What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by Jodi Taylor
Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)
This is the sixth in The Chronicles of St Mary’s series. St Mary’s “investigates major historical events in contemporary time”, aka time travel, but they must never call it that. It’s best for a new reader to start with the first book, JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER, which I reviewed previously (link). There are going to be minor spoilers in this review for previous books – you have been warned.
Our heroine Max is now the temporary Chief Training Officer, with six new potential historians to train. This entry in the series will take us to the Paleolithic period, Joan of Arc, the Greek historian Herodotus, and a few other adventures. The Time Police make another appearance. As usual, not every character is going to live through the book.
Finally someone has asked the question of how villains are finding the teams when they travel into the past. The answer is forthcoming, although I think Taylor made that much too easy, and I didn’t think explained everything. But no matter, this is not a series where you should be applying a lot of logic to the plot. We are not done with villains though as a slightly different nefarious plot surfaces towards the end, and while it seems to be foiled for the moment, we don’t know who instigated it.
I would have liked a bit more of Leon. We barely see him, and after the ending of the last book plus a throwaway comment from Max in the beginning of this one, I really expected more interaction. But with 14 books (so far) in the series, there seems to be plenty of time for Taylor to take it up.
While it’s still a nice quick read, I found the pacing a lot slower. After the momentous events of the last couple books, it’s like the series is taking a little breather, which I think is a good thing. This is not to say that there isn’t action going on. I can’t decide if there is a even balance between the amusing scenes (the baby mammoth) and the horribly gruesome (Joan of Arc), but I think it spends more time on the amusing. Although the gruesome certainly sticks out – that was worthy of a horror novel.
Bottom line, I’m still enjoying it all although I’m not as anxious to grab the next book as I was when I started the series. But I do plan on reading #7 before too much time goes by.
