Blackout (Oxford Time Travel)

Connie Willis's epic of civilian life in World War II London is an enormously long novel, too vast and complicated to cut down to fit in one volume. Her publisher suggested that it be cut in half and released as two volumes, one in spring 2010 as "Blackout" and one in fall 2010 as "All Clear". Knowing this in advance, I waited until the release of the second and read them both together. I'm glad I did. Unlike a series which can be read in parts, these two form a single story arc and demand to be read at the same time. Neither one stands alone, and most of the negative reviews have come from readers who were unaware of the situation. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy was a similar single novel published in parts, the most important difference being that there was a collective title that made the situation clear. If this work had been given a title that covered the whole, I believe the confusion would have been eliminated.

I found the story excellent, satisfying, and compelling. The time travel puzzle was genuinely intriguing, but even more, I was enthralled with the daily lives of people living through the London blitz. What courage, what humanity, I was impressed and moved. This is a novel that will reward rereading, and I look forward to the experience.

Follow-up from January 2012: I just re-read both volumes and enjoyed the experience even more the second time through. Details that slipped past me the first time stood out vividly, and the entire interconnectedness of even minor details was clear and sharp. My only disappointment is how long I am likely to have to wait until the next Connie Willis novel is published.

I really loved Willis's 1992 time travel adventure The Doomsday Book when I read it about ten years ago. I was psyched to see that she'd returned to the time travel concept, and even more interested in seeing that it involved World War Two. It opens promisingly enough, with a trio of Oxford historians about fifty years in the future seeking to travel to wartime England to do the ultimate in primary research. In Willis's version of time travel, the process won't allow you to "land" anywhere that you can affect history, but the past is dangerous, you can die there.

One historian is out at a country estate, working as a maid tending to children sent to the countryside to avoid the Blitz. The second in in London, living in a rooming house and working as a department store assistant. The third set down along the coast, to get a feel for the citizen sailors who participated in the Dunkirk evacuation. Very early on in the book, it's pretty clear (to the reader) that the time travel mechanism isn't working properly.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book doesn't advance the plot much further beyond that. Instead, it gets kind of bogged down in recreating the sights and sounds of wartime England. These are fairly interesting (although some reviewers have noted a number of errors), and while the three characters do face challenges and thrills and spills, the book seems to be running in place. I didn't realize why until near the end -- it's just part one of a two-volume story.... So if you pick this up, do so with the full knowledge that it's half a book, and you'll need to read All Clear to get the resolution.

We are losing the people who fought and lived through WWII both on the front and the homefront and with this loss, we are losing the vital importance of that war to the world we live in now; it could all be very, very different. As Mary Doria Russell put it, WWII is that war "which began years before it began and has never quite ended and which provides the pivot point for two centuries."

In Blackout, Connie Willis returns to the time travel universe in Oxford made popular by Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, but this time she takes us to WWII England with three historians, one observing the evacuation of Dunkirk from Dover, one observing the thousands of children evacuated to rural England and one working as a shop girl during the Blitz. Willis's research is remarkable and never overbearing; we learn facts about the Blitz and Dunkirk without ever feeling that this has turned from a novel to a dry recitation. And what facts they are! It was vital that the Allied powers win WWII and everything that we and our children know is because this in fact happened, but there were many points at which it might not have happened the way history has it.

Willis's time-traveling historians have a lot to contend with, not only the hardships of living as 'contemps' in WWII England, but the fear, becoming more and more pressing as the novel progresses, that their mechanism of time-travel has gone disastrously awry, stranding them in WWII England forever, but even more importantly, allowing them to change the course of history, perhaps to the detriment of the Allies and every person on earth. Before the events of the novel, it was a law of time travel that a traveling historian couldn't change the events of the past, but one of the historians rescues people at Dunkirk, a time-point previously inaccessible for that very reason. The book ends with the three protagonists stranded and a fourth, as yet un-named arriving just as the book ends. Careful readers of this and other Willis books in the same universe will have their guesses as to who this traveler is. The cliff-hanger is not as annoying as other reviewers would have it.

In showing us WWII, Willis has given us a more somber version of her time-travel universe; in this book, even more than in The Doomsday Book, what the time-travelers do matters. But Willis's story is also of the everyday people who affected these events and whose sacrifices allow all of us to live as we do. Willis doesn't dwell on this, and instead she chooses to dwell on the heroic in daily life, but between every line is the knowledge of how many people's blood washed the earth to allow a victory in WWII. It is an affecting reading experience and though I miss her trademark screwball comedy of manners, it wouldn't be appropriate here.

