Jodi Taylor is positively evil. When reading these books it's important to at least try to avoid getting too attached to any of the characters, because JT obviously doesn't do 'protagonist armour' and you never know which one she'll kill next. Or horribly maim. Or suddenly age through time related accidents. And just when you think, "ah, but this character can't be dead because that has already happened and they were older then!" (time travel gets confusing) JT will go and yank out that particular loose thread as well, so that you can remain in doubt even longer. This has more or less been true for all of the novels so far, but this one was particularly bad. At one point I even actually considered not finishing, despite the fact that I really love these books and this 'verse. It was just particularly heart wrenching in this one. And probably not actually for the character that JT intended to be the one to bear the great emotional impact, but one of the others. Well, two actually, but particularly one of them. It's not easy doing this spoilerlessly!

I did carry on though. The ending was very satisfying and I had a glorious moment of "HA! I KNEW IT!" too. I'm a little upset, though, that I've now run out of St Mary's.