Skip to main content

Plan for the Worst (SF) - Jodi Taylor ****

The publisher classifies this book as fantasy, but as it is based on one of the classic SF tropes, time travel - and this is done by technology, rather than magic - it can sensibly be classified as science fiction.

 The book features St Mary's, an institute of history attached to a fictional university, where the historians research the realities of history using time machines. While not a particularly original idea - Bill and Ted did their history homework this way a long time ago - it's quite nicely set up with a Time Police organisation that is technically on the same side as the historians, but in practice is often in opposition, plus a couple of dastardly time travellers who are intent on messing with the St Mary's bunch, up to and including committing murder.

 I did have a slight problem coming to Plan for the Worst as it's book 11 in a series - I sympathise with Jodi Taylor in trying to make the opening accessible to someone who hasn't read the series before, yet not overdoing the old ground. It would have been useful to have a bit more background on St Mary's and the time pods, and I did struggle with the sheer size of the cast - this could have been kept down a little, at least initially.

 There was a real problem giving this book a star rating. It has some distinct flaws. It's significantly too long, spending far too much time on describing mundane activities in unnecessary detail. It's episodic - there's an opening visit to a store area in the pre-European Americas that really doesn't contribute anything, for example. It was only after this, around 100 pages in, that the book really seemed to get going. And the humour is juvenile, laid on far too thickly. I initially thought it was a children's book because of the relentless nature of the attempts to be funny in the narration, but the protagonist is a middle-aged woman and the themes sometimes adult, so I was a bit adrift on the target audience. I certainly didn't understand the way the blurb likens the book to Ben Aaronovitch, whose Rivers of London series may also have some humour, but are far more sophisticated and dark in the way it's used.

 Because of the above, I was all set to give the book just three stars, but what rescued it were the set pieces. The murder investigation, the Tower of London and Crete - particularly Crete - were really well handled and draw the reader in. These are five star sections, bringing up the overall score. There's also some quite clever playing around with time and time streams. This is something that, for example, Dr Who hardly ever does as it can be hard to follow. It's used effectively in the movie Looper, but that takes a couple of watchings to get on top of - it's handled well here.

 So, it's a strange mix. If I'm honest, I wasn't drawn in enough to go back and start the series from the beginning, but after initially being close to giving up when faced with the relentless jokiness, I  did enjoy those set pieces enough to make it a satisfying read.

Paperback:     
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight ****

Not everyone would class this as popular science, but it concerns an attempt to take a scientific approach to paranormal abilities - notably premonitions (aka clairvoyance) and as such, it fits the category. Writing in the typical dramatic storytelling style of a US magazine, Sam Knight brings to life the remarkable tale of the work of two British figures from the 1960s. The central one is psychiatrist John Barker, with a supporting role given to newspaper and TV science reporter Peter Fairley. Barker had a long interest in extra sensory phenomena - the story takes off when he was inspired by a number of people claiming to have foreseen the Aberfan disaster (which terrible tragedy Knight covers movingly). As a result of the Aberfan premonitions, the pair were responsible for London's Evening Standard newspaper setting up a long-running experiment in the form of 'The Premonitions Bureau.' Aware that the Aberfan predictions were only reported after the event, and hence flawe...
Post a Comment
Read more