Chaotic Dash Through Time to Save England’s History

This is the second book in The Chronicles of Saint Mary’s and like the first book; I listened to this one in audio form. I’m still not 100% sold on audio format, but I like the narrator for this series and I had a long, brainless task at work that needed to get done so an audio book was called for. So once again, I dived into the chaotic world of Saint Mary’s.

I suppose the basic plot of A Symphony of Echoes is that the historians of Saint Mary’s need to go back to fix the timeline surrounding Mary Queen of Scotts, as someone else is trying to change history so that SHE becomes queen of England instead of Elizabeth. However, there are so many diverting trips and things that this particular plotline is almost a side note. Unfortunately, this book also contains an absolutely infuriating romantic plotline between Maxwell and the Chief. It drove me completely bonkers, and felt really forced. The Chief does something that hurts Maxwell very deeply and then she goes off and acts like a child (as usual) and they don’t talk to each other about it until Maxwell’s disabled assistant gets a promise that Maxwell would fix things, so he forces the matter and things end up OK. It’s…. really annoying and I hated it; both the romance story line and the saintly disabled assistant plot line. As a note, the books are still very focused on the history of the western world, so no trips into ancient China or Africa or the Americas yet (or even post Roman Middle East). The longer this goes on, the more it starts to annoy me.

The book is enjoyable. It’s a crazy romp through time, and so long as you don’t think about various things too hard there is fun to be had. Honestly, I find the audio book a pretty good format for this kind of story (even though I’m still not really reconciled to it) because it doesn’t let me stop and think about the book to hard, I’m far too caught up in the story to think about what’s going on. If that makes sense.

If you read and enjoyed the first, you’ll enjoy this one. It’s an enjoyable time travel series and I’m having fun with it.