A Symphony of Echoes - Jodi Taylor

   2013; 364 pages.  Book 2 (out of 12) in the series “The Chronicles of St. Mary’s”.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Time Travel; Paranormal Fantasy; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    You could call it a “going-away trip”.  If you’re an agent at the Institute of Historical Research, headquartered in St. Mary’s Priory in Rushford England, and you somehow survive enough missions to earn your retirement, you get to choose your final assignment: its date, its destination, and its event.

 

    That may sound strange, but agents of St. Mary’s are what you and I would call time-travelers.  They don’t like that term, they’d prefer to be known as historians, observers and note-takers if you will.  Or, in more classy verbiage, “investigators of historical events in contemporary time”.

 

    Kalinda “Kal” Black is retiring from St. Mary’s.  For her final sortie, she’s chosen London in 1888, and more specifically, the Whitechapel neighborhood there.  If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s the time and place where/when Jack the Ripper was plying his gruesome trade.

 

    Kal would like to go there, strictly as an observer (you don’t want to mess with the actual events, History doesn’t like cleaning up temporal paradoxes caused by meddling time-travelers), to see if she can identify the madman.  She’ll be dressed in the attire of the time, and speak like a native.  It won’t be humanly possible for anyone to know she’s from the future.

 

    But Kal, what if Jack the Ripper isn’t human?

 

What’s To Like...

    A Symphony of Echoes is the second book in Jodi Taylor’s “The Chronicles of St. Mary’s” series, featuring their History Department’s Chief Operations Officer, Dr. Madeleine “Max” Maxwell, as our chrono-hopping protagonist.

 

    If you read time-travel books for their history tie-ins, you’ll love this storyline.  Max embarks upon no less than six time-jumps, including the abovementioned Jack-the-Ripper quest.  We won’t give details of the other five, that would spoil things, except to say one of them is a jump forward, into the future, which hitherto was a department no-no.  Too many ways for things to go wrong.

 

    In addition to the time-traveling agendas, there are a bunch of plot threads to deal with.  To wit: a.) Jack the Ripper proves to be a more formidable foe than expected; b.) Max’s lover and coworker, Leon Farrell, goes missing in action; c.) the Ultimate Evildoer from the first book, Clive Ronan, continues his skullduggery against St. Mary’s; d.) a Shakespearean play has inexplicably been altered; e.) some sort of glitch in the time-hopping mechanism dumps Max and her squad a year off-target on one of the missions.

 

    The book is written in English, not American, so some words have different spellings, such as fulfil, paralysing, chequebook, three-storey, and draught.  There are also some British terms that may sound strange to us Yanks, such as a clothes peg, bollocking, and a type of furniture bench called a settle.  I also had to look up what it means to wear or carry something “Dick Whittington style” (it means “over the shoulder”).  It's always fun to learn new words and terms in a foreign language.

 

    The trips to the past seemed well-researched, especially the final one.  I laughed at the toilet options in the Middle Ages: an outdoor privy, a community midden, and/or indoor buckets that need to be emptied frequently.  Also, one has to recognize that the English language is always evolving.  If you’re want to “blend in” with the locals from centuries ago, you must learn to speak the time-appropriate lingo, although the phrase “the arse of success” is probably good at all times.

 

    The title reference is given on page 222.  The book is written in the first-person POV – Max’s – and I suspect that will be true throughout the series.  There are a ton of characters to meet and greet; that’s no surprise when there are six different missions to six different times and places.  For the most part, you just have to keep track of St. Mary’s personnel, and there’s a handy Cast of Characters at the start of the book, which Jodi Taylor hilariously labels “Dramatis Thingummy”.

 

    The ending is good.  I guessed some of it before it happened, but it was still fun to watch my predictions be confirmed.  All is well in History’s timeline once more, and most of the main characters, both good and evil, live to skirmish another day, which is not true for some of the secondary characters.  I liked the teaser for what I presume is the opening mission in Book 3.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Whiffy (adj.) : having an unpleasant smell.

Others: Bolshie (adj.); Settles (n., plural).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 1,866 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.13*/5, based on 15,093 ratings and 1,321 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Dr. Maxwell, why are you wearing a red snake in my office?”

    “Sorry, sir.  Whose office should I be wearing it in?”

    There was a bit of silence.

    “I understand the medical profession has washed its hands of you.”

    “Yes indeed, sir.  They’ve declared me perfect and there’s no more they can do for me.  I’ve been released.”

    “I prefer the word unleashed.”  (pg. 45)

 

    In the Middle Ages, the Church was the most powerful institution in the western world.  In England, the struggle between church and kings would take centuries to resolve.  Interestingly, in the end neither institution came out on top.  Today, each is as powerless as the other.  As people power emerged, we invented politicians.  We’re not bright.  (pg. 137)

 

“What the hell am I going to do with seventeen dodos?”  (pg. 154)

    The quibbles are negligible.  There’s a small amount of cussing (9 instances in the first 20%), mostly of the 4- or 5-lettered variety.  There’s also one roll-in-the-hay, but it’s tastefully done. 

 

    There’s only a couple typos, but they’re glaring.  One character is “Pinkie” in the text, but “Pinky” in the Thingummy.  Ditto for the guy who’s “Dr. Knox” in the text, but “Dr. Know” in the Thingummy.  And when counting off a group of baddies (page 141), two of them, with different names, get listed as “the fourth knight”.  There also was one though/through typo.

 

    You should be aware that A Symphony of Echoes is a series of six episodes by what is labeled on the book’s front cover as “the disaster-magnets of St. Mary’s as they hurtle around History”. It does not have the typical structure of one overarching storyline.  Also, not all the plot threads get tied up.  The origin of the Jack-the-Ripper entity feels like fodder for a future episode, and Ronan, the chief bad guy, shows a remarkable talent for getting away.  I’m predicting he’ll be around for the duration of the series.

 

    But all these quibbles are trivial.  Overall, A Symphony of Echoes is a great blend of time-travel, historical fiction, and action-intrigue, replete with wit, and with just a smattering of romance that will please the female readers without causing heartburn for the male ones.

 

    9 Stars.  I have a couple more e-books of the series on my Kindle, plus a ten-book paperback bundle given to me last Christmas that resides on my TBR shelf.  So I’m nicely set up to get more deeply immersed in the antics of these temporal historians.