jcpdiesel21's review against another edition
2.0
I have such mixed feelings about this book upon finishing. On one hand, it has an original concept that utilizes time travel like nothing I've read before. Even though I am starting to experience some fatigue with material centered on World War II, the different perspectives that exist keep me coming back to the time period, and reading about how the Blitz affected the day-to-day lives of the British was very informative. On the other hand, I feel like the volume of this novel could have easily been halved and it still would have accomplished its main purpose; its pace is meandering at best and any semblance of a plot is painfully slow to show up. Despite the fact that I knew going in that this book has a sequel, I was very frustrated with the lack of finality in the conclusion. I expected there to be dangling plot threads, but it ends somewhat nonchalantly with not even a cliffhanger to tantalize my interest. There was not enough information included about the mechanics of time travel to make me comprehend how the process worked or why it was so necessary. The main characters are indistinguishable and I felt like I learned very little about their actual personalities, so it was difficult to become invested in their fates. I also grew incredibly annoyed with how they constantly obsessed over their retrieval; I understand why this was a major concern, but it was a worry that was repeated ad nauseam instead of the characters concentrating on their assignments. Overall, I think this contains a neat idea utilizing excellent research, but its execution leaves much to be desired.
chirson's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars. The interchangeable and repetitive sequences of confusion and denial were unfortunately tiresome (despite being thematically relevant) but when the novel focused on ethical obligations of humans to each other it became a true delight.
I'll probably have more to say once I get through the second half.
I'll probably have more to say once I get through the second half.
isabellarobinson7's review against another edition
4.0
Rating: 4 stars
Reading this book was a little bittersweet, because Blackout was the last thing I ordered from Book Depository beforeJeff Bozos killed them they closed down. It even arrived after the company had officially shut its doors. Truly, it is the end of an era. Though, it’s not like I could ever forget about Book Depository, not with the hundreds of bookmarks I have of theirs. But anyway. Review time.
Blackout is Connie Willis’ most recent entry into the Oxford Time Travelling universe of Doomsday Book fame. Following in its predecessor’s footsteps, Blackout is a time travelling novel (to no one’s surprise) in which three students from 2060’s Oxford are sent to observe events surrounding and directly concerning the Blitz during World War II in London, England. Of course, this was what they intended to happen, and nothing goes really to plan.
The first of these characters/students is named Polly Churchill (who goes by Polly Sebastian in WWII for obvious reasons) and her story was perhaps my least favourite of the three. Her main area of interest was observing the lives of the general public in central London, and how they reacted to and operated in spite of the incessant German air raids of the early 1940’s. The reason why Polly’s perspective interested me less than the other two was perhaps because her story didn’t really seem to be going anywhere, and was quite repetitive. Work as a shop girl during the day, run for the bomb shelters at night, wake up to various piles of rubble and debris, go back to work… wash, rinse, repeat. I also just didn’t particularly care for Polly as a character.
The second of the three perspectives is Merope Ward (took me a good 30 seconds to remember her name there) who assumes the name Eileen O’Reilly (due to her red hair) when she goes back in time. Eileen is working as a servant in the West Midlands to observe the children who had been evacuated from London as a precaution before the Blitz began. That’s just a roundabout way of saying she was looking after annoying kids. Willis is great at writing irritatingly endearing children. Like, you want to slap them silly whenever they so much as open their mouths, but they are just kids and so they do what kids do. And this is coming from someone who usually avoids them.
The last perspective (and my personal favourite) was Micheal Davies. He was initially supposed to be studying Pearl Harbour, and thus got an American accent “implant”, but had his destination changed at the last minute to the Dunkirk evacuation. The lack of his natural English accent leaving him very few options, he goes by Mike Davis, an American journalist, and ends up on board one of the civilian ships sent across the Channel. While reading Mike’s chapters, I continuously had the Dunkirk scenes from two movies in my head: Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name; and (of course) Dunkirk written, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan. This helped me, as someone who doesn’t visualise things very easily, more closely understand what the characters in Mike’s storyline were experiencing... or, at least, what Hollywood thinks they were.
