{"id":648,"date":"2018-11-27T08:25:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T22:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/?p=648"},"modified":"2018-11-27T08:27:31","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T22:27:31","slug":"review-just-one-damn-thing-after-another-by-jodi-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/2018\/11\/27\/review-just-one-damn-thing-after-another-by-jodi-taylor\/","title":{"rendered":"Review &#8211; Just One Damn Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Being a historian should be easier when you have a time machine and lots of tea&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to set to set a single tone &#8211; juggling tones is a lot harder.\u00a0 The title and the start of One Damn Thing suggest a particular style that I love, wry British comedy, and when operating in the mode of hard work, punishing bureaucracy, farcical romance and endless tea, it&#8217;s a very enjoyable book.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the humor is juxtaposed with a story of grueling training, punishing missions, and physical and sexual violence.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not that these things can&#8217;t be pulled together, Black Adder goes forth being a topical example, it&#8217;s just that it requires a mastery of tone that just isn&#8217;t present here.<\/p>\n<p>All of this is before we get to the Elephant in the room.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not fair, but if you write a book about a female, time traveling historian, you are going to draw comparisons to one of the best regarded science fiction books of all time, Connie Willis&#8217; The Doomsday Book.<span id='easy-footnote-1-648' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/2018\/11\/27\/review-just-one-damn-thing-after-another-by-jodi-taylor\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-648' title=' A book I started, but didn&amp;#8217;t finish, for reasons I can&amp;#8217;t remember. '><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0 Given the quality of what&#8217;s on offer here, if the idea of this book sounded interesting you are far better reading that.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>A good comedy combined with a terrible drama makes a disappointing mess.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em> Being a historian should be easier when you have a time machine and lots of tea&#8230; <\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to set to set a single tone &#8211; juggling tones is a lot harder.  The title and the start of One Damn Thing suggest a particular style that I love, wry British comedy, and when operating in the mode of hard work, punishing bureaucracy, farcical romance and endless tea, it&#8217;s a very enjoyable book.  Unfortunately&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8],"tags":[33,27,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":669,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jcreid.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}