[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. (more…)