In short, Willis is reminding us of the WWII that we can never forget, but she is also reminding us of the immense potential for good and sacrifice and nobility that lives in each of us, no matter how ordinary.

In "Blackout", Connie Willis brings the same quality storytelling and grasp of history to the London Blitz that she previously applied to the black death in her Hugo and Nebula Award winning novel "Doomsday Book". In Willis' novel, historians Michael Davies, Merope Ward, and Polly Churchill travel from 2060 Oxford to 1940 London, Dover, and Backbury. Events collude to prevent all three from returning to their own time when they should and Michael and Merope converge on London to seek Polly's help. Willis' historical background and use of detail help to recreate the long-past world of 1940 England and infuse a sense of tension into the story as characters try to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Additionally, while Willis' version of time travel supposedly precludes the ability to change history, her characters begin to fear that their actions are altering events. As an historian myself, I find the premise fascinating and tempting. Willis writes of the technology and those who use it, "Which is why historians must do on-site research, Polly thought. There were simply too many errors in the historical record" (pg. 100). The ability to verify the historical record would offer a nice advantage, though Willis makes it clear that traditional research would continue to play a role. Her writing blends the best of science- and historical-fiction.

I was reading an article today about "Blitz Nostalgia" in London, and it made me think of this book, which I love very much. If you are interested in WWII Britain, Black Out offers an interesting overview of individuals in different places/circumstances, including London, the English countryside, and even Dunkirk.

If you are new to the Oxford Time Travel books, you might at least read the novella Fire Watch before beginning Black Out. Willis has built and developed an entire world full of characters, time-traveling historians from Oxford University, whose adventures we follow along different timelines in different eras. The Doomsday Book takes place during the bubonic plague in Europe, for instance, and is also a beautiful book.

Black Out has all the hallmarks of the writer's signature style, including fantasic period detail, richly drawn characters, and the hand of fate constantly frustrating best laid plans. Black Out and All Clear were written as one massive novel but published as two books, so you will definitely want the second book handy as you finish the first book and reach the cliffhanger.

I feel Connie Willis, despite winning multiple Nebula and Hugo awards in her career, is rather underappreciated compared to many of her contemporaries. I encourage anyone who enjoys character-driven speculative fiction to check out her impressive body of work, which includes many great short stories and novellas.

I listened to the entire novel hoping it would get somewhere, but it doesn't. There's no twist, no shock at the end, just a hanging end that forces you to start the second novel. I got about 5 chapters into the second novel before I stopped in annoyance that there was still nothing happening.

This series is a disjointed attempt at a history lesson about Southern England in WW2. The author sometimes hints at something unexpected, but that something never happens. The only mystery is that you can't guess if it is a time travel fiction that leaves the characters stranded in the past or sees them rescued.

The characters... the characters seem alternately expert in their history subject and, a few minutes later, completely ill informed and moronic. There are also moments when a character will seemingly lose their mind then return to sanity a few minutes later. Speaking of minutes...

There are many places in the book where the characters verbally indicate what time of day it is, a few minutes of dialogue happen, and the characters verbally indicate that the time of day is hours later. A "we've been talking all night and now the sun is up" when they have really only provided a few minutes of dialogue. I was unsure if this was intended as irony because it is a time travel novel, or just poor transitioning in the writing.

I wanted to like this book because the premise was intriguing. After approx. 150 pages, I gave up. I didn't find any of the characters interesting or appealing. It was interesting that there was obviously something amiss with the administration of the time travel lab in 2060. Historians are getting bounced from one assignment to another with no advance warning, thus they show up in the past without due preparation, similar to showing up in class for a final exam without having studied for it.

What bothered me about them is that, even with those problems to contend with, they seemed to be rank amateurs with no ability whatsoever to deal with situations that they weren't prepared for. It would seem that time traveling would be full of such situations and that travelers would be trained to deal with them.

The worst part for me was the obnoxious presence of two little brats, Alf and Binnie. These are possibly the most horribly annoying children ever created in fiction. Merope, the time traveler who goes by the alias of Eileen, has the chore of dealing with these two little twits. At the time I stopped reading the book, she had dealt with them without having them flung from a catapult. She had more tolerance than I would have.

