Blackout
I FINISHED A BOOK. The fact that this is cause for celebration may tell you something. Anyway, as the sequel All Clear is less a sequel than Part 2 of Blackout, I'm not sure that I really have. But I'll be talking about Blackout here, and any references to All Clear, which I just started, will be clearly marked as such. If you are between books. Which I seriously doubt.
Let's start with the basic setup. Three historians from the year 2060 travel back in time - which is possible and commonplace in 2060 - to observe various points during WWII, get stuck there, and get a more up-close-and-personal view of the war than they'd hoped.
I knew from To Say Nothing of the Dog that Connie Willis does amazing research into her time periods. That was, I think, nothing compared to this. It's been a long time since I read that book, but either way, Blackout on that front is stunning. I don't know how she got these details, but I felt a lot of them were too weird to be made up. I have to admit I loved the idea of reciting Shakespeare at volume when bombs are falling so loudly near your shelter that you know you could be killed at any moment. Sir Godfrey is my hero. The characterization of all the people from that era was twice as vibrant as the characterization of the time travelers, which I hope was intentional. The bits of history that the travelers know, that their friends in 1940 don't (yet) are torture for the travelers who can't actually speak any of it. They still make little changes to keep their new friends out of danger, without telling them. Maybe CW has the darker intention to make a point about humanity being time travel's biggest enemy. But the travelers still do it, and I can't honestly say that I blame them.
That said, I had some issues with Blackout. It boils down to 3 things, but I go on for ages about each. Bullet points for clarity!
Okay, maybe a couple more things. >.>
Man, this is an epic review, and most of it has been bitching. To be fair, I am basically in the middle of a very long book. All Clear took up where Blackout left off, without a cliffhanger (or at least a more dramatic than usual) chapter ending. There is still time for a lot of this to be redeemed. And ok, for some other things it's too late, because while reading a book, all times are not one time. But some things. And I've probably given the impression that I didn't like the book, but the things I enjoyed I really enjoyed. The good things made the bad things worthwhile, and given how much I've whined about the bad means that the good was pretty epic. And I think that CW's intention here was to showcase the Ordinary Citizen displaying everyday heroism, which she does very well. Maybe that is why the main characters seem like cardboard cutouts in comparison. This is worth reading for the 'contemps' in 1940, if nothing else, and the incredible historical detail. Of course, ymmv.
Let's start with the basic setup. Three historians from the year 2060 travel back in time - which is possible and commonplace in 2060 - to observe various points during WWII, get stuck there, and get a more up-close-and-personal view of the war than they'd hoped.
I knew from To Say Nothing of the Dog that Connie Willis does amazing research into her time periods. That was, I think, nothing compared to this. It's been a long time since I read that book, but either way, Blackout on that front is stunning. I don't know how she got these details, but I felt a lot of them were too weird to be made up. I have to admit I loved the idea of reciting Shakespeare at volume when bombs are falling so loudly near your shelter that you know you could be killed at any moment. Sir Godfrey is my hero. The characterization of all the people from that era was twice as vibrant as the characterization of the time travelers, which I hope was intentional. The bits of history that the travelers know, that their friends in 1940 don't (yet) are torture for the travelers who can't actually speak any of it. They still make little changes to keep their new friends out of danger, without telling them. Maybe CW has the darker intention to make a point about humanity being time travel's biggest enemy. But the travelers still do it, and I can't honestly say that I blame them.
That said, I had some issues with Blackout. It boils down to 3 things, but I go on for ages about each. Bullet points for clarity!
- You can't tell the 3 historians apart. They have so little characterization as individual people that where they are originally located is the only way. It's not just that they're from The Future - there are more interesting people in 2060: I like Colin, the 17-year-old with a massive crush on Polly, and the ever-cautious Mr Dunworthy, apparently the leader on their course. Our heroes go by different names in the past. Polly = Polly (different last name), Michael = Mike (different last name), Merope = Eileen (different last name). Polly went to VE Day previously, hence part of her confidence that England did in fact win the war, and had a DIFFERENT name, which made for a lot of confusion because I didn't realize that Polly and Douglas, as she's called, are the same person. That random guy in the field inflating fake rubber tanks may well be Michael, and I just don't know that yet. There was a lot of confusion in the early chapters.
