After the heartwrench that was And the Rest is History comes An Argumentation of Historians, the long awaited sequel. Luckily we were able to get our intermittent fix with 3 short stories but still my heart yearned for more, and boy does Jodi Taylor deliver!
Story
I don’t want to spoil anything here, but I did really like the shenannigans the St. Mary’s crew ends up in. However I did feel that there was a jarring switch in pace after the major arc.
The normal format of St. Mary’s planning to do a thing, doing a thing, somehow messing the thing up and somebody ending up in trouble is still there. But then usually the remainder of the story deals with trying to solve said trouble, but smack down around the 75% mark, the problem is suddenly resolved in an anti-climactic manner, and all of a sudden I was a bit fazed with where the story was going. I felt lost in a sea of historians, without direction or purpose. This feeling did kind of ruin the last quarter of the book for me. It all felt a bit rushed to me, whereas the entire first three quarters took it’s time to work things out, and kept a decent pace, the last quarter is all over the place in terms of pacing and it all felt a bit disconnected.
That’s not to say the ending isn’t good but I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if it felt a little more coherent.
Apart from this small rant, I did very much like the story and I’m looking forward to the next major installment.
Characters
Well, there’s all the usual suspects, with Max taking up most of the forefront, as the main protagonist. I really liked Max here. She’s proven to be a strong woman, resourceful and not without faults or drama.
Writing
We get the usual witty Jodi Taylor humor with lots of asides filled with absurdities and odd little tidbits of history, which is all very easily digestable and very enjoying to read.
The narration by Zara Ramm is, also as usual, spot on, with her clear sound, different character voices and cool british accent.
Conclusion
Despite the somewhat jarring last 25%, I still very much enjoyed this installment, so I’m awarding it 4.5 stars.