Dorothy Parker once reviewed a book and wrote "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." Having great respect for books, I didn't take her advice on this one, although it was a temptation. I would advise potential readers to stay away from this book as if it were contaminated.

I enjoyed "Blackout." This is a time travel novel, with a few complexities thrown in to attempt accounting for the physical impossibilities of time travel. But it is light, readable, enjoyable fiction. The novel concerns several characters who are historians in 2060, fortunate to be chosen to conduct time travel as observers-researchers in the past. These historians, who do not travel together, nor to the same places, all observe portions of the early war in England during Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain.

I won't ruin the plot for you, but will tell you that the characters have different misadventures, some comical, some dangerous. All face unexpected obstacles to returning to their point of departure in the year 2060. All are careful about getting stranded, killed, or altering time with some unwise action that could have terrible consequences for their own time.

Now for the bad news: This novel is a come-on. It has no conclusion. One is forced to buy the follow-on sequel, "All Clear," by the same author.

This book just dropped off with a note, “to see what happens, purchase the sequel.” I found that manipulative. Why not just be clear from the start that Blackout and All Clear are not two separate books, but one book in two volumes? Because they can charge more for two books!
If that weren’t bad enough, the action quickly becomes tiresomely predictable. Everything is about rushing back and forth in wartime England. The author has done her research on WW II events, to be sure, but there is little else in the book. The characters are barely developed and hard to differentiate, and everything happens on the emotional level of panic and guilt—which works to create a sense of urgency the first 12 or 15 times but quickly becomes predictable and stale. I had higher expectations from a Nebula-winning author, and was disappointed.

I usually like "hard science fiction" and was initially disappointed; but as the reading evolved I got hooked. In fact I am reading the second book; the completion.
This is time travel from a decidedly personal point of view. Actually historical fiction; which is certainly what was intended but it is not "chic lit". A way to present good solid research into historical circumstances with fictional characters.
The plot basis is: time travelers stuck (maybe) in WWII Briton and their personal efforts to survive and get back to where they came from. The horror is well represented as well as the courage that enabled the survival of Britain as a nation. The characters lacked a certain depth to start with but the author gave them challenges sufficient for them to grow inside of the reader.
Aside from a certain obsessiveness in the characters this is a well written book with a reasonable story line and would recommend it to anybody wanting some mix of time travel and a personal view of the V1's, V2's, blitz,... and living in the circumstances; at least as the author envisions it.

NB: It is impossible for me to write about Blackout without discussing All Clear, its so-called sequel. Before I begin the review I want to warn the reader that All Clear is NOT a follow-up to Blackout. Blackout/All Clear is one very long (over 1000 pages) novel that should be read as one if you want to enjoy it fully. Blackout ends on a terrible cliffhanger, which I consider almost unforgivable (a primary reason for my rating of 4 versus 5). Readers who were not aware of this have had to wait 8 months for the denouement. Although a few reviewers of All Clear who did not read Blackout said they ultimately figured out the background and enjoyed the book, if you have not read Blackout you will not have a proper introduction to the characters & will not appreciate some of their motivations fully.
This quintessentially Willis book takes place in the same universe as several of her other books, such as the outstanding Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. The base setting is Oxford University in 2060, where history students do hands-on research via time travel. The main protagonists are Eileen (or Merope, as she is known in 2060), Polly, and Mike, all of whom are doing their research in Britain during World War II. Soon after they arrive at their destinations, each of them notices certain discrepancies between actual events & the historical background given in their preparation, discrepancies that should not be possible according to the known laws of time travel. Worse, their "drops", their departure points back to 2060, do not "open", and they are trapped in London during the Blitz and its aftermath . The novel tells the story of their adventures trying to return home safely and without doing any (further) damage to the time continuum.
Although the action occurs during the worst of the German attacks on England against a backdrop of destruction and death that could have made it a depressing experience, Willis chooses to focus instead on the basic goodness and courage of ordinary people. A number of the characters make significant sacrifices, many of them voluntary, for either patriotic or personal reasons. Although I would not describe this as a deeply philosophical book, Willis is a good enough writer that I was moved to stop several times and ponder whether I would have made the same choice as the character in question.
And there WERE a number of "characters" playing major and minor roles. As seems to be typical of Willis' works, the most interesting characters are the ones from the past. From their first appearance in the early pages of Blackout, one knows that the street urchins Alf and Binnie are destined to provide comic relief and probably something more throughout the book, as does Sir Godfrey, a distinguished older actor whose conversation consists primarily of lines from famous plays and who takes a special interest in Polly.
I once heard Connie Willis respond to a question about research at a science fiction con with the quip, "What research? That's why it's called fiction", but nonetheless she does not take this approach. She has obviously researched the World War II environment extensively, and her meticulous details of the daily lives of the shopgirls, fire wardens, ambulance drivers, and others gave me a sense of the war that was missing from my history texts.
But Blackout/All Clear was not only or not even primarily a historical novel. It is a lot of fun, full of farce and suspense, reminiscent of the Shakespearean and Agatha Christie works that are mentioned repeatedly throughout. The novel switches back and forth between Mike, Eileen, and Polly, as they look for an open "drop" or each other or another time-traveling historian, repeatedly missing each other or disaster by a hair's breadth. They also miss the significance of clues to what might be causing their problem, clues whose meaning does not become clear until late in the book (I was tempted to go back and reread it to try to pick up more of the hints, but at 1000 pages I'll save that for another time.).
It was a long time coming, Connie, but All Clear is a super ending to the super beginning in Blackout. Please keep writing, but please, give us the whole book at once next time.

