{"id":1254,"date":"2016-09-08T21:29:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1254"},"modified":"2016-09-08T21:29:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:29:26","slug":"when-the-echoes-symphonize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/when-the-echoes-symphonize\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Echoes Symphonize"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"a-symphony-of-echoes\"<\/a>A Symphony of Echoes<\/em><\/a>
\nJodi Taylor<\/a>
\nNight Shade Books<\/a>
\nHardcover $24.95
\nTrade Paper $12.99
\nEbook $3.99<\/p>\n

I’d like to thank Brianna Scharfenberg of Night Shade Books for not only providing me with the review copy but also introducing me to this series. It’s become one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

A Symphony of Echoes<\/em> takes up pretty soon after the ending of Just One Damned Thing After Another<\/em> (reviewed here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Things haven’t slowed down.\u00a0 Early in the book, Madeline Maxwell and her associates end up going to the future to save St. Mary’s from an attack.\u00a0 This is highly irregular, and by highly irregular, I mean Not Done At All.\u00a0 You never go to the future.\u00a0 Too many risks.<\/p>\n

But these are unusual times, no pun intended.\u00a0 Max ends up being the director for a while.\u00a0 I’m not sure how far in the future they go.\u00a0 It doesn’t seem to be too far, but none of the people there are members of Max’s version of St. Mary’s except Mrs. Partridge, the assistant to the director.\u00a0 The implication is that they are all dead.<\/p>\n

Anyway, one of the funniest scenes in the book is when Max takes a group of trainees on a team building exercise: the team that catches the most live dodos wins.\u00a0 None of the teams are capable of finding and capturing a dodo, even if the dodos walk up to them.\u00a0 Which they don’t.\u00a0 They walk up to Max and Mrs. Partridge, who are having a formal tea on the lawn outside the pod while they wait for the teams.\u00a0 The whole scene reminded me of Howard Waldrop’s classic short story, “The Ugly Chickens”.\"dodo-02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lest you think things are all fun and games, the next mission the trainees go on is to witness the assassination of Thomas a Beckett.\u00a0 That was pretty grim.<\/p>\n

I’m not giving away any surprises, because both of the things I’ve described above happen fairly early in the book and serve to set up some later events.\u00a0 And that’s not the only assassination Max witnesses.\u00a0 (Did you know that many modern scholars think the Hanging Gardens of Babylon weren’t really in Babylon, but in Ninevah? I didn’t. And yes, that relates to another assassination.)<\/p>\n

A Symphony of Echoes<\/em> is just as enjoyable as Just One Damned Thing After Another<\/em>.\u00a0 The humor is just as funny.\u00a0 The overall tone, however, I thought was a bit darker than the first volume.\u00a0 But when you make your living watching things in history that are pretty dark, such as the opening chapters in which Max and another historian are stalking Jack the Ripper only to end up being hunted by him, things are going to be a little grim.\u00a0 The Jack the Ripper sequence was pretty nerve wracking, and Jack doesn’t turn out to be who might think.<\/p>\n

I heartily recommend The Chronicles of St. Mary’s<\/em>.\u00a0 This is a fun series of books, one of the few that can make me laugh and\/or cry while piquing my curiosity about history,which truth be told isn’t that hard to do.\u00a0 Making me laugh or cry, though, that takes real skill.\u00a0 As long as Ms. Taylor continues to write like this, I’m going to be reading these books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Symphony of Echoes Jodi Taylor Night Shade Books Hardcover $24.95 Trade Paper $12.99 Ebook $3.99 I’d like to thank Brianna Scharfenberg of Night Shade Books for not only providing me with the review copy but also introducing me to this series. It’s become one of my favorites. A Symphony of Echoes takes up pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[191],"tags":[821,795,823],"class_list":["post-1254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-night-shade-books","tag-jodi-taylor","tag-night-shade-books","tag-the-chronicles-of-st-marys"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-ke","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1258,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}