A review by ablotial
Blackout by Connie Willis
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.