I really wanted to love this book - time travel! the Blitz! how could you go wrong? - but I was cruelly disappointed. Far too much labored and repetitive internal dialogue from the main characters that could have been condensed, for one thing. Blah blah blah, oh dear, whatever could be keeping my retrieval team? If the authors intent was to create a maddening sense of helplessness and frustration in her reader, she has succeeded admirably. I don't want to give away too much of the story here, but there are lots of ridiculous implausibilities that I simply could not get past (no cell phones in 2060? - yes, I recognize that this lack is an artifact of (the first of the series) Doomsday Book's having been written when it was, but still! -No solid back up plan for stranded time travelers to get home?).

I simply adored To Say Nothing of the Dog, tolerated Doomsday Book but this one I came to actively dislike. I will slog through All Clear because I hate cliffhangers, but it's more of a chore than an anticipated pleasure.

BLACKOUT isn't one of Connie Willis's best books (that would be either DOOMSDAY BOOK or TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG), but it is still a good one. The idea of the novel is historians traveling through time from 2060 to various crisis points in history to gain a more accurate historian account of what happened. Setting aside the fact that if a means to travel in time were to be invented, it is highly unlikely that historians were be allowed to use it in great frequency, if at all, the book is interesting less for the set up than for the vivid presentation of historical events. By having time travelers provide an outsiders perspective on historical events, we gain new perspectives on what happened. Too often history is focused on key people and ignores the experience of every day men and women instead of politicians and soldiers. BLACKOUT does a lot to correct this.

I listen to a fair number of audiobooks and the reader can make or break the audio version of the book. This was one of the best read books that I have listened to in quite a while. I had not previously listened to a recording by Katherine Kellgren, but she is definitely someone I'll be on the look out for in the future. I have to confess that I often struggle a bit with female readers because I don't always buy the male voices. (The same holds for many male readers who can't do female voices.) But Kellgren does an outstanding job.

I strongly recommend this audio recording of Connie Willis's fine novel. I even more strongly recommend her other novels. DOMSDAY BOOK is one of the best SF/Fantasy novels of the past couple of decades while TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG is one of the most brilliant take offs of another novel - in this case Jerome K. Jerome's comic masterpiece THREE MEN ON A BOAT, subtitled TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG). She is one of the most interesting writers around and any new book by her is a must read for me.

What a disappointment and frustration! As a fan of both science fiction, time travel stories, England, WWII, and the Blitz this seemed a tailor made story and what a let down. There is some good. It does a good job in showing the bits and pieces of personal life during the blitz - trains that would be hours late and descriptions of Anderson shelters and sheltering in the Underground. However as the book progresses, much of the descriptions are lost in the moaning of the strangely uniformed historians that have time traveled to
London and the surrounding countryside during the Blitz.

One of the huge disappointments were simple mistakes in vernacular English., i.e. cots are baby cribs, not something an adult sleeps in and the biggest historical lapse was claiming Queen Mary said" "The children won't go without me. I won't leave the King. And the King will never leave." Queen Mary was King George's mother, his wife, Elizabeth, the queen consort, the mother of the present queen Elizabeth said this and has become one of the legends of morale building during the blitz.