There isn’t much else to say about the plot of Blackout, because the story is so heavily tied in with the three characters we get perspectives of, the ones I have already described. Overall, I don’t think I liked it quite as much as Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, but that is probably only because Blackout is only half the story. Yes, in true Tolkien fashion, the story Willis was trying to write got too big for a single volume and had to be split in two. Because of this Blackout just ends, and you don’t get any real catharsis. That is not a critique, per se, as Blackout is meant to be read with its “sequel” All Clear directly following. Which I fully intended to do, but stuff got in the way. Well, at least I got this review done, albeit two and a half months late. Eh, such is life.
Reading this book was a little bittersweet, because Blackout was the last thing I ordered from Book Depository before
Blackout is Connie Willis’ most recent entry into the Oxford Time Travelling universe of Doomsday Book fame. Following in its predecessor’s footsteps, Blackout is a time travelling novel (to no one’s surprise) in which three students from 2060’s Oxford are sent to observe events surrounding and directly concerning the Blitz during World War II in London, England. Of course, this was what they intended to happen, and nothing goes really to plan.
The first of these characters/students is named Polly Churchill (who goes by Polly Sebastian in WWII for obvious reasons) and her story was perhaps my least favourite of the three. Her main area of interest was observing the lives of the general public in central London, and how they reacted to and operated in spite of the incessant German air raids of the early 1940’s. The reason why Polly’s perspective interested me less than the other two was perhaps because her story didn’t really seem to be going anywhere, and was quite repetitive. Work as a shop girl during the day, run for the bomb shelters at night, wake up to various piles of rubble and debris, go back to work… wash, rinse, repeat. I also just didn’t particularly care for Polly as a character.
The second of the three perspectives is Merope Ward (took me a good 30 seconds to remember her name there) who assumes the name Eileen O’Reilly (due to her red hair) when she goes back in time. Eileen is working as a servant in the West Midlands to observe the children who had been evacuated from London as a precaution before the Blitz began. That’s just a roundabout way of saying she was looking after annoying kids. Willis is great at writing irritatingly endearing children. Like, you want to slap them silly whenever they so much as open their mouths, but they are just kids and so they do what kids do. And this is coming from someone who usually avoids them.
The last perspective (and my personal favourite) was Micheal Davies. He was initially supposed to be studying Pearl Harbour, and thus got an American accent “implant”, but had his destination changed at the last minute to the Dunkirk evacuation. The lack of his natural English accent leaving him very few options, he goes by Mike Davis, an American journalist, and ends up on board one of the civilian ships sent across the Channel. While reading Mike’s chapters, I continuously had the Dunkirk scenes from two movies in my head: Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name; and (of course) Dunkirk written, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan. This helped me, as someone who doesn’t visualise things very easily, more closely understand what the characters in Mike’s storyline were experiencing... or, at least, what Hollywood thinks they were.
There isn’t much else to say about the plot of Blackout, because the story is so heavily tied in with the three characters we get perspectives of, the ones I have already described. Overall, I don’t think I liked it quite as much as Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, but that is probably only because Blackout is only half the story. Yes, in true Tolkien fashion, the story Willis was trying to write got too big for a single volume and had to be split in two. Because of this Blackout just ends, and you don’t get any real catharsis. That is not a critique, per se, as Blackout is meant to be read with its “sequel” All Clear directly following. Which I fully intended to do, but stuff got in the way. Well, at least I got this review done, albeit two and a half months late. Eh, such is life.
skyring's review against another edition
5.0
I love Connie Willis! She writes intricate stories, meticulously researched, her characters come alive on the page, their environment is present in more than words and she does it all with gentle humour and romance.
She writes a book about the Middle Ages - you are there. Simple as that.
And that's how it works. In her writing world, time travel has been invented, about fifty years from now, and historians are lining up to go through to the past to study their favorite historical periods. It's modern people going back in time.
The theme is a step forward from the often hokey time travel stories of classic SF, where a scientist goes back and alters history, or kills an ancestor, or in one nifty story, is his own mother and father. All the wrinkles in time were done to death long ago, but here is Connie breaking new ground and collecting all the science fiction writing awards going.
I knew I'd enjoy these two books. Together they are two halves of one big novel and the reader is well advised to read Blackout before All Clear, lest all the surprises of the complex plot be revealed before they are set up.
So I bought them both on Audible.com and listened to them in sequence.
The print edition of Blackout might have helped. In the beginning, there is confusion in both the story and the mind of the reader. So many characters, all leaping back and forwards in time, interacting in past and present. Some of the characters are really the same person with two or three different names, depending on their assignment. To make things worse, the careful schedules of the historians are being re-arranged or cancelled with no apparent explanation. The English researcher who has received an American accent implant for a Pearl Harbor trip is now being sent to the Dunkirk evacuation first, for example, and he has to come up with a plausible explanation.
