The Very First Damned Thing (The Chronicles of St Mary's, #0.5)

If you want an account of the founding of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, here it is, and it's quite nice to have if you've read other books in the series. It's chronologically the first item in the series; but, confusingly, you shouldn't start reading the series here, because time travel is involved, and this story includes spoilers about the future.Start the series with [b:Just One Damned Thing After Another 53501004 Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St. Mary's #1) Jodi Taylor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590609626l/53501004.SY75.jpg 25626746], and come back to this later, if you still feel motivated to do so.From my experience so far, it seems that Jodi Taylor's idea of a short story involves a minimum of plot. So, this short story gives a documentary account of the steps followed by Dr Bairstow in order to set up the Institute. There are no real complications: he just goes through it, one step after another, setting up funding and recruiting personnel. He finds it tiring and rather lonely work, but he gets it all done.As usual, the author gives us very little sense of how much time has passed in the course of this story, but it seems to be a matter of years—perhaps up to about 20 years.