This starts out as a delightfully silly and charming book about the bureaucracy of Time Travel and ends up as something darker and more thought provoking. What would happen if the UK Civil Service had access to TIME TRAVEL!?!?! It's a brilliant idea for a novel and is written with a seemingly-real understanding of the number of forms, systems, emails, and subterfuge needed to set up such a premise. It is perfectly observed - both in terms of the protagonists' lived experience and their…
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What if Red Dwarf were given a big budget and re-made "Backwards"? I'm only teasing a little bit! It is impossible to do a good Time Travel story. The closest I've experienced is "This Is How You Lose the Time War" which, similar to TENET, has sort-of-spies chasing each other through time. Most sci-fi movies are an excuse to advertise the prowess of the special effects team - and TENET is no exception. Even on a TV screen, it is blisteringly clever the way they seamlessly interweave the…
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This is either the greatest time-travel novel ever - or a load of monkeyshine. And I'm not sure which! What if Quantum Leap was an Agatha Christie novel? That's the basic plot - but, in this, Sam is only leaping between characters in the same story. The whodunnit plot is brilliantly worked out - and has the requisite number of twists-and-turns. But the quasi-time-travel requires the reader to keep an extravagantly large cast of characters in their head and flip back and forth to make sure…
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Wherever the historians go, chaos is sure to follow… Dispatched to Victorian London to seek out Jack the Ripper, things go badly wrong when he finds the St Mary’s historians first. Stalked through the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel, Max is soon running for her life. Again. And that’s just the start. Max finds herself in a race against time when an old enemy is intent on destroying St Mary’s. An enemy willing, if necessary, to destroy History itself. Very very very very very s…
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The first book in the bestselling Chronicles of St Mary's series which follows a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as they hurtle their way around History. This is stupid amounts of fun! A roaring adventure through time. Doesn't bother getting hung-up on paradoxes - or science - but goes straight for the heart of history. Historians! Specifically, historians fightin', drinkin', and shaggin' their way through the space-time continuum. There are several points where the book could have…
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Several years ago, I was wandering round the Louvre on a wet Parisian afternoon. I turned a corner from one gallery to another when I saw a painting which would change my life forever. Like a good many of you, I was completely unaware of Íñigo Melchor de Velasco, the 7th Duke of Frías. But then, how many of us know the person we are destined to become? Looking at the picture, staring into those familiar eyes, I felt like I was looking into a mirror. A mirror which showed the future. I wa…
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