The other huge frustration is that the book just ends and leaves on hanging literally. One almost looks to see if discs or page are missing. This is a horrendous thing to do to a reader and at least makes this one so mad I would not purchase the sequel. It's like false advertising to present to an interested reader an unfinished product

I really enjoyed that the book takes place in England before American involvement in WWII. It's a period in history I know very little about. I would imagine what is written here is pretty accurate historically an it added to my enjoyment of the book.
The author really developed the characters well and I really cared about them.
The things that I disliked was that unless the reader was familiar with the author's previous work you really don't know how the time travel mythology works. I don't know this but I have feeling her book the dooms day book explains how time travel works in her universe. I would have rather read that first if this is the case.

Bought this book because it inexplicably won the Hugo award. Not finished yet, but not going to buy the second volume. This book is affecting in parts, but so terribly slow and poorly edited that it's very hard to make progress. The narrative, such as it is, is embedded in this onslaught of frankly annoying detail about the characters' decision making. It's like the author is trying to defend herself against charges of inconsistency, or ensure that no character can be accused of making a decision entirely for the benefit of the plot. This isn't supposed to be a watertight rental contract, it's supposed to be a novel. A novel which should quite seriously have been a third as long as it is.

This is an OK story. The characterization and scene descriptions are good. The central crisis that the characters face became very tiresome (I won't tell you what the crisis is so I don't ruin the story for you, but you'll see what I mean 3/4 of the way through the book).

However the ripoff is that you have to buy the next book to finish the story. I don't object to sequels, but in my mind a sequel is the same characters, in the same or a different setting, in a NEW adventure. For this book, you're left hanging with no closure of any of the story .. unless you spend another $13-$20 on the next book. The writing wasn't good enough to make me want to do that, so I just walked away.

I recently read a biography of Ayn Rand that said one of her favorite questions when discussing a novel with someone was "Would you like to meet the characters?"

I would definitely like to meet the characters in BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR. One of my favorite parts of the 2-part novel was the sensitive way Willis developed the relationships among the people who lived in Britain during WWII and the historians who traveled from the future to observe the period. I was truly sorry when I reached the end of ALL CLEAR. I looked forward each day to spending time with Polly, Eileen, Binnie and Alf whenever I could find a spare moment.

Some of the reviewers complained that BLACKOUT was confusing. Among other things, the novel is a mystery story (note: Agatha Christie makes a brief appearance in one of the scenes). It's *meant* to be confusing at the beginning. Part of the fun of reading it is working out what's going on.

Connie Willis' newest novel, Blackout had a lot of things in its favor even before I read the first page: (1) it was written by Connie Willis, whose work I admire; (2) it's a time-travel story, which is a minor passion of mine; (3) it takes place in London in World War II, a setting which pushes more of my buttons. When I started reading it, I knew I would not be disappointed. The story follows three "historians" from Oxford, circa 2060, who are researching aspects of the Blitz in London. They do this by traveling back in time and embedding themselves in various events.

The story is rich with the setting and details of the period. The amount of research I imagine it must have taken shows through in the fine detail of what life must have been like during the Blitz. Having been to London, roamed the city and the Underground, I could picture very well where the events took place. Connie Willis' fabulous description, and especially, the little details she adds, helped complete the picture of what it was like 70 years ago, with bombs falling overhead. The characters come to life, too, and Willis even captures some rather witty examples of the British sense of humor that had me laughing out loud.

But the story has another layer, one which gradually build in tension: time travel itself, and its implications. More and more it appears that the historians are finding themselves stuck in 1940 London. The usual methods of extraction do not appear to be working. And no one knows why.

The writing really helps make the story come alive. Connie Willis is a master at this. The words on the page disappear and you feel embedded in the scenes, the sounds of the exploding bombs shuddering your bones, the droning of the airplanes rattling your teeth. She makes it look so easy, and yet if it were this easy to write a good story, everyone would be able to do it.

I don't give out 5-stars for books very often. (The last piece of science fiction to which I gave 5-stars was Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine.) I don't have hard and fast rules for this kind of thing, but there are 2 things that clue me in to the fact that what I am reading is 5-star material: first, it's a page turner, one that I can't seem to put down. I ended up finishing this book between 3-4 am simply because I woke up and had to know how it ended. Second, if I find myself getting close to the end of a book and wishing there was more, I know I've got something that's worthy of 5-stars. Both apply to Blackout. And yet--in this rare instance, my wish is coming true. For Blackout is really just the first half of the story. The second half of the story, All Clear is scheduled for a fall release. So the story will continue.

