- Voice: Zara Ramm reads the full twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes alone, a squad of new recruits plus a returning cast from the earlier series, with no second reader credited.
- Big ideas: Time policing, misfit recruits, series crossover, comic crime.
- Atmosphere: Brisk and jokey, with a real crime running underneath.
- Worth it?: Take it for the novel the description promises, and read the author credit as the error it appears to be.
The byline and the description on this page belong to two different books. The author credit reads Bell Gale Chevigny, followed by the word editor. The description directly beneath it introduces the Time Police, a series by Jodi Taylor, sold as a spinoff from the Chronicles of St Mary's and pitched at people who like Doctor Who, Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde. All five written reviews are about the Taylor novel. So is the series field, which reads The Time Police, book one. If you press play on this twelve hour and twenty-eight minute audiobook, what you almost certainly get is the Taylor. What the top line of the record says you are getting is something else, and nothing here reconciles the two.
Zara Ramm Switches Between a Squad of Recruits
A record this confused would usually be reason enough to walk away, and it is not, because the thing underneath the confusion is a well-liked comic novel with a premise that does a lot of work on its own. Time travel has gone public, the world has already nearly ended once, and an international force now exists to stop anybody rewriting history. Into it walk Jane, Luke and Matthew, described in the jacket copy as the worst recruits in Time Police history. Beyond that setup the description gives away almost nothing, which is unusual for jacket copy running this long, and it leaves the five reviewers to do most of the describing. Zara Ramm reads the whole of it, twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes, and for a novel carrying a squad of new recruits plus a returning cast that means one voice doing a great deal of switching.
That returning cast is the real question for a newcomer, and the reviewers happen to answer it. The reviewer posting from Germany names Matthew, Captain Ellis and North as carryovers from the earlier books, says you meet Commander Hays, Max and Farrell again, and then states outright that you do not have to have read the Chronicles first, because Taylor explains what you need to know. The reviewer in Canada puts it the other way round, calling the overlap with St Mary's enough to make the whole thing feel like one more entry in that series. Both can be true at once, and both point the same way: the book does not lock a newcomer out. What neither of them settles is how much of the earlier series you will feel you are missing, which is a different question from whether you can follow the plot.
Comfort Listening With an Actual Body Count
This is comfort listening with a body count, which is a narrower combination than it sounds. The four-star review splits the two halves in its own headline, calling the book a Lighthearted Time Travel Romp and then flagging a Serious Crime inside it. The Canadian entry supplies the actual shape: three recruits, their first six months in the job, a rabbit chased across Australia, a winning lottery ticket swiped, and a few murders that may or may not have happened, complete with the reviewer's own question mark. That clause tells you the register more accurately than any of the promotional lines above it do.
What the jacket does at length is tell you who to compare this to. Doctor Who, Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde all turn up in the second sentence, followed by two press quotes: the British Fantasy Society on the book being lots of fun, and Culturefly calling it inventive and entertaining and a fast-paced and fun first book in a promising new series. Blurb-stacking that heavy usually means a publisher launching a run of titles and hoping the first one pulls the rest along. Worth knowing before you start, since the reviewers here write like people who expected more of them, one closing by hoping the next book will not be long in coming.
Every Review Predates This 2024 Recording
When you check the dates, the record comes apart a second time. The oldest written response is from October 2019 and the newest from September 2021, while this edition is dated September 2, 2024. Every person who wrote about the book did so between three and five years before the recording they now appear beneath was published. The column has been carried over from an earlier edition, which is common enough on its own, but on a record whose author line already names someone the reviewers never mention, it is one more reason to check what you are buying before you buy it.
If you read the review bodies to the end, four of the five stop before their sentence does, and two of those stop in the middle of a word: one breaks off at over a w, another at Chronicles-ex. All four run to exactly the same length before cutting, which points at a display limit rather than five people who lost interest at the same instant. Two smaller things belong in the same pile. The tag on this listing reads Drama and Plays, which fits nothing in the description. And the badge sits at 4.6 across six votes while five people have written, so the arithmetic behind that number is not one you can reconstruct from what is shown.
Two Groups Should Think Twice Before Buying
Once you know which book you are actually getting, the audience is easy to describe. Anyone who has read the Chronicles of St Mary's and hesitated over the spinoff should note that the five-star opener here did exactly that, hesitated, then reversed. Newcomers are covered too, on the direct testimony of the reviewer who says the necessary background gets explained without an information dump. Comic science fiction listeners who want plot rather than whimsy get a crime running under the jokes, and twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes leaves room for both to breathe.
Two groups should think twice. If you want the edited collection the author credit points to, this is not it, and nothing on the record suggests where that book went. And if a jokey register grates on you, the promotional quotes, the headlines and the reviewers all describe the same thing, so take them at their word. One more group worth naming: anyone who buys on a star rating alone will find that the number here rests on six votes, five written opinions, and a run of dates that does not line up with the release. Treat the byline as the error it appears to be, treat the description and the review column as the accurate part, and you will know what you are pressing play on.
Which book does this audiobook actually contain?
The description, the series field and all five reviews describe Jodi Taylor's Time Police novel, first in that series. The author credit names Bell Gale Chevigny as editor, a name no reviewer mentions and the description never uses. The recording you get is almost certainly the Taylor, but the record itself never resolves the contradiction, so check before purchase.
Can I start this audiobook without the Chronicles of St Mary's?
One reviewer addresses this head on and says no prior reading is required, because Taylor supplies the background without an information dump. Another calls the overlap with the earlier series heavy enough that the book feels like part of it. Expect returning names such as Captain Ellis, Commander Hays, Max and Farrell to land differently for you.
What does the Drama and Plays tag mean on this audiobook?
Nothing that matches the description, which promises a comic science fiction novel about a time-travel police force rather than a stage work. The tag looks like leftover classification from whatever record this page was assembled out of, in the same way the author credit does. Judge the content by the description and the reviews instead.
