RogerBW's Blog

2015 science fiction novelette in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). When an historian leaves a gun behind in ancient Egypt, Max decides to retrieve it herself rather than calling in the Time Police.

The thing about this series for me is that with occasional exceptions each book tends to feel like a series of disconnected incidents. So this single incident is pretty much business as usual, even though it's in a different format; and this is the side of the series I tend to prefer, the dusty sweaty expeditions into history more than the politics and soap-opera of home.

‘Shut up, the pair of you,' I said in my newly acquired role of mission facilitator and peacemaker. ‘Let's get out of here before anyone comes looking for us.'

Of course, even more than usual for this series, there's no real guidance as to who's who – that's for the novels. One could I suppose read this on its own, but I can't see why one would want to; if you don't already know who Max and Markham and Peterson are, you'd have no particular reason to care about them here.

The list of characters includes:

Egyptian labourers: An unspecified number. Almost naked. Glistening. Muscular. Strong. Lsing th ablty ti type … May hv to lie dwn

It's that sort of book, never taking itself too seriously, and that's a big part of why I continue to read the series.