- They're very blasé about it all. These 3 have presumably spent months or years preparing for this, though the book doesn't mention it, and yet they spend all their time in the past griping about getting to the future, or possibly messing up the future, but surely that's impossible, but maybe not, but maybe so oh God. This would be a horrible, disastrous fear, but it takes up all their time. They do nothing else except run around being late and getting no sleep in an attempt to return home. Running around being late and getting no sleep is a realistic part of life, particularly student life, in my experience. It is not something I want to read five hundred pages of in a sci-fi novel. Some of this is at the beginning of All Clear so I'm blacking it out, but some is not. Polly's at Trafalgar Square on VE Day - it is absolutely packed with people singing, chanting, cheering, weeping, all manner of dancing, waving flags, throwing confetti and streamers, blowing whistles and kazoos and the siren that freezes everyone turns out to be the all clear and there is more celebration and all the lights are on after months and months of blackout, and and and. It sounds to me like the most magical thing to experience, an incredible privilege, and I'm not a historian. I'm not even a history buff. I'm not English. Polly is all these things, and she is mainly worried about what time the tube closes so she can make it back to her net. I mean. What. This is her passion. What?? It's a reasonable, mundane thing to be concerned about IF YOU ARE WONDERING WHETHER YOUR FILM GETS OUT IN TIME OR SOMETHING. This is a little different, jeez.
- All three of them do the exact same thing. You see Polly freaking out, then in the next chapter Eileen/Merope freaks out, then in the next chapter Michael/Mike freaks out, then it starts over with Polly having a new setback, and this goes on for the entire book until the very end when they all get together and hysterically explain in excruciating fashion what you have just been reading about. It's very frustrating.
Okay, maybe a couple more things. >.>
- The worldbuilding has some minor inconsistencies. Polly for some reason memorized the time and place of daily bombings for months following the time she was due to return home. She says that the Oxford Street bombings were implanted (whatever that means, as I still haven't found out, but I assume it's like Neo suddenly knowing kung fu only more expensive(??) or less reliable(??) so they do most of these the old-fashioned way) so maybe the implants were for This Whole Year as opposed to ending when she was due to return. But that would just be Oxford Street, and she knows all of them. Through the end of the year. Why? And what bugged me more - she agrees to write down the time/place of bombings for the next week so that Michael/Mike and Merope/Eileen will know what to avoid. A ban on writing future events down where anyone could find it seems like it would be one of the first rules of time travel. A big, big one. And Polly could certainly decide to break the rules in this dire situation, but no mention is made in Blackout of it ever having been a rule.
Mike worries that none of their nets will open (nets = the portals that allow them to go back and forth from The Future) because he's changed history and WWII was lost to Germany and none of the people they expected to rescue them were ever born. Polly counters this by pointing out that if the war had been lost, the parents of the inventor of time travel would have been killed and the inventor wouldn't be born and they couldn't have come here to 1940. Mike says that they left before changing history. Er. As Polly never ceases to point out, though she seems to have forgotten it here, this is time travel. A major conceit of this world is basically that all times are one time; there is no 'this was changed after we went through to the past,' and if they were going to mess up history that badly the net, by this conceit, wouldn't have opened in the first place. As you can see, the theories get very complicated. My personal one is that they did affect history but fixed it, and the retrieval team they're all waiting for can't go back to get them until that happens / their nets won't open until that happens. But in this world, all times are one time, so they couldn't have gone back to screw it up. ACK CIRCLES HELP. No wonder you have to be a freaking time lord to deal with this stuff. - Anyway. Historians are probably also advised in school what to do in a catastrophe, given how (overly?) careful Mr. Dunworthy is, and he'd give students the name of a trustworthy and long-standing messenger. In Quantum Leap, for example, the character in the past mailed a letter to the Future Lab with the delivery date written on it, and sent it COD. In Good Omens, a package for The Future was given to a law firm with a specific date & time, and it was handed down over generations before delivery. This method of communication is one-way, and maybe not entirely reliable, but trying it to say 'WE ARE ALL HERE AT X ADDRESS, CAN'T GET BACK, SEND HELP' has not occurred to our heroes stuck in the past who have tried everything else. I guess this would make for a very short book. But it doesn't have to work. ;)
Man, this is an epic review, and most of it has been bitching. To be fair, I am basically in the middle of a very long book. All Clear took up where Blackout left off, without a cliffhanger (or at least a more dramatic than usual) chapter ending. There is still time for a lot of this to be redeemed. And ok, for some other things it's too late, because while reading a book, all times are not one time. But some things. And I've probably given the impression that I didn't like the book, but the things I enjoyed I really enjoyed. The good things made the bad things worthwhile, and given how much I've whined about the bad means that the good was pretty epic. And I think that CW's intention here was to showcase the Ordinary Citizen displaying everyday heroism, which she does very well. Maybe that is why the main characters seem like cardboard cutouts in comparison. This is worth reading for the 'contemps' in 1940, if nothing else, and the incredible historical detail. Of course, ymmv.