Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a surprisingly delightful Time Travel novel!

I mean, if it wasn't for the great characters, and there were a ton of them, this book was still full of snark right down to the foundations. (And even sometimes under the foundations!) But even so, no one could hold a candle to Maxwell. I've never read a character so simultaneously dense about sex and love and so very, very brilliant and adaptable than her, while all the while being brainy, clumsy, and eventually able to go out and kick ass with the best of them.

Because, after all, nothing says Historian than a woman with a big gun. Right? Right! And raptors really are a bit more tiny than she expected. But, of course, the real predators are other Time-Travelers.

Do you like plot? OMG there's so much plot, and so much happens, and all the while I'm like... the author's touching upon so many great periods and so many historians are dying because they're idiots and how the hell were they trained and that's NOT RIGHT, but hell that's funny and I found myself telling myself that this has got to be one of the most comprehensively well-thought-out time travel novels I've ever read. At least, it's a lot more stable and a lot less outright weird than most, firmly rooted in all the things we know or we think we know, while focusing on being damn realistic about achievable goals, keeping the tech out of the public's hands because we know they'll fuck it up anyway, and just HOW did St. Mary's come to be? Oh, lordy.

I've read good Time Travel books, to be sure, but none of those had quite the breadth or the wide stretch of character change and development as this. Have I finally found my modern go-to SF series for plain frolicky fun and hijinks? Perhaps!

It's a bit more complicated than most of the Time-Travel books I'm used to, and while it has a lot of light moments, it's packed to the gills with the serious, too, and not always about personal safety. It's clever right down to the core.

And exciting. :) I can't wait for more. :)

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