2019 science fiction novella, in the Chronicles of St Mary's series
(time travel). Ian Guthrie is retiring as Head of Security at St
Mary's, but first goes on one last jump…
and argh? They have a planned return time, and if they don't make
that they're "overdue" and there's suddenly urgency about finding
them… but you have a time machine. So if the jump was to 9am on day
one of the Battle of Bannockburn, there is no rush. You can send in
the rescue team to five seconds after the first team arrived. You can
take six months to equip and train that rescue team, and still send
them in to five seconds after the first team arrived. And I've
complained about this in Taylor's writing before, but she handled it
so well in the first few books that I'm very sorry to see the series
falling into adventure-story clichés of urgency that just don't make
sense in this setting.
(Yes, telling a coherent story in a setting with time travel is
hard. I know. But it's been done before, by this very author.)
The story's main job is to introduce a couple of new minor characters,
and to have some feel-good moments with the St Mary's crew (a reason
not to start here, because you won't know who these people are or why
you should care about them). It's quite fun, but there is very little
in the way of surprises.