Thinking carefully is something that happens to other people.

I lost my notes to this book, which is annoying me greatly. So I'm going to be a bit more vague than I want to be.

I could tell from the first couple of pages that I was going to have a great time with this book -- our narrator is Dr. Madeline "Max" Maxwell, a specialist in ancient history. She is charming, engaging, brash, and funny. She's a few more things, too, but let's leave it there. Essentially, she's a delight -- it almost doesn't matter what setting you put her in, what story you tell with her -- I'm in.

Thankfully, Taylor puts her in a crazy novel, one perfectly suited for her. When we meet her, Max is being recruited by a former mentor to join St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, a very strange research facility. These historians get their hands dirty in their research in the ways that no other facility on Earth can manage -- they have time machines to take them to whatever point in time they're studying so they can see ad experience history first-hand.

Sounds great, doesn't it? But things go awry -- in spectacularly bad fashion. But, for these Historians, where there's tea, there's hope. Using wit, sheer determination, and a little luck Max and her new colleagues will have to find a way to meet these new and dangerous challenges.

There's a lot more action and fighting than you'd think given that the book is about Historians and the Technicians who work with them. There's a lot of humor, some pathos, a little love -- and a little more sex than I'd prefer (thankfully most of it happens "off screen," but not all of it). The plot is impossible to summarize well -- it bounces around from point to point like a ball in a pinball machine. This is not a complaint, this is a description. Months will go by in a paragraph (or less) and then things will slow down for the events of a day or two. These are Time Travelers, after all, they can squeeze a lot of activity into a short period of time.

There are some other great characters here, too. Max has wonderful, loyal and capable allies (who happen to be interesting to read about); she has fantastic antagonists -- the kind of characters you can relish your annoyance/anger/moral superiority over; her friends are interesting, he love interest is about as fun as you could ask for, and is charming enough in his own right.

I wish I'd had the time to write this up when the book was fresher in my mind -- or if I'd not lost my notes. This book deserved a bit more from me. Basically, this book -- between characters, circumstances, plot and tone is what I'd hoped for from the Tuesday Next books. I have no idea if Taylor can keep up the freshness of the voice, the zaniness of the plot, and the engaging quality of the characters (particularly Max) -- it'll be tough to do. But I'm looking forward to finding out. I had a blast reading this one, and can't imagine that Taylor's charm wouldn't win over at least 87% of those who give this a try.

Guess:  Madeleine L'Engle

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

The tl;dr version:  This book was a lot of fun; almost nothing was taken seriously, even during the serious parts.  Not in a disrespectful way, mind you, but not a word was spared for angst or melodrama. BrokenTune called it a romp, and a romp is exactly what it is.

Given my outspoken dislike of science fiction and dystopia, it's probably no surprise that I generally dislike time travel books too, but something about the setting of St. Mary's (which I originally thought was a school and therefore that this book was more YA - could not be more wrong) and the characters pulled me in anyway.  The title probably helped too, giving me the impression that this was not a book that was going to take itself seriously.

And it doesn't.  St. Mary's is a post-grad version of Animal House and the dialog is mostly of the banter type.  Honestly, I loved it; if they never left the grounds I might have adored it, but they do leave and that's when everything goes very pear shaped.  If I were Max, I'd have refused to go so far as the front gates after the first 100 pages or so.  But every trip through time ends disastrously in furtherance of the plot (a series arc, by the way; this was never meant to be a standalone book).  The pace is fast and constant, the action packed in.  A total romp.

But, romp though it may be, this is not a book for the delicate.  There's a surprising amount of violence, death and sex.  Nothing descriptively graphic in detail; the death isn't gory (much) and the sex isn't explicit to the point of erotica, but they are both blunt enough to feel a tiny bit confronting at times, relative to the snarky, madcap adventure surrounding them.

This is not high falutin literature, but it's highly entertaining escapism.  The only thing I purely hated was the scene in the Cretaceous age.  The human race just sucks.  But I raced through the rest and I'll happily devour the next one.

I read this as part of the Kill Your Darlings game, in fulfilment of the Suspect: Madeleine L'Engle card (Read a book that involves time travel or has the main character involved in STEM)

Epic title.

The premise of this is quite similar to Connie Willis' Oxford Time Travel books, but the plot, characters, tone, basically everything else, is completely different. So rather than make direct comparisons, let's just consider both to be part of the same sub genre of Time Travelling Academics.

I admit, I almost didn't make it out of the first few chapters. The prose felt very rough, and the story itself wasn't grabbing me. Too much slow intro on the premise and too much time spent learning the names of characters who wouldn't make it through training. But as soon as we get to time travel, I had a great time.

Mostly.

I do feel that the second attempted rape was a bit much. Largely because the events leading up to it were just dumb. The first one felt gratuitous, but fit into context. The second was just a shit cherry on top of a melting shit cream sunday of a subplot.

I like the protagonist. I like that the author drops things that look like foreshadowing, but are as likely to be recontextualizations as premonitions. I like the sense of humor a lot. And I'm definitely interested in reading more of these. 

**Thanks to Char and BrokenTune, editing to add the title of the story:

This was a surprising little "sleeper".

A nice little haunting/something's lurking/stalking type story.

Only about 10 pages, concise, no extra flowery stuff.

However, it gave me nightmares last night.

Intense enough for me to wake myself up telling hubby 'No! Get away!' as I replayed an entire scene in my dream.

And loud enough that he came in to make sure I was awake and okay.

I wasn't even going to write anything about it since it was just a short story I found in my TBR that matched the author birthday challenge I'm doing in a group on Goodreads.

I will be looking for more of Mr. Bierce's writings.