Reviews with content warning for Miscarriage - Miss Maxwells kurioses Zeitarchiv

I'll hand it to the book that the concept of having time-travelling historians was nice and was what initially drew me in.
Apart from I should've become suspicious when the book starts with a list of characters. Not because they're so many it's hard to keep track but everyone is so bland and flat that I have to check every now and then who the hell the main character is interacting with because everyone is so alike and irrelevant?! Also: people dying left and right and almost being raped and no one cares, bland characters still managing to act out of character, apparently 5 years have gone by during this book, main character being broken even though living at work and not having any hobbies/family/whatever.

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bel017's review against another edition

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adventurous

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

A bunch of historians and their colleagues run missions back in time to observe history. Something always goes wrong. But it's not slapstick. People die.

It was fun (other than the dying, that was awful) and mad and slightly confusing.

I had trouble picturing the characters. The only person I could imagine was Ronan, who I envisaged as Jeremy Renner in Hawkeye (or it as Hawkeye? I haven't seen whatever movie it was, didn't even know the actor's name. My internet search history is now a confusion of searches like 'white male actor dark hair black outfit maybe avengers'). Anyway, I digress. I also found the main relationship confusing and uneven, it seemed to go from unrequited to full-on.

I like the ideas, and the premise, and the humor. I wonder if my lack of engagement in the world is just me having a bad day. I've had a bad month, actually it's been a pretty rough year--it's been, as it were, just one damned thing after another. I've been escaping into books a lot so maybe it's just me putting too much pressure on the book to draw me in. I look forward to reading the next one. Hopefully it'll have a few fewer characters and a few lines more description (never thought I'd say that, I'm not--at all--a fan of highly descriptive narratives).

It is the second book I've read this week that referenced Peterloo (the other was *A fashionable indulgence* by KJ Charles).

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