brendaclay's review against another edition
4.0
I knew going in that Blackout was only the first half of a two-book story. Three British historians from the year 2060 time travel back to observe various events in and around the London Blitz in WWII. When they discover that the "drops" meant to take them back to their time aren't opening, they must find each other and try to work out a solution - while also surviving the Blitz. Since this really is only a partial story, I'll say (a lot) more in my All Clear review.
interrowhimper's review against another edition
2.0
I guess it being half a book explains the tedium. I'm not sure how a book about both time travel and WWII can feel so very boring.
Finally starts to pick up in last 50 pages. Not sure I want to invest the time and money in the second part though.
Finally starts to pick up in last 50 pages. Not sure I want to invest the time and money in the second part though.
gracewygo's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
3.0
Egregiously frustrating, but that is Willis’ M.O.
sarahannkateri's review against another edition
I liked the premise and found the information about London during the Blitz interesting, but the writing and characters just didn't suck me in. When I realized - halfway through the book - that it was only the first in a series, I decided there were too many other good stories out there for me to stick with this one for 600 more pages and gave up, which means I'll never know whether I hallucinated a completely random chapter that had nothing to do with any of the characters that had already been introduced or whether it really happened and was later explained. Oh well. I'll live.
ablotial's review against another edition
3.0
Ugh. I really hate books like this, where this book is absolutely NOT a story in and of itself, and there is no ending in this book. I'd really rather that the author just wrote one really long book instead of two regular size books. I guess the only benefit here is that since it is called two books, I'll have two books toward my challenges instead of only one.
To be fair, this book is in the 500-700 page range depending on edition, and the second is in the 600-800 page range... so it'd be one REALLY long book. But still. At least this first book could have been considerably shorter. We could remove all of the times that Theodore says "I don't want to X" or "I want to X" and easily cut out 10 pages, at least. And lots of other prattling on and on that don't actually add to the story, as far as I can tell. And references to the retrieval team every 2 sentences. I get it, the characters are concerned. But the repetition is annoying.
So why three stars then? And why did I purchase the second book? I really like the IDEA of this book. It has a similar premise (and a lot of the same concepts like not being allowed near divergence points and slippage, but with different names) to [b:The Far Time Incident|16163629|The Far Time Incident (The Incident Series, #1)|Neve Maslakovic|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1358289636s/16163629.jpg|22006627], which I rather enjoyed. In fact, they were so similar at the beginning I checked to see which was the rip-off (this book was written first, for those who wonder). The concept is fun, I like time travel books in general and the idea of an academic program based around it is intriguing.
And I do want to know what happens to the characters even though I mostly dislike all of them except Colin, and why exactly they are stuck in the situation they are in (although I'm appalled at the lack of planning that apparently goes into these adventures in the future... Smart enough to invent time travel, but not smart enough to have reasonable back-up plans? hmmm).
Questions I have:
- How many of the other people in the novel are actually time travelers? And why don't any of these three time travelers ever wonder that? Is this the only time travel school in the world? And even if it is, they should have no reason to believe that it won't last forever right? So time travelers from 100 years in THEIR future could also be traveling back to WWII. For that matter, some future time travelers could be at Oxford in 2060 also, traveling there from 2095 or even 2148! But no one ever wonders and it's never addressed.
This one leads to more speculation, so I'll hide it behind a spoiler tag.
Guess I'll have to go through the damn second book to find out.
To be fair, this book is in the 500-700 page range depending on edition, and the second is in the 600-800 page range... so it'd be one REALLY long book. But still. At least this first book could have been considerably shorter. We could remove all of the times that Theodore says "I don't want to X" or "I want to X" and easily cut out 10 pages, at least. And lots of other prattling on and on that don't actually add to the story, as far as I can tell. And references to the retrieval team every 2 sentences. I get it, the characters are concerned. But the repetition is annoying.
So why three stars then? And why did I purchase the second book? I really like the IDEA of this book. It has a similar premise (and a lot of the same concepts like not being allowed near divergence points and slippage, but with different names) to [b:The Far Time Incident|16163629|The Far Time Incident (The Incident Series, #1)|Neve Maslakovic|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1358289636s/16163629.jpg|22006627], which I rather enjoyed. In fact, they were so similar at the beginning I checked to see which was the rip-off (this book was written first, for those who wonder). The concept is fun, I like time travel books in general and the idea of an academic program based around it is intriguing.
And I do want to know what happens to the characters even though I mostly dislike all of them except Colin, and why exactly they are stuck in the situation they are in (although I'm appalled at the lack of planning that apparently goes into these adventures in the future... Smart enough to invent time travel, but not smart enough to have reasonable back-up plans? hmmm).
Questions I have:
- How many of the other people in the novel are actually time travelers? And why don't any of these three time travelers ever wonder that? Is this the only time travel school in the world? And even if it is, they should have no reason to believe that it won't last forever right? So time travelers from 100 years in THEIR future could also be traveling back to WWII.
Spoiler
I can't be the only person who wonders if Marjorie's reason for being in a random alley in whatever street it was that got bombed was the same reason Polly was in a random alley... looking for her drop. And many other people I wonder about as well... the vicar, sir godfrey, the nurse...This one leads to more speculation, so I'll hide it behind a spoiler tag.
Spoiler
Polly keeps saying that she knows things aren't messed up because she's already been to VE day. I -suspect- (because she kept asking Eileen/Merope if she got permission to go to VE day yet) that it's because she saw a future version of Merope there. But I don't see how this proves anything, whether she saw Merope or not. She was at ONE verson of VE day... but it was the version on the timeline before any changes would have been made. So on this new timeline, it could be a different VE day. After all, if the Oxford they left could possibly not exist, then the future VE day she left may also not as well, fof exactly the same reasons. Right?Guess I'll have to go through the damn second book to find out.
kwbridge's review against another edition
4.0
Mostly enjoyed this. I was almost finished, however, when I found out that it was the first of two books and that it ends with a cliffhanger. I would have waited until the 2nd one was out to read it, if I had know this before I started.
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.