This leads to one of two minor issues I found with the book. First, the fact that the story ends abruptly with a cliff-hanger means that people will have to wait to find out how things turnout, and some people may find that frustrating. Second, it seems there are ways that our stranded time-travelers could make contact with their colleagues in the future--some fairly obvious ones--but those are not considered by characters. At least not in the first half of the story. (Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity hints at one possible solution--something that was also used in the Back to the Future series.)

Regardless, this was an absolutely wonderful read and I no eagerly await the conclusion of the story, desperately hoping it will be as good as the opening.

For readers who want an entertaining presentation of WWII, and not the typical, dry, run-through of historical milestones, this book is fantastic. As is often mentioned in the book - for England, there were no civilians in the war. This author places the reader in the Blitz, Dunkirk, Bomber's Alley (with knowledge aforehand of what is going to happen). The story gracefully reintroduces the reader to familiar territory, yet makes it fresh, with the fear and courage of the English people rendered heart-breakingly accessible.

Connie Willis is a lover of madcap dialog, and subtle comedy, and in this version of her Oxford historian's universe, she's done the best job yet of blending humor and pathos. Willis is a lover of history, and of the human condition. It is this aspect of her writing that makes this book so good. There are 5 (not 3) historians trapped in the WWII environment, three are in the early part of the war, and two are at the war's end (it's not clear if one of the early group of 3 is not also the one in 1945, but that may be a critical element of the sequel). The best sequence is the one with Mary studying the V1 and V2 Bomber's Alley history. The Dunkirk sequence is also rendered in a fascinating way. Another terrific sequence is the Underground shelter during the Blitz.

Criticism at this website has been levied at the author for some inconsistencies in the story, for a long opening sequence, and for some anti-climactic almost deaths of minor characters. I also found it challenging in places, and had to re-read some passages, paying careful attention to the time-tags at the start of each chapter (she goes back and forth between 1945 and 1940, and the reader can miss that nuance, especially if they don't know their WWII history that well.) But I have the feeling that when the whole story is told (including the sequel) it will become clear that much of the discussion in the beginning is not filler, but vital clues. The phenomena of folks gone missing and then found alive is not uncommon in war-time. Willis is giving us the flavor of what it was like. Finally that the sense of loss, of not knowing the future, of wanting things to go back to normal, that the historians feel, will pick up speed in the sequel, giving us the feeling of what it was like for folks embedded in the war who didn't have the benefit of time to know its outcome.

For me, this is the best book of 2010, and I eagerly look forward to the sequel.

I really enjoyed this book, and its sequel (second half?) All Clear. I've read everything I could get my hands on about the Blitz, and appreciate the huge amount of research that Ms. Willis must have done to be able to write this book.

Connie Willis has always been a wonderful, engaging author - this time around is no different. However wonderful the story is, though, it pisses me off when I could see the way the book was going to end 150 pages before the end. Connie wastes a lot of time having people act stupid (hey, it works for Shakespeare) in order to stretch the story out to make two books. On top of it all, the book is a bit more, not a bit a bit less expensive. It should have been a single book.

If you like hysterical characters imagining and/or stumbling into cliff hangers at the end of every chapter, you'll love this book. Not only that, the silliness has been stretched out to two substantial volumes; no mean feat for a thin farcical plot. One can only hope that Oxford's real historians bear no resemblance to these dunderheads.
I made the mistake of buying both volumes since I recognized Willis' name but had never read any of her work. Bad decision, sci-fi for the Agatha Christie fans. (Apologies to Ms Christie, an excellent if equally antiquated author.)

I was so looking forward to this novel, having read and enjoyed Willis other fine writings.
Sadly this book, which is actually part one of a two parter (I would have waited until the sequel is published rather than have a months long intermission had I known)is a disappointment in that it goes on and on with minor details and boring conversations.
The premise is interesting, sending people from 2060 back to WW II to observe the daily events of the war in Britain and how the people there dealt with them.
Yet what we get is mostly a group of characters running around trying to catch trains and other forms of transport, searching for and missing each other while dealing with boring, tedious situations.
How the historians in the future could have missed some of the problems entailed, despite such thorough research on their part is frustrating.
Not to mention glaring anachronisms in the 2060 world.
The attempts at humor fall flat, while the anxiety is overwrought.
The book could have been halved and if the sequel is of the same tome the whole could have been easily done in one edition.
There is supposedly an underlying mystery but the clues are either very well hidden or simply nonexistent.
While I love Willis other novels this one is just not up to the same standard. I wish I had waited until the local library edition I had on hold came in and would have saved myself some money.

