RogerBW's Blog

The Great St Mary's Day Out, Jodi Taylor 26 July 2023

2016 science fiction novelette, in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). Things have gone well for a change, so the historians and other of St Mary's go on an outing to see one of the first run performances of Hamlet. Of course, things go wrong.

And it's rather a pleasing change from the grimness of recent books. Things go amiss, but we don't get all the emotional stress of the novels: instead, our heroes fix those things. Shakespeare catches fire in the middle of a performance at the Globe: what are you going to do about it?

There's not much of it, but I've often found Taylor's longer books bitty, and this feels much more comfortable. Not much "had I but known", just the usual embranglements that follow St Mary's around, and dealing with them by whatever means come to hand. (And the recurring big bads of the series don't recur here.)

Very much a better fit for my mood than the latest few novels.

Previous in series: Lies, Damned Lies and History | Series: Chronicles of St Mary's | Next in series: When a Child is Born/Roman Holiday/Christmas Present/Ships and Stings And Wedding Rings/The Very First Damned Thing/The Great St Mary's Day Out/My Name is Markham/A Perfect Storm

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