Scan barcode
A review by trin
Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor
1.0
The title unfortunately describes the way this book is plotted. Things happen, and they are sort of loosely slung-together, with very little sense of time passing (at one point the protagonist notes she's known another character for five years, and I genuinely thought only a single year had passed since their meeting at the beginning of the novel) and with absolutely no character development. No characters at all, really: Taylor's creations seem to turn on a dime, depending on whatever the plot ("plot"?) dictates. Out of nowhere, one character is suddenly revealed to be a sexual predator, because Taylor needs the reader to hate him now. The love interest up and screams at the protagonist, also out of nowhere, for...angst I guess? Oh and some rando background character suddenly calls the protagonist a slut and...sexually attacks her. Of course. I see more of a pattern here than to the plot and it's gross.
The main character has no personality except to be perfect at everything and drive evil people to fits of revealing rage -- classic Mary Sue stuff. I get annoyed with the overuse and misuse of that term, but it really applies here. Max feels like a self-insert. She, her love interest, and the innumerable interchangeable secondary characters are all amazingly under-characterized and flatly written: I couldn't describe a single one of them to you, nor could I tell them apart much of the time. (Which one was Markham and which was Murdoch again?) Early in the book, Max notes that she often does not react to things in a "normal" way, but this is never used to make a point about her history or to develop her character as the story progresses; instead, it feels like Taylor simply did not know how to write realistic reactions to situations and was using this as an excuse.
And nothing else makes sense either! You have a secret -- but not all that secret if it's known by a major university and receives "assignments" -- time travel organization, which for some reason is severely understaffed. At one point they only have four historians (a.k.a. time travelers) working for them, and don't hire more -- but no real qualification seems necessary? Like Max makes a big deal about how rigorous the training is, but without actually conveying that in any way, and it's also not explained why they can't just recruit more people for the training in the first place. Max's "specialty" as a historian is brought up, but then she never works on anything related to it. They send her back to study dinosaurs when her speciality was ancient Greek and Roman civ. You guys couldn't recruit some paleontologists?
As a time travel book, this novel makes poor use of its subject. In fact, nearly no use: the main conceit of historians using time travel in their studies was done better many times over by [a:Connie Willis|14032|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1199238234p2/14032.jpg]; the big "twist" is the starting point for many other time travel narratives, and seemed so obvious that the characters not figuring it out sooner just makes them look dumb. On the most basic level, St. Mary's does not seem like a fun or exciting organization to work for, so why would I want to read about it? This book was baffling for me from start to finish; I kept waiting for it to get going, then to get better. It didn't. Now I wish I could go back in time and not bother.
The main character has no personality except to be perfect at everything and drive evil people to fits of revealing rage -- classic Mary Sue stuff. I get annoyed with the overuse and misuse of that term, but it really applies here. Max feels like a self-insert. She, her love interest, and the innumerable interchangeable secondary characters are all amazingly under-characterized and flatly written: I couldn't describe a single one of them to you, nor could I tell them apart much of the time. (Which one was Markham and which was Murdoch again?) Early in the book, Max notes that she often does not react to things in a "normal" way, but this is never used to make a point about her history or to develop her character as the story progresses; instead, it feels like Taylor simply did not know how to write realistic reactions to situations and was using this as an excuse.
And nothing else makes sense either! You have a secret -- but not all that secret if it's known by a major university and receives "assignments" -- time travel organization, which for some reason is severely understaffed. At one point they only have four historians (a.k.a. time travelers) working for them, and don't hire more -- but no real qualification seems necessary? Like Max makes a big deal about how rigorous the training is, but without actually conveying that in any way, and it's also not explained why they can't just recruit more people for the training in the first place. Max's "specialty" as a historian is brought up, but then she never works on anything related to it. They send her back to study dinosaurs when her speciality was ancient Greek and Roman civ. You guys couldn't recruit some paleontologists?
As a time travel book, this novel makes poor use of its subject. In fact, nearly no use: the main conceit of historians using time travel in their studies was done better many times over by [a:Connie Willis|14032|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1199238234p2/14032.jpg]; the big "twist" is the starting point for many other time travel narratives, and seemed so obvious that the characters not figuring it out sooner just makes them look dumb. On the most basic level, St. Mary's does not seem like a fun or exciting organization to work for, so why would I want to read about it? This book was baffling for me from start to finish; I kept waiting for it to get going, then to get better. It didn't. Now I wish I could go back in time and not bother.