This is one terrific novel, with the best news being that the sequel is out this fall. Yet another of Willis's time travel tales, this one rich in characterization and the detailed lives of Londoners living through the Blitz. Great, great stuff.

One of the most intriguing and literate "SF" novels I have read in sometime. It is not a shoot-em-up in the usual sense, but will you finish the last page with an intimate sense of what life was like during the Blitz. Then you will send off for part II.

Connie Willis is becoming a caricature of herself. I didn't mind all the running around in her earlier novels, and actually found it amusing when there were only a few characters to think about and remember. I started feeling like it was a bit too much in Passage. This time I find myself skipping chapters. I finally put the book aside because I felt that it's unreadable. Too many characters, too much running around getting permits. I think she's lost it.

I've quite enjoyed each of the other Connie Willis books I've read. I plowed through some overwrought frustrations in "Passage" for example, only to be happily surprised to find out that all the labored complications in the story turned out to be a nifty metaphor. I like her slightly tongue-in-cheek style, and I enjoy her gentle characters. You add the deal with all the weird science and time travel to the mix and, as I've said, I've found some really fun reads.

So I was excited to see this new book announced! Patiently I plowed through the first third and read through lots of different overwrought complications. I struggled through maintaining interest in three different interior monologues which all sounded exactly alike. And moreover, each of the three kept repeating the same thoughts over and over and over again. . .

"It's OK," I thought, "Connie will tie it all together in a nifty and satisfying metaphor right at the end! I'll be glad I did it!"

So I waded into the second third, and only my faith in the previous books got me through--it wasn't for the sparkling characters or the advancement of the story, certainly--though there were glimmers of interesting situations. A few bits made me smile wryly.

Finally, I was nearing the end. I'd get a Connie Willis signature Terrific Conclusion! The characters were coming around together and there was something new on the scene and it just seemed as though things might possibly actually come together. . .but they'd have to do it awfully quickly, whatever it might be.

I was getting worried, because my Kindle said I was 98% done so Connie'd have to wrap this up pretty darned quick actually. . .and all of a sudden. . .

THERE WAS AN AD FOR THE NEXT BOOK SCHEDULED TO COME OUT IN THE FALL! I couldn't help but feel cheated. And annoyed. And like I'd only paid for half of a book. Be warned.

Having come this far, and because I've liked her previous books, I'm going to give Ms. Willis the benefit of the doubt. Let's hope this rather overwrought beginning leads to a spectacularly satisfying conclusion. Don't let me down now, Connie! (Also, feel free to stop with a sequel--no need for a trilogy here.)

My husband heard about this via a podcast. It sounded interesting so he put it on his wish list. I bought and he flew through the book. Enjoyed it SO much, he quickly got the sequel on Kindle and has already read that as well. He highly recommends this as a great read.

The review by J. Fuchs expresses many of my thoughts.

I finished this book only because I thought it might finally start to make sense. The closer I got to the "end" I thought it must be just around the corner.

Characters are hard to follow, the constant worrying by ADULT time travelers about "Mr. Dunworthy" (or whomever) and his impulsiveness, and the lack of an ending (agh!!!) makes this book one to avoid.

This book is a long, confusing trailer for the next installment you'll be forced to buy if you want any wrap-up.

Reading the book was a chore, but so was the last 10K I ran. If I run my next 10K and find at the end that the marked finish line is another "several kilometers" further AND I had to pay a second entrance fee to continue AND that the timer broke shortly after the starting gun, I would feel as if I'd just read "Blackout" a second time.

Connie Willis is a much better writer than this book portrays.

