Review – No Time like the Past

From Goodreads:

St Mary’s has been rebuilt and it’s business as usual for the History department.

But first, there’s the little matter of a seventeenth-century ghost that only Mr Markham can see.

Not to mention the minor inconvenience of being trapped in the Great Fire of London…and an unfortunately-timed comfort break at Thermopylae leaving the fate of the western world hanging in the balance.

Re-join Max’s madcap journey through time in Jodi Taylor’s fifth inter-dimensional installment No Time Like the Past.

Its always very hard to be spoiler free when reviewing a book deep in a series, especially one like the Chronicles of St Mary’s. The best way I can describe these books is they read more like lots of mini adventures intertwined with small moments of the overarching storyline. Its a bit like TV series, each individual episode is a journey within a series of its own that has its own arc which then plays again into a multi series arc. This is true of these. This book has 5/6 mini adventures (i lost count – again) that play into the over arching story-line of this book and then the arc for this trilogy within the St Mary’s series.

The mini adventures in this instalment were great. We follow Max in most of her missions but it was great to hear about missions she didn’t have a great hand it. We also got a great breadth of history in this one visiting not only Thermopylae but also the Great exhibition and Florance to name a few. Taylor really isn’t afraid to through absolutely everything at her characters and we have massive swings in emotions to laughing at the antics of the research department to grieving for the loss of another historian. There are some wild and wonderful turns of fate in these books and No time like the past in no exception. It is jam packed with twists and turns.

I adore the cast of characters and how they interact with each other. It really has a found family feel but then there is also the reservation and shock of learning personal information about co-workers that is also captured so well. We are finally getting to know Markham a bit more and I do hope that continues in the future books.

While the pace of these mini adventures is furious to say the least the over arching plot within No Time like the Past is a lot more simple and relaxed. We even get a more romantic side to the main Arc which was a nice insight and change of pace. This larger Arc is a lot simpler and slower paces and is only moved a few paces forward in this book which does make it a lot easier to follow when Max is diving in and out of history at a blistering pace.

These books are just really enjoyable romps. Romp is just the only word that does them any justice. The pages just fly and they leave a smile on my face every time. They are a solid and dependable world to dip into that I know I can just loose myself in for an evening or too.