RogerBW's Blog

2020 science fiction, eleventh in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). A jump to see the Princes in the Tower changes everything…

…well, no it doesn't, because this is a series. And while it's good to see these people feel betrayed by old friends and then get over it like actual adults when they find out why, is it perhaps unreasonable of me to feel that they get over it a bit too quickly? Probably it is.

There's a jump to find evidence to save Leon from a murder charge, the one to the Tower, and a longer mission to Crete just before Thera erupts. (Why? I mean, having established the date, why not jump to several months earlier for the observation? Never mind.)

And it is very good, after Hope for the Best had Max mostly operating away from the St Mary's friend and support network, to show her back as part of the team. This is the Max that I want to read about, the competent historian to whom shenanigans happen, not the driven undercover agent.

So when I say it's largely the recipe as before, that's not to imply I didn't enjoy it: I did. In recent volumes Taylor has made excursions into slightly separate subgenres and they haven't been as much to my taste, so I'm glad to see this back on track.

Back downhill because it was faster. There was no time to look behind us—Major Guthrie had drilled into us over and over again during training: ‘Never mind what's happening behind you. You'll find out soon enough if you keep stopping to look. Just run. Run until you've left whatever it is safely in your dust and then run a bit more just to be on the safe side.' So we did.

Yes, all right, a series villain shows up again, and once more Taylor forgets the point that she herself made in an earlier book, that if you've got time travel it really doesn't help to see someone unambiguously and irrevocably dead unless you can also account for every instant of their life up to that point, which of course you can't. A younger version of them can always come after you. And may even succeed in killing you, if no later version of you is scheduled to interact with them.

Probably don't start here, but if you've enjoyed the series to this point, do by all means continue.