2019; 461 pages. Book 10 (out of 14) in the “Chronicles of St. Mary’s” series. New Author? : No. Genres: Time Travel; Humorous Fantasy; Historical
Fiction. Overall Rating: 9*/10.
Madeleine “Max” Maxwell has been traded to the
Time Police!
Well okay, technically she’s
been “seconded” to the Time Police, meaning St. Mary’s loaning Max to them for
a while. It’s sort of a goodwill
gesture, aimed at improving the relationship between the two organizations.
One of the weird things is
that the Time Police office is based in the future, so Max gets to time-travel
forward every time she goes to work. How
utterly kewl is that?! But the bigger
perk for Max is that she gets to be with her son, Matthew, who is being kept at the Time
Police headquarters (“TPHQ”), protected by the Time Police from the evil bad guy, Clive Ronan.
Looking after Matthew is not an easy job; see
the second excerpt below.
What’s To Like...
I enjoyed Max’s career move in Hope for the Best. It seemed a nice way for Jodi Taylor to
introduce the reader to her new “Time Police” series, the first book of which
came out about five months after this one.
It was interesting to watch
Max and Captain Ellis learn to work as partners. Their first adventure involves traveling to
16th-century London to deal with a Temporal Anomaly. The Time Police are there to “repair” the
digression, even if that means using force.
St. Mary’s is there to record history.
Those differing motivations do not always mesh smoothly.
Delightfully, there’s lots of
time-jumping. I counted ten chrono-hops,
and that’s not including return jumps to St. Mary’s and/or TPHQ. As usual, the book’s cover image gives a
glimpse at two of those trips. The
smokestacks shown at the top are of the Battersea Power Station, as any fan of
Pink Floyd’s “Animals” album will
recognize. We’ll let you wonder why the
bottom image is simply a nest of eggs.
It’s not a spoiler to reveal
that two of my favorite characters in this series, Adrian
and Mikey, play prominent roles in the storyline. Grint the
Grunt was also an interesting character, as were Hillary and Donald. I chuckled at the mention of the sport of cheese-rolling on Cooper’s Hill, and liked
learning why “Time is like a bluebell wood”.
The ending is tense, twisty,
and totally unexpected. History is
restored to its proper order, although not everybody at St. Mary’s, Max in particular, is happy about it. The
Time Police and St. Mary’s have a better understanding of each other, although
I’d hardly call them bosom buddies. Hope
For the Best is both a part of a series and a standalone novel.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 5,408 ratings
and 383 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.32*/5,
based on 7,706
ratings and 584 reviews.
Excerpts...
I knelt up to see better.
Ellis pulled me down. “Stay down.”
“I can’t.
It’s my job. I’m the
historian. I study historical events. You’re the Time Police. Go and count your crayons.”
Someone behind me wondered aloud why they
let me live.
“I’ve no idea,” said Ellis. “Perhaps she’ll come in handy one day.”
“And if not?” Was it my imagination or was there a hopeful
note there?
“Then you can kill her.” (pg. 126)
“Will you come and see me off?”
“Of course.
Every wife always wants to know when her husband’s safely out of the
picture.”
“And I gather you’re on the move, too.”
“Yes.
Because of what’s happening at St. Mary’s, Dr. Bairstow’s moved the
schedule forwards. I’m going back to
TPHQ.”
“Give my love to Matthew. How’s he doing?”
“He broke the Time Map.”
“The boy’s a vandal. He gets more like his mother every day.”
“And then showed them how to put it right.”
“The boy’s a genius. He gets more like his father every day.” (pg. 278)
Kewlest New Word ...
Firkling (v.) : searching; rummaging.
Others: Jellabiyas (n.).
I was well and
truly up the River of Excrement and my canoe had no visible means of propulsion. (pg. 352)
The profanity is pretty sparse in Hope for the Best; I noticed
just 11 instances in the first 20% of the book; all of which of the “milder”
ilk. Max pays a visit to a sex club late
in the story, but it’s a rather tame experience. I didn’t note any typos; so kudos to whoever the
editor was.
The series is written in
British, not American; so there are a few weird words and spellings for
us Yankee readers, including draughty, ploughed,
ageing, and storeys. I’m used to hoovering
by now, but the abovementioned firkling
stumped me. Jellabiya
is an Arabic term.
That’s the nit-pickiest I can
be with Hope for the Best. It’s
another fine time-travel tale with lots of wit, humor, thrills-&-spills, family
drama, and, maybe best of all, historical fiction blended in. I've yet to see any drop-off in the
quality of the books in this series.
9 Stars. One last thing. At one point our heroes come riding in on what is described as “TWOC’d horses”. Say what? That acronym stumped me, so I googled it. It turns out TWOC stands for “Taken Without Owner’s Consent”. Now you know.