It's all chaos, but that's fine. The time continuum is a chaotic system and small inputs at critical points can have major impacts later on. It's all part of time travel theory.
But something's going wrong with time. Historians are sent back to World War Two on assignment, but somehow become stranded as events conspire to make their return to the future difficult. Is the gun emplacement freshly built on the portal site a coincidence or is it the continuum trying to protect itself from fatal damage? If the researchers somehow alter events so that Hitler wins the war and time travel is not invented at Oxford a century later, then there will be hell to pay.
The sense of worry and despair builds up through the dark days of the war, as the British Army is kicked out of France and the bombs begin to fall on London. There's a mirrored sequence around the time of the Normandy Invasion, when the Allies return to the Continent and more and more dreadful terror weapons are aimed at England.
Throughout the book(s), more and more characters are introduced, though thankfully there are only a handful of point of view protagonists. The settings are varied, from the wartime Oxford Street department stores, St Pauls Cathedral during the height of the Blitz, Dunkirk and Dover in the Evacuation, and Kent as the V-1 flying bombs are falling out of the sky.
We are taken to Trafalgar Square during the VE Day celebrations a number of times through the eyes of different characters, but the nagging fear builds: was the war really won or did the historians somehow accidentally intervene in history through their chance encounters with significant people?
I must confess that I was getting doubtful about the time travel theory until towards the end of the second book when Connie Willis revealed a magnificent twist that sorted everything out. Ironically - and yes, Agatha Christie and her mysteries make an appearance in these pages - the answer was there in plain sight all the time and in her narrated introduction the heroic author gives away a vital clue. Listen very carefully!
There's an enormous number of loose ends to be tied up, but they are all squared away, and there are poignant moments along the way when we realise that things aren't going to work out perfectly. But it's an immensely satisfying ending all the same, all the better for the long and tangled path we've followed to get there.
In fact, it might be worthwhile keeping a notebook open to jot down names and places, just to keep it all straight in your head. The reader can always flip back and forth through the print edition, but the audiobook is pretty much a linear progress through a chaotic narrative.
Perhaps the best part of the book is the atmosphere. Connie Willis has done her research well, aided by a lucky afternoon with some of the people who lived through these times, and she brings wartime London to life beautifully. The sound of the bombs, the taste of the scarce food, the noise of the shelters, the scarcity of clothing, the dark of the blackout and the eventual joy as the lights are turned on again. We are there.
A few minor grumbles. In the audio version, although the accents are superbly done, I must take exception to the sheer number of long "a" sounds. It grates on my ear to hear "train parsengers".
Nothing in wartime Britain cost 5p. Sixpence, if you please! And it's day before month, when talking dates - the English would definitely not have been discussing dates in American format!
But these are minor niggles, and all in all, I must confess - I love Connie Willis!
--Skyring
An added bonus, if you are an Audible.com customer, is a free download of Connie Willis and Carrie Vaughn (author of the Kitty Norville
series) discussing these two books (and the Kitty series), research, writing and just having a great time together.
She writes a book about the Middle Ages - you are there. Simple as that.
And that's how it works. In her writing world, time travel has been invented, about fifty years from now, and historians are lining up to go through to the past to study their favorite historical periods. It's modern people going back in time.
The theme is a step forward from the often hokey time travel stories of classic SF, where a scientist goes back and alters history, or kills an ancestor, or in one nifty story, is his own mother and father. All the wrinkles in time were done to death long ago, but here is Connie breaking new ground and collecting all the science fiction writing awards going.
I knew I'd enjoy these two books. Together they are two halves of one big novel and the reader is well advised to read Blackout before All Clear, lest all the surprises of the complex plot be revealed before they are set up.
So I bought them both on Audible.com and listened to them in sequence.
The print edition of Blackout might have helped. In the beginning, there is confusion in both the story and the mind of the reader. So many characters, all leaping back and forwards in time, interacting in past and present. Some of the characters are really the same person with two or three different names, depending on their assignment. To make things worse, the careful schedules of the historians are being re-arranged or cancelled with no apparent explanation. The English researcher who has received an American accent implant for a Pearl Harbor trip is now being sent to the Dunkirk evacuation first, for example, and he has to come up with a plausible explanation.
