Review – The Good The Bad and The History

From Goodreads:

St Mary’s is under investigation. Their director has been shot and Max is Number One Suspect. Can things get any worse? We all know the answer to that one.

Max needs to get away – fast – and a Brilliant Idea soon leads her to a full-scale uprising in twentieth-century China. If she can come by a historical treasure or two in the process, even better. That is, if she makes it out alive.

Then there’s the small matter of Insight – the sinister organisation from the future hell bent on changing History for their own dark ends. Having successfully infiltrated their ranks, Max is perfectly placed to stop them. But she knows her cover will soon be blown – because it’s already happened.

Can Max take down Insight before they come after her? The circle is closing, and only one can survive…

This is book 14 in one of my most beloved series. This series definately does have to be read in order, so if you are just hearing about it I would suggest you look at my review for book 1, Just one Damned Thing After Another.

I had mixed feelings about this one. While it was jam packed with the usual high-jinx and mischeif that Max and Co usually get up to I do felt we didn’t really get to wallow in the historical aspects as much as we have in other installments. A lot of the the jumps were back to places and times we have visited before or we didn’t really get to spend ebough time there to get all the little details that really make these books masterpeices.

We did get a lot more insight into Insight (pun very much inented) again this gives the reaader a huge view into what the future looks like in this universe, though we still don’t quite know what happened to America. I really liked the descriptions of technology and how they all play into this futuristic London. I also like seeing Max out of her comfort zone, and how she and Markham work together. As per usual they are both disaster magnets, even if some of that disaster is of their own making.

I was also kind of shocked at just home much of the ongoing story lines this wrapped up. It felt very final. We said goodbye to some friends, life seemed to just calm down. All the set up from books 8 and 9 just seemed to tie up at the end of this book and I don’t know how I feel. The timeline has also caught up with that of the spinoff series, The Time Police. While we, the reader, are assured it is not ‘The End’. It felt very final, happily ever after style and part of me felt a slight pang of disappointment at that as I really didn’t see that coming. We are not left with any tid-bits as to where a next book might take us, depsite there being a lot of unaswered questions about the St Mary’s Universe.

We will have to wait and see if there is a book 15 on the horizon.