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  • A Trail Through Time

  • The Chronicles of St. Mary's, Book 4
  • By: Jodi Taylor
  • Narrated by: Zara Ramm
  • Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (2,385 ratings)
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A Trail Through Time cover art

A Trail Through Time

By: Jodi Taylor
Narrated by: Zara Ramm
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Summary

The fourth book in the best-selling Chronicles of St Mary's series which follows a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as they hurtle their way around History. If you love Jasper Fforde or Ben Aaronovitch, you won't be able to resist Jodi Taylor.

Sometimes, surviving is all you have left.

Max and Leon are safe at last. Or so they think.

Snatched from her own world and dumped into a new one, Max is soon running for her life. Again.

From a 17th century Frost Fair to Ancient Egypt; from Pompeii to 8th century Scandinavia; Max and Leon are pursued up and down the timeline, playing a dangerous game of hide-and-seek, until finally they're forced to take refuge at St Mary's where a new danger awaits them.

Max's happily ever after is going to have to wait a while....

©2014 Jodi Taylor (P)2014 Audible Studios

What listeners say about A Trail Through Time

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  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

It's still St Mary's

Pre-ordered this and seriously was counting the days till it was released. Jodi Taylor didn't fail to deliver again. A fast paced romp (including PJ's) through time, then some serious storylines.

I'm a bit disappointed that Zara Ramm has dropped Dr Bairstow's accent (slight Scottish, I think - I'm a New Zealander and don't pick between Scottish and Irish well). Still, she still reads the books with an understanding of pace, suspense and emotion.

I hope there will be more of these books. I fell in love with the first one and haven't been able to stop listening to them. I tried to listen to this in one sitting and sadly fell asleep almost right at the end (just at the interesting fight) so I had to finish it today. Jodi Taylor left it open ended enough for there to be more books and I hope her muse doesn't fail her.

People have complained about plot holes in these books but I've found that Ms Taylor is quite adept in filling them in (not always in the same book). Let's face it, time travel allows the filling of plot holes.

More please.

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Max grows up in her new world

At the end of “A Second Chance”, I was more than a little unsure where this series was going. I enjoyed the book, even the harrowing section about the fall of Troy, but the ending, which took Max into an alternate universe, seemed a little weak. I’d been concerned that the ideas had dried up and St Mary’s was no longer going to be part of the story-line.

I needn’t have worried. “A Trail Through Time” actually boosts the series: some of the gloom and doom of the old St Mary’s is lifted without diminishing its anarchic character and recalcitrant nature; Max is delivered from life in the office to spend more time in a pod – well, actually, more time running away from people and things that are trying to kill her; and we get to visit London during the Black Death and again during a seventeenth century Frost Fair, Pompeii during the great eruption and Egypt at the time of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten.

There are new set of bad(ish) guys – the sinister, black-clad Time Police – and a new, but still familiar, St. Mary’s.

What held everything together for me was the way Max embraced her second chance. She doesn’t take it for granted and she doesn’t get off easily but she commits herself to her new world with her usual passion, bravery and wonderfully dry and quintessentially British humour. We learn more about the darkness of her childhood and see her tested to her limits. She comes out of it stronger and somehow more grown up but without being any less of a walking hurricane.

“A Trail Through Time” reinvigorated the series for me. I’m looking forward to seeing what Max gets up to next.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

I am addicted

I love this series. This one is a bit of a hodgepodge of stories woven together rather than one great adventure but equally as enjoyable as the others.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

good read.

As always I enjoyed this book. The tangles that Madeline Maxwell gets herself into are delightfully improbable. This book is a little more violent than the other books but I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The reader makes stupid errors on some words

Generally the reader is great but sometimes mis-reads a simple word, obvioulsy just in error, but also can't pronounce some others at all. Pyroclastic flow become proclastic and there's other. Overall she's fine but it does throw you out of the moment a fair amount.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Still entertaining, but a bit samey...

This is the first time I've listened to two St Mary's books back to back, and I wonder if maybe that detracted a little from the story? I came away a little disappointed - at times the antics and the banter just felt a little contrived / samey / repeat performance?

If you're a fan of this series, then you are unlikely to be put off - it's still the same St Marys chaos but some of the "sadness" of the previous books is resolved (convenient?). It's still entertainment for a few hours.

Not my favourite in the series to date, but that won't deter me from future St Marys downloads.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Death cannot be the end!

Max is on her last adventure across the tide of time before taking on a promotion. But she is an historian. Nothing quite goes to plan!

St Mary's is on danger and Max is in the middle of it all.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Lighthearted jolly good listen

Where does A Trail Through Time rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

St Mary's what fun - a really enjoyable fast paced humorous series with a wonderful female lead.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Poor narration

Omg, if you don’t know what the word is, ASK.

What colour is oc-ra? could that be ochre, maybe?
Pompeii: pro-clastric flow? What is that? She says it about 10 times. Pyroclastic- not so tricky, is it?

Does my head in.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Not as good as Book 3

I very recently enjoyed Book 3 in this series and had high hopes that this imaginative way of telling history, as if witnessed first hand, would continue. Book 4 does have visits to historical events but is dominated by a war between the St Mary's historians and the Time Police following them on their time travels. It was more Star Wars than the illumination of history. The final battle is an interminable description of fighting and injuries that I just wanted to end. The witty dialogue that leavened Book 3 is over done and became tedious and jarring at times.
The narrator is good.

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3 people found this helpful