It's all chaos, but that's fine. The time continuum is a chaotic system and small inputs at critical points can have major impacts later on. It's all part of time travel theory.
But something's going wrong with time. Historians are sent back to World War Two on assignment, but somehow become stranded as events conspire to make their return to the future difficult. Is the gun emplacement freshly built on the portal site a coincidence or is it the continuum trying to protect itself from fatal damage? If the researchers somehow alter events so that Hitler wins the war and time travel is not invented at Oxford a century later, then there will be hell to pay.
The sense of worry and despair builds up through the dark days of the war, as the British Army is kicked out of France and the bombs begin to fall on London. There's a mirrored sequence around the time of the Normandy Invasion, when the Allies return to the Continent and more and more dreadful terror weapons are aimed at England.
Throughout the book(s), more and more characters are introduced, though thankfully there are only a handful of point of view protagonists. The settings are varied, from the wartime Oxford Street department stores, St Pauls Cathedral during the height of the Blitz, Dunkirk and Dover in the Evacuation, and Kent as the V-1 flying bombs are falling out of the sky.
We are taken to Trafalgar Square during the VE Day celebrations a number of times through the eyes of different characters, but the nagging fear builds: was the war really won or did the historians somehow accidentally intervene in history through their chance encounters with significant people?
I must confess that I was getting doubtful about the time travel theory until towards the end of the second book when Connie Willis revealed a magnificent twist that sorted everything out. Ironically - and yes, Agatha Christie and her mysteries make an appearance in these pages - the answer was there in plain sight all the time and in her narrated introduction the heroic author gives away a vital clue. Listen very carefully!
There's an enormous number of loose ends to be tied up, but they are all squared away, and there are poignant moments along the way when we realise that things aren't going to work out perfectly. But it's an immensely satisfying ending all the same, all the better for the long and tangled path we've followed to get there.
In fact, it might be worthwhile keeping a notebook open to jot down names and places, just to keep it all straight in your head. The reader can always flip back and forth through the print edition, but the audiobook is pretty much a linear progress through a chaotic narrative.
Perhaps the best part of the book is the atmosphere. Connie Willis has done her research well, aided by a lucky afternoon with some of the people who lived through these times, and she brings wartime London to life beautifully. The sound of the bombs, the taste of the scarce food, the noise of the shelters, the scarcity of clothing, the dark of the blackout and the eventual joy as the lights are turned on again. We are there.
A few minor grumbles. In the audio version, although the accents are superbly done, I must take exception to the sheer number of long "a" sounds. It grates on my ear to hear "train parsengers".
Nothing in wartime Britain cost 5p. Sixpence, if you please! And it's day before month, when talking dates - the English would definitely not have been discussing dates in American format!
But these are minor niggles, and all in all, I must confess - I love Connie Willis!
--Skyring
An added bonus, if you are an Audible.com customer, is a free download of Connie Willis and Carrie Vaughn (author of the Kitty Norville
series) discussing these two books (and the Kitty series), research, writing and just having a great time together.
lizziethereader's review against another edition
3.0
Although I liked the three main narratives well enough, I felt somewhat tricked by this book - it's a 600+ page tome that does not complete a story arc but stops halfway through. Now, I don't mind series and cliffhangers, but I do prefer when each individual book still has its own, somewhat completed narrative.
I did like the book enough to invest time into another 600-page tome, though. Let's hope it's worth it!
I did like the book enough to invest time into another 600-page tome, though. Let's hope it's worth it!
glitterbomb47's review against another edition
4.0
This book is nearly 500 pages, but it reads very quickly. It was surprisingly riveting. Well written. Unfortunately I didn't realize it is only Part I of what is apparently an extremely long story, so now I have to wait until the fall to read the sequel. Blast.
koalathebear's review against another edition
4.0
I finished it yesterday and loved it. Fortunately I was fully prepared for the cliff hanger. A Kindle doesn't give you the page number but you see the percentage finished so I was keeping an eye on the percentage symbol so I knew when the book was about to end abrupt only me. I am now in Great Suspense as I wait "All Clear".
I've read some of the reviews that criticised Willis' geographical descriptions of London, some of have criticised her for being overly long. Blah. I'm not that familiar with London's street layout so I wasn't fussed and Willis' dialogue, storytelling and beautiful light tone were as wonderful as I expected. Having the historians travel back to World War II and describe it is fabulous and Willis has humour, pathos and drama all rolled into one. Some niggling questions/thoughts, though. Spoilers, so I'll put them behind a cut.
