes, and write the post, all within my (arbitrary) time limit.
I recently got a book from the library entitled Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor and sat down to read it last night. There were 322 pages, so I figured if I read about 100 pages a day, I’d be done in three days. With that schedule in mind, I cracked the book open and started. Five hours later, I was all the way through the book (and wayyyyy past my bedtime). I couldn’t put it down!
To give you an idea of the flavor and tone of the book, where there would normally be a dedication at the front of the book, the author has instead written a note to the reader:
“I made all this up. Historians and physicists—please do not spit on me in the street.”
The next page takes us to a list of what would normally be called dramatis personae, but which the author has instead titled “Dramatis Thingummy.” It lists such characters as:
Dr. Helen Foster—Early 30s. Medical doctor with the people skills of Vlad the Impaler.
Major Ian Guthrie—Head of Security and whose unenviable task it is to keep (the residents of) St. Mary’s safe, despite all their best efforts.
Professor Rapson—Head of R & D. Lives in his own world. Responsible for the destruction of the Clock Tower and the disastrous Icarus experiment. Apparently unaware of the properties of methane.
Doctor Dawson—Librarian and Archivist. Also not quite up to speed re methane.
And on it goes. Our main character is Dr. Madeleine “Max” Maxwell, an historian who has some tragedy in her background which is only hinted at (I’m guessing her family was a group of abusive monsters) but who nonetheless has pushed herself through school, and now specializes in Ancient History. She receives a letter from a former teacher/mentor, inviting her to interview for an unspecified position at St. Mary’s, an institution loosely attached to her alma mater but about which she knows nothing.
It’s perhaps unfortunate that the blurb on the back of the book gives away immediately that this is going to be about time travel. Because if the reader had been as ignorant about that as Max is during her first tour and interview (before she knows what the job is), I think Max’s introduction to St. Mary’s would have been more interesting and entertaining. Nevertheless, Max finds out about time travel within the first fifteen pages, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
“(During final exams) they gave me a pile of miscellaneous tat and fifteen minutes to fashion a weapon. In the absence of any fissionable material, I came up with a pretty good slingshot that David himself would have been proud of and when asked to test fire, I took out the small window in the gents’ toilet on the second floor.”
As an historian, Max (partnered with other historians) travels through time to certain historical events to observe and report. NOT to interfere or get involved in any way. Of course, that high ideal was never going to be adhered to by any historian and the adventures along the way include a trip to a soon-to-be-blown-up field hospital on the battlefields of World War I, and a lovely tour of the Cretaceous period, with some close-up (way, way too close up) encounters with dinosaurs. I have to admit, during that part of the book, I actually had to Google some of the dinosaurs listed, as I couldn’t remember what most of them looked like. Except the T-Rex. I absolutely remember what that looks like! (Thank you, Jurassic Park.)
The book includes themes of love and romance (no, not necessarily the same thing), friendship, loyalty, jealousy, greed, betrayal, life, death…all the good stuff. Not all the characters survive. And the story is surprisingly suspenseful in spots. Although the author’s style is whimsical and humorous, she does not shy away from the hard topics either. Which makes sense…it’s all part of the human experience after all.
“(Dieter) was built like a large brick sh*thouse. Two large brick sh*thouses actually. In fact he was so big it was possible he distorted time and space. He had his own gravitational pull (...) and he’d fallen for Kal like a sperm whale failing to clear the Grand Canyon on a bicycle. He thought no one knew.”
Apparently, the author could not get a publishing company to publish her first book, because it didn’t fall easily into a regular genre (romance, history, sci-fi, etc). So she self-published it before a publisher finally picked it up. And the book has been so popular that it’s now a series of fourteen books. I have the second one on hold at the library. Personally, I think that the book falls easily into the sci-fi category, but that’s just me.
This morning after I’d finished the book, I texted my bibliophile friend Bea and told her to read this book immediately. She texted back that she’d read and enjoyed the first five books in the series already. I was outraged…”Why didn’t you tell me about this book??” After a long pause, she texted back, “Mental illness.” Ha. As if. As excuses go, that’s some weak sauce right there, but we can still be friends.
I can’t recommend the series (yet) because I’ve only read the first book. But I finished it late last night, and I loved it so much that I immediately had to write about it. Like I told my friend Bea, you need to read this book immediately.
