Willis, Connie: All Clear
All Clear (2010)
Written by: Connie Willis
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 641 (Hardcover)
Series: Book Two of Two
I was almost finished reading Blackout when All Clear was released, so I told my hubby to pick up the conclusion on his way home from work. I knew I wanted to read these books close together so I wouldn't forget any of the details from the first, and besides, it's kind of cool to put these two reviews one right after the other!
The premise: ganked from BN.com: In Blackout, award-winning author Connie Willis returned to the time-traveling future of 2060--the setting for several of her most celebrated works--and sent three Oxford historians to World War II England: Michael Davies, intent on observing heroism during the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope Ward, studying children evacuated from London; and Polly Churchill, posing as a shopgirl in the middle of the Blitz. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler’s bombers attempt to pummel London into submission.
Now the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war. The belief that the past can be observed but never altered has always been a core belief of time-travel theory--but suddenly it seems that the theory is horribly, tragically wrong.
Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians’ supervisor, Mr. Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who nurses a powerful crush on Polly, are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle of their own--to find three missing needles in the haystack of history.
Review style: you know how I promised no spoilers for Blackout? I make NO SUCH PROMISES here. Now we're going to get details, so if you haven't read the book and/or you don't want to be spoiled, stop now and skip to "My Rating." Because we're going to spoil Willis's time travel, let alone her time table, and talk about how it all could've been a bit shorter. Or could it?
Okay, so Connie Willis just spent 1,142 pages to tell us her theory of time travel is all wrong. It's not fixed in that you can't change history; instead, it's a loop, and in order for history to happen, the future has to go back and time and affect it.
GREAT. But why'd it take so long?
For someone like me, someone who enjoys travel and all the mind-bending implications of its theory, it's not that hard a concept to propose. There's three theories, and I'm forgetting the third but that's fine because it's the other two I want to talk about, but at any rate, you either go back in time, change the past and create a parallel universe (J.J. Abrams' Star Trek) which doesn't destroy the original timeline which allowed time travel to begin with.
Or time travel is a loop. A never ending loop where the future affects the past which breeds the future which affects the past, and so on and so forth. See the Terminator franchise for one of the best examples of the time travel loop.
And Willis, bless her heart, has just spent 1,142 pages explaining how and why her characters' initial time travel theory (you can't affect the past!) is wrong and how her time traveling characters are actually an integral part of the past.
Okay, the premise alone? Fantastic. I loved seeing how Eileen ended up staying and ended up being Colin's grandmother. I also liked toying with the notion that either Colin or Polly are somehow related to Stephen and Fairchild's children, as Stephen was so obsessed with Polly (excuse me, MARY) being familiar. But given that Polly saw Stephen in Colin's features, I'm guessing that Eileen, Stephen and Fairchild are all a part of Colin's DNA.
Also great, though a wee bit predictable, was how Mike faked his death (yeah, that was obvious for two reasons, which I'll explain later) in order to keep helping any future retrieval team, and how he may have been a major instrument in the war. Sure, he was killed before Polly ever went back to her Blitz assignment, but the fact that she was essentially at his deathbed and didn't know it was pretty powerful. Not as powerful as it could've been, but powerful.
And while I complain of the length (OMFG), I do really like how Willis posits that it was a great many LITTLE things that helped tip the war in the Allies' favor, and how the drops refused to open because Mike, Polly, and Eileen hadn't yet fulfilled their duties in the past to make sure the future they came from actually happened. I love that kind of mind-bending stuff, so it makes all the little details, all those tangents, almost worthwhile.
Almost, because some are more worthwhile than others.
You know i had a problem with the fake-out cliffhanger chapter endings. All Clear was no different, because Willis had clearly set up a pattern of fake outs so that when something wasn't fake, I still had a hard time believing it. Like when Colin in the '90s met Binnie, aka Eileen, and learned that the original Eileen, aka Merope (ugh with all the name changes!), stayed in the past and eventually died of cancer. Then I realized we were towards the end of the book and Willis couldn't afford to keep faking me out, so I began to warm up to the notion.
