A Symphony Of Echoes, by Jodi Taylor, is the second in the Chronicles of St. Mary's series about a time-travelling group of historians. The action centres around Max (Madeleine Maxwell), who manages to get into all manner of scrapes across the great expanse of history and somehow survive by the skin of her teeth. In this book, she goes in search of Jack The Ripper, witnesses the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and tries to find the Hanging Gardens of Babylon too. Along the way, she gets caught up in a future St Mary's where their arch enemy has wreaked havoc to the extent that there is a very real chance the research facility will have to close. Of course, you could go back in time and just kill this man who is threatening the very fabric of history - but then that would mean St Mary's might NEVER have existed ... so a good old paradox in time is created! This is a highly enjoyable, fast-paced adventure that is laced with gritty and extremely sarcastic dialogue. In between the adventure we have the on/off/on relationship between Max and Chief Farrell, which, if it continues in this vein, may get a little wearing! I do like Max as a character, but she does seem to cause havoc wherever she goes and one might be left wondering how on earth she is let loose in history ... in fact, something always seems to go wrong on the trips - not sure what kind of Health and Safety Rules they've got there, but there doesn't seem to be much of a pension plan! Great fun, wouldn't want to work there! I read the audio edition, excellently narrated by Zara Ramm.
My STAR rating: FOUR.
Length: 340 print pages.
Price I paid: £2.99.
Reading formats available: print; unabridged audio download; MP3-CD; ebook.
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