Just One Damned Thing After Another
The Chronicles of St Mary's • Book 1
by Jodi Taylor, Marty Ross, Gemma Whelan, Ben Miles, Jonathan Bailey, Zara Ramm
Why You'll Love This
Time travel played straight, wrapped in British chaos, and staffed entirely by historians who probably shouldn't be trusted with the past.
- Great if you want: time travel with real historical teeth and reckless charm
- The experience: fast, funny, and propulsive — history as gleeful disaster comedy
- The writing: Taylor's voice is dry and deadpan — wit doing the heavy lifting throughout
- Skip if: you prefer grounded, serious historical fiction over romp-style adventure
About This Book
Behind the modest façade of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, historians aren't content to study the past from a safe distance—they step directly into it. Jodi Taylor's debut novel follows a band of brilliantly eccentric academics who "investigate major historical events in contemporary time" (they are very clear that it isn't time travel), lurching from one catastrophe to the next while trying, with varying success, not to fundamentally break history. The stakes are genuinely life-or-death, yet the tone refuses to be grim about it, threading real danger through a story that crackles with wit and warmth.
What makes this book such a rewarding read is Taylor's instinct for pacing and voice. The prose moves like a runaway cart downhill—propulsive, funny, and surprisingly sharp when it chooses to be. The narrator, historian Madeleine Maxwell, is acerbic and self-aware in ways that make her feel immediately real, and Taylor uses that intimacy to smuggle in emotional weight between the chaos. The structure earns its momentum honestly, delivering escalating consequences rather than just escalating spectacle. It's the kind of book that makes the sequel feel less like an option and more like a foregone conclusion.