But with Mike's first death? Please. It was too anti-climatic to be real, and I'd already pegged Mike as Ernest in the first book. Maybe that's what I was supposed to think, but rather than raising the tension, I was getting impatient with the characters for not knowing what was so clearly obvious to me. And for the record, even if we didn't have Ernest's sections, I still would've had a hard time believing in Mike's first death. Again, he was too big a character to simply die off screen, you know?
His real death was more satisfying, realizing the man Mary (aka Polly) tried to save was actually Mike, and seeing that scene from both hers and his point of view. I was sorry to see Mike actually go, but I'm glad that he was able to help rescue Polly in the end.
Which brings me to a random tangent. Rescue and women. And the role of women in this book. Let me say first and foremost that Willis does a fantastic job showing how women rose to the occasion and did their part and genuinely aided in the war effort. That's great. But after I finished reading the book, my brain got stuck on a little breakdown:
Polly's major function in the book: to be rescued by her prince (Colin). Sure, she does more: she saves people and she's genuinely heroic in different regards, but her story ends with her as a woman falling in love. And technically speaking, I don't have a problem with that.
But then you look at Eileen's major function in the book: while she, too, is heroic and saves peoples' lives, she's essentially a quintessential mother figure. She chooses to stay in the past to take care of Alf and Binnie, and she ends up being part of Colin's bloodline thanks to this choice. Sure, she also stays because somehow, she's got to let a time-traveling Colin know where to find Polly, but her major role in the book? To care for Alf and Binnie, to be Colin's maternal grandmother (or great-grandmother or whatever). And technically speaking, I don't have a problem with that (I love loops!)
But put together, you have to major female roles who are partially defined by their roles as, well, not women, but as caretakers of children and damsels in distress and romantic interests for others. It's a piece of fat I want to toss out there for others to chew on it, as I'm also chewing on it, and it's not wholly satisfying. Though, the meat of this bite is that both Polly and Eileen do have heroic moments where, when totaled up, help tip the war into the Allies' favor. So they aren't WHOLLY defined by their traditional feminine roles in these books. Just partially. Just enough to make me go, "Whoa, wait."
I preferred Eileen to Polly. Quite a bit. Eileen was dogged and determined and she took action. I liked her optimism, as it was refreshing in the face of the other two's pessimism. She was smart. Polly was smart too, but she was bland, and when you consider that we read three different POVs of her (as Polly in the Blitz, as Mary during the V1 raids, and as Douglas--later revealed to be Mary--during VE Day), you realize that Polly never really had any distinguishing characteristics or voice. Because Polly, Mary, and Douglas could've EASILY been three different women based on the way the book was written, based on the blandness of the characters. Sure, there's some differences (I preferred Mary to Polly, but Polly was more unique in her relationship to Sir Godfrey and her association with the theatre). Polly also annoyed me the most of the two books, because her theories and paranoia was the worst. Mike was a close second. We didn't get Eileen's POV that often, so maybe that's why I preferred her the most of the three stranded time travelers?
At any rate, I should give these characters some credit: that they'd panic is understandable. Everything they thought they knew about time travel was working against them, and they were terrified of changing the course of history and basically wiping out any possibility for time travel to exist and for their retrieval team to rescue them. That's, truly, understandable. But there's a fine line in fiction: on one hand, readers was a good dose of reality to their fiction. On the other, they don't TOO much. And the emotional reactions and attitudes of Polly bordered on TOO much, at least for me.
And there's still unanswered questions, or maybe the answers were there and I just overlooked them once I realized I was in the home stretch: before Colin and Dunworthy showed up at the theatre, where was Eileen? Why was she late? What was she doing? Did we ever learn?
And I happily accept the loop theory of time travel, but Willis seems to suggest that before the loop got started, there was an original timeline where the Allies DIDN'T win and the world was worse off, which of course means that even in this awful future, time travel's invented so that someone can CHANGE that future and create the parallel world/history we live in today (hey, is Willis simultaneously using TWO forms of time travel in one world? Cool!). But that leads to the question of something actually somehow being able to govern time travel and recognize when changes need to be made. The drops wouldn't open until Polly, Mike, and Eileen accomplished their missions, and is that because there's some entity shaking it's finger and telling them no or because the drops don't open because they CAN'T open because that's simply not what happens? I don't know, and I hope that if Willis writes more time-traveling historian novels, we learn more about what's really governing time travel laws.