1. Presumably the 'he' in the final chapter is Colin coming to rescue again. I'm of two minds about it. While I adore Colin and am glad he's in this book, I don't quite see/get any romance between him and Polly. I think it's sad for Colin to want to wish away years of his life just to catch up with Polly.
2. What is this 'deadline' thing that Polly keeps going on about? Here are the mentions in the book:
"Something terrible—no, worse than terrible—something unthinkable had happened in Oxford. It was the only possible explanation for her drop and Merope’s drop both failing to open, for their retrieval teams not being here, for Mr. Dunworthy not being here. He would never have left Michael lying wounded in hospital, never have left Merope stranded in the middle of an epidemic, never have left her here knowing she had a deadline."
and
"We are, Polly thought bleakly. We’re stranded in the middle of the Blitz, and no one’s coming to get us. We’ll still be here when my deadline arrives."
and
"Oh, no, he’s realized why I asked him when he left for Dover, Polly thought. He’s going to ask me if I have a deadline, and if I tell him, he’ll begin asking questions—"
and
"Thank God, Polly thought. She didn’t go to VE-Day. She doesn’t have a deadline, thank God. And neither does Mike. But then—"
and
"Because I was there the day we won it, she thought. But telling him that meant telling him she had a deadline, and he was still reeling from finding out about the drops and the retrieval teams. "
and
"I’m going to have to tell him about VE-Day, even if it does mean his finding out about my deadline, she thought. It’s the only way to convince him. But once he found out she had a deadline, he’d—"
Clearly Willis is building up to something - but what? Polly must be wanting to do something that she's not supposed to be doing - hence the way she hurried off at the beginning of the novel when she had originally promised to help Merope with driving. I'm very mystified.
I've read some of the reviews that criticised Willis' geographical descriptions of London, some of have criticised her for being overly long. Blah. I'm not that familiar with London's street layout so I wasn't fussed and Willis' dialogue, storytelling and beautiful light tone were as wonderful as I expected. Having the historians travel back to World War II and describe it is fabulous and Willis has humour, pathos and drama all rolled into one. Some niggling questions/thoughts, though. Spoilers, so I'll put them behind a cut.
1. Presumably the 'he' in the final chapter is Colin coming to rescue again. I'm of two minds about it. While I adore Colin and am glad he's in this book, I don't quite see/get any romance between him and Polly. I think it's sad for Colin to want to wish away years of his life just to catch up with Polly.
2. What is this 'deadline' thing that Polly keeps going on about? Here are the mentions in the book:
"Something terrible—no, worse than terrible—something unthinkable had happened in Oxford. It was the only possible explanation for her drop and Merope’s drop both failing to open, for their retrieval teams not being here, for Mr. Dunworthy not being here. He would never have left Michael lying wounded in hospital, never have left Merope stranded in the middle of an epidemic, never have left her here knowing she had a deadline."
and
"We are, Polly thought bleakly. We’re stranded in the middle of the Blitz, and no one’s coming to get us. We’ll still be here when my deadline arrives."
and
"Oh, no, he’s realized why I asked him when he left for Dover, Polly thought. He’s going to ask me if I have a deadline, and if I tell him, he’ll begin asking questions—"
and
"Thank God, Polly thought. She didn’t go to VE-Day. She doesn’t have a deadline, thank God. And neither does Mike. But then—"
and
"Because I was there the day we won it, she thought. But telling him that meant telling him she had a deadline, and he was still reeling from finding out about the drops and the retrieval teams. "
and
"I’m going to have to tell him about VE-Day, even if it does mean his finding out about my deadline, she thought. It’s the only way to convince him. But once he found out she had a deadline, he’d—"
Clearly Willis is building up to something - but what? Polly must be wanting to do something that she's not supposed to be doing - hence the way she hurried off at the beginning of the novel when she had originally promised to help Merope with driving. I'm very mystified.
eggjuices's review against another edition
4.0
Hard to review thoroughly since it really is as if Blackout/All Clear were one book that was sliced in two with no changes made to attempt concluding the first book. But I will say that I enjoyed it very much, though it could have used some cuts.
Spoiler
and the repetitive fake outs of trying to determine if they altered history or not became annoying near the endzanosgood's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0