Book Review: Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Oooo a book about time travelling, tea drinking, endearingly weird historians? Sign me up!

“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. They don’t do ‘time-travel’ – they ‘investigate major historical events in contemporary time’. 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. Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. 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. But one wrong move and History will fight back – to the death. And, as they soon discover – it’s not just History they’re fighting. Follow the catastrophe curve from 11th-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. For wherever Historians go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake…”

Sadly I cannot confirm or deny that chaos follows in the wake of these historians since I could not bring myself to finish the book. The clue should have been in the title, this really is just one thing after another, it literally reads like ” And then this happened, and then this happened. And then that happened. That’s when this happened.” There is no character development, no build up and no atmosphere. We are told everything that happens and never really given much introduction to characters. In the 50 pages or so that I read, about 4 characters died, and I didn’t care one bit. Most of them I didn’t even remember having been introduced, and then we skip back to “then the next mission happened”. It’s kind of like reading the episode synopsis for a series of Doctor Who. All the plot, none of the caring.

I always feel so mean for writing a bad review, someone somewhere spent a lot of time and effort writing their book and getting it published only to have some bored prick with a computer poop all over it. I genuinely am sorry, and the GoodReads reviews aren’t all bad, so there clearly is a market for this. Plus if you do enjoy it, there are about 20 sequels, which weirdly, all came out in the same year…

Sorry Ms Taylor, this one is not for me.

1 Star because I couldn’t finish it.

1/5 *

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