I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: January 2023] A Symphony of Echoes

This is the second book in a something-teen long series.

I sometimes wonder if I enjoy a series more for the narrator of the audio books than the quality of the books themselves.

I didn’t think that at the time of reading this, because I was swept up in the comedy and adventure and (yes, I’m saying it, time travel).  However, while looking for a cover image, I read a scathing review of this book and felt that I did agree with many of the criticisms.  I guess I just didn’t care.  And I wonder if that’s because Zara Ramm gave great voice to the lead character Max and also did an amazing job with all of the different characters (male and female from all over the place).

Book 2 continues the time travelling saga of the historians of St. Mary’s.  Like the other stories there are several seemingly random adventures that the crew must go on.  The first, in this case, is with a soon-to-be-retiring historian named Kalinda Black.  She wishes to go to Jack the Ripper times and suss out what actually happened.

Things go horribly wrong when Jack the Ripper (in some form or another) hops a ride with them back to St. Mary’s.  It’s confusion and chaos trying to fight a near invisible enemy.  And that’s before anyone realizes that Captain Farrell is missing.

It is, of course, the dastardly duo of Izzie Barclay and Clive Ronan, set in a future St. Mary’s.  In a sign of things  to come, Max realizes that they cannot kill Ronan because of time paradoxes (I am not about to go into details of that) and that Izzie is much harder to kill than it seems when Max shoots her and dumps her in an elevator.

Because the future St. Mary’s has been decimated by Barclay and Ronan, Max stays on as interim head.

Some time later the story adds some fun to it.  The entire team of St. Mary’s goes to Mauritius in 1666 to try to capture some dodos.  Taylor really exceeds at this humorous recounting of the hopeless historians running around after the flightless birds.

One of the ways that St. Mary’s can pay for expenses is by “discovering” ancient items that were suddenly found somewhere.  In this case, some sonnets by Thomas a Beckett appeared unexpectedly on the grounds of St. Mary’s (fortune secured for the St. Mary’s of the future).

Farrell and Max are sent for a lovely R&R retreat.  But the doctor in charge is bent on destroying Max by undermining everything she holds dear.  He has also convinced Farrell to reject Max–that it would be best for her right now.  There’s a lengthy sequence in which Max destroys Farrell’s beloved car.

St. Mary’s is always low on new recruits.  So they take a few new people to The Hanging Gardens as an easy way for new recruits to see what they can do and to get their bearings.  But if course, things go horribly awry.

In the previous book, St. Mary’s found a rare Shakespeare with a factual error–Mary Queen of Scots never marries James Hepburn.  They realize that this error is because if an anomaly in the timeline and they go back to see that Ronan has prevented Mary Stuart from being sexually assaulted.  While this is a good thing for Mary, it upends all of history and Max has the unenviable task of ensuring that Mary Stuart is assaulted to preserve the timeline.

This story definitely had some darker moments (history isn’t pretty) but the overall vibe (and Ramm’s readings) were terrific fun.