Are we going to find out there's a multi-verse, with each verse full of the changes time travelers have made with each trip?
Because in truth, how could any of the time travelers POSSIBLY believe they were NOT affecting history somehow? If they were living as a contemporary, their presence alone changes things. So I almost wonder how they came up with the lame-brained theory to begin with, short of trying and failing to kill Hitler before he waged his war, you know?
The tone of this book is an odd matter as well. Doomsday Book was very serious. To Say Nothing of the Dog was light and humorous. Blackout and All Clear seem to be trying to blend the styles of those previously mentioned books, and it doesn't really pull it off either. Oh, the style was quite easy to read. I flew through both books with ease, but I never knew how serious or funny I was supposed to be taking each scene, because the overall tone of the two books was, well, ambiguous. I guess that worked well enough, but for future books, I'd rather Willis write firmly in one camp or the other.
Now, the historical detail. Wow, what an immersion. Truly, while sometimes overwhelming, you definitely get a feel for what life was like back in this time, and when Willis wasn't trying to cheat me with a fake-out chapter-ending cliffhanger, there were true moments of tension. And some characters and scenes really came alive in certain moments, making this book (when coupled with the time travel revelation) an overall enjoyable read. The book is simply rich in historical detail, and it's a marvel. But then again, I can't speak to how accurate it is or isn't.
That said, I still think this two volume set could've been shorter. :)
My Rating
Find a Cheaper Copy: This rating is based more on the two books combined: Blackout and All Clear, because MAKE NO MISTAKE: reading All Clear without having read Blackout will confuse the snot out of you. It's the equivalent of picking up a random book in the store, turning to the middle and reading forward from that point. I really, really, REALLY do not recommend that. Because in truth, Willis wrote these two books as ONE NOVEL, and the decision came later to split them into two books.
My rating comes with two different recommendations.
For those of you who've NEVER read Connie Willis before, I stand by my previous statement: do not start with this two-volume set. Because while it's good when it's all said and done, it's not Willis's best work, and it doesn't showcase her strengths (save for historical detail) well at all. If you want time traveling historians, please start with Doomsday Book for serious and To Say Nothing of the Dog for a lighter fare, or just track down the short stories that feature time traveling historians and get a sense of how she writes and what her strengths and weaknesses are. But don't start here. It's good, but not great, and you should read the great before you read the good.
For those of you who HAVE read Connie Willis before: this is a tricky set. The first book had me something close to infuriated and the second book soothed that fury for the most part. The historical detail is wonderful in terms of painting how it felt to be living in the time, and I love what we end up learning about time travel and the historians' roles in it. But is that enough? The books could've been shorter (though I won't say they should've been published as one single volume, even though it was written that way), and some of the characters grated on my nerves. But by the end, I was quite satisfied. Both are incredibly fast-paced reads--which is impressive considering all of the detail--but you still have to pay attention to names and identifying character traits. If there's one thing to look for, it's this: there appears to be FAR more narrators in these books than there really are. Willis is coy in letting you know who is where and at what time, but by the end, you do actually learn who is who and when they are and why those scenes are important. She gives you plenty to chew on in terms of content, but the books' greatest weakness is the length. Still, I think All Clear redeems Blackout a bit, but I recommend reading them as close to back-to-back as possible, because both books are literally a single novel split in two.
I'm a little torn on what I want to see Willis do next. On one hand, I want something totally unrelated to time-travel. On the other, I'll be happy to learn more of this time-traveling universe and what it now means to send historians back, but please, no more World War II. I've quite had my fill, thanks. :)
Cover Commentary: Oh, these covers are so excellently designed! Side by side, they look fabulous together! I love how All Clear is an inverse of Blackout in so many ways. Is there anything else I can say to further express my glee over the design? Okay, one nitpick: I wish that both Blackout and All Clear had "Volume I" and "Volume II" as a subtitle somewhere, because let's face it, some poor bastard is going to pick up All Clear thinking it looks cool but not knowing they REALLY need to get and read Blackout first. And said poor bastard will be VERY confused, so an indication on the spine and/or cover that the books are part of a greater whole would've been a good idea.
Next up: Made to be Broken by Kelley Armstrong