At St. Mary’s history is not only taught rather the students are allowed to visit different timelines so that they can observe everything with their eyes. This is interesting stuff but there is an issue with this time-traveling i.e if you try to change anything or even get noticed by anyone in the past your existence comes under threat.
The whole timeline can be destroyed if the change is a major one which means the future would never be the same. For Max selecting history as a major subject was fun from the beginning. She visited different timelines and saw the historical events with her eyes. This time she goes to the era of Isaac Newton and meets the man herself after which she witnesses The Gates of Grief. Everything went just fine and then the chapter of the Trojan War just fell too big on Max.
All she wanted was to save a life but that landed her standing against history. Being noticed is one thing and then trying to alter is really bad news for the whole St. Mary’s institute. Jodi Taylor tried to turn Just One Damned Thing After Another and Hard Time into thrillers in the later stages and here the author has played in the same way.
Zara Ramm knew exactly what was needed in the narration so the narrator too added extra speed in narration. It can be considered as a shift from fantasy to the thriller but we cannot brand it as a full thriller because the ingredients of fantasy never leave the stage at any point in the novel.