Just One Damned Thing After Another

Series: The Chronicles of St Mary's, Book 1

By: Jodi Taylor / Narrated By: Zara Ramm

Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins

Delightful romps through time after time

This was my second listen of Just One Damned Thing After Another, and I must say that I enjoyed it as much this time as I did the last. I expected to find other great reviews over on Audible and was surprised to find that a lot of people panned it…

I mean, whazza?!?

Seems that a lot o’ folks took it waaaay too seriously. Some even compared it to the Oxford Time Travel series by Connie Willis (Whom I ADORE!), as though different people can’t have a different take on how time travel might be used in developing stories. So holy COW: Need I say that Jodi’s take and Connie’s take are VAAASTLY dissimilar, happily so?!?

No, there’s not a huuuge amount of time travel with epic points in history studied here. And I must admit that I have no idea whether further books in the series delve more into the St. Mary’s lot getting into traveling through time; I just dunno.

What I CAN tell you is that in this book? There’s just enough time travel to tickle my funny bone (I mean, c’mon: There’s the fire of Alexandria and heroic measures taken, for gosh sake!). Mostly, yes, it’s the life of “Max” our heroine. First it’s how she navigates her way through training, then it’s followed by jumps with her partner, then it’s a way to do some saving of dinosaurs (Yes, they go back that far!), then it goes through more St. Mary’s troubles and life and ways to save their institution.

Some readers found Max, a proud possessor of a PhD, to be childish and schizzy, but that’s kinda what I liked about her. She had no problem taking the lazy person’s way out… so long as it worked. The funniest instance of this is how she cannot STAND the idea of doing the Backwoods Survival part of her exams, but the humor goes through to another part of her exam where her mind blinks, and twists, and whirls, and finally comes up with a possible sassy-ass answer. I LIKED how Max was a bit spastic because it made meeee feel as though being spastic was actually okay (Spaz Extraordinaire that I am). So I found a role-model in Max, believe it or not!

Also, some listeners had a problem with Zara Ramm not vocally distinguishing between the characters well enough. Hmmm…. well, to this I say, thank GOD! I haaate it when narrators try too hard, doing all sorts of gyrations, all in an effort to do “different” voices for each character. This audiobook has plenty of characters, thank you very much, so that would’ve been a mess of distractions for me. I liked how Ramm narrated the characters true to their personalities, and how she guided us through the increased tension that was thrown in throughout the book.

Make no mistake, this is an action-based book, tho’ I think Taylor did a fine job with likable characters.

So if you’re looking for jaunts aaaall through history, this book’ll not be for you (And remember: I can’t even tell ya whether St. Mary’s books will be). Ya wanna bit of a wallow with dinosaurs? Okay, you might find part of this book to suit your fancy.

But if you have a hankering for a delightfully irreverent heroine (Who drops her knickers when the love of her life shows up—fear not: This isn’t an in-your-face naughty book), one who is willing to accept a hand offered in help, one who is willing to take on major responsibilities to do the job right? Give this book a try.

Plus I checked. Zara Ramm does indeed do aaall of the St. Mary’s books. If she’s doing my dear Max, I am so totally THERE!!!