Connie Willis is one of my favorite writers, but this novel, and her previous one, _Passage_, are marked by two characteristics of all her work turned into obsessions - a deep feeling for the past and a narrative built on continuous frustration. In her shorter works like "Fire Watch" or "Blued Moon" one has a sense of struggle, but at that length the reader doesn't feel a slog - it's a brief, funny, exciting, wrenching experience crowned by an epiphany in the former case, a madcap but touching comedy in the latter. In these last novels the slog as experience is what the book in large part is about. Character C is trying to do something we know is a mistake, runs into obstacles, gets more entangled by struggling, gets trapped, has to suffer fear, can't get out, can't get home - and that's how the reader feels about reading the book, in sympathy with the character but also on his or her own account. It was often difficult for me to stay involved in the story - "oh, so-and-so's lost now/stuck standing in icy water/drawing false conclusions on obviously insufficient data while observing lots of period detail, and in a few pages the chapter will end on a revelation that will turn out to be shown to be a mistake in the next". Reading _Passage_ I often thought of Kafka, and I wouldn't be surprised if the work is a masterpiece of the sort I don't much enjoy, though Kafka is so strong a writer I don't mind the reading-about-slog-as-slog aspect. _Blackout_ seems like a surfeit of material which is ok on its own (though never of the interest of Willis's earlier stuff) but when conglomerated is just way too much, even given that being overwhelmed is part of the point - and this is just half the story apparently. Well, ok, it's not a failure despite the slow spots, it's just not up to Willis's standard, and maybe the continuation novel will evoke some of the wry beauty and nostalgia that's her trademark and even manage to make some of the extraneous characters' stories have some significance in the whole instead of just being filler.

Just an aside - for those sf readers who are at least a little familiar with the sf time-travel literature it will probably be irksome that there aren't any of the obvious procedures set up in the novel for dealing with the problems that occur. There are also some of the scale and pace issues that may be familiar from the less awesome parts of _A Song Of Ice And Fire_, exacerbated by the relative triviality of much of the action and the extreme choppiness of the intertwined narratives.

*SPOILER" Blackout is another example of bloated writing. Hundreds of pages go by with nothing ever really happening except idle banter or inner monologue/thought that doesn't move the plot along. The entire book is simply three characters getting stuck in the past during the Blitz and taking forever to realize it. We are taken through the same thought processes and missed opportunities again and again as they dimly fail to grasp their predicament and worry whether they are stuck because they may have altered history. Willis attempts to create tension in her story with the characters' confusion, but in the end just repeats herself until the reader is bored despite the interesting nature of the material and Ms. Willis's excellent historical details. Much of this could have been prevented if an editor had firmly told Willis to move the plot along and fit all the material into one book. Neither Ms. Willis nor her reader is well-served because no one was willing to say, "Sorry, but you wrote 400 pages when you really only needed 50 to 100."

...I am a huge fan of Connie Willis books, especially "Doomsday Book", which will always be in the top of my most memorable books I have read. Those of you who have read "Doomsday",(winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Science Fiction) as well as "To Say Nothing of the Dog" and "Fire Watch", will be reunited with Mr. Dunworthy and his team of Time Travelling Historians from future Oxford.

In `BLACKOUT', a team of historian's are sent to study/observe the different aspects of the effect WW2 had on the lives of ordinary people who lived through the war in England. We meet Evacuated Children, London Shop Girls, Nurses and many others including the amazing ordinary hero's who attempted to rescue British Troops from Dunkirk, in fishing boats regardless of the Danger to themselves.

Unlike Doomsday, this book does not alternate between future and past, but once the time travelling historians leave their present (2060), the story remains fixed in the early 1940's during WW2 England.

Regardless of the desperate, chaotic and sometimes very frighteningly dangerous situations the Brits and the time travelling historians find themselves in, Connie Willis adds the needed humour now and then.

I felt totally immersed into the story. I felt it was very believable and I learnt how the Brits reacted to the crisis at hand and how life went on regardless. As the famous WW2 poster stated "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" and they certainly did. Meanwhile, the Historians are desperate to return back to the future, but because of what seems to be a technical time travelling glitch they are stranded in a very dangerous time and the fear of changing the course of history is forever present.

NEGATIVES: Yes, `BLACKOUT' is the first of two books in the series.....Yes, "ALL CLEAR" the second book does not come out till fall....Yes, it leaves you hanging....and sure there are some very "small" flaws in the writing...but hey, get over it! this is a very exciting, suspenseful book which I highly recommend reading.

...I LOVED IT AND I KNOW YOU WILL TOO!... I am pre-ordering the second and last book in the series `ALL CLEAR' right away.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING THIS BOOK!!

The single star is because this book does not have a proper ending. It's meant to be the first of two books, and it just stops with no resolution. This is a huge no-no in my opinion -- at least tell the purchaser upfront if you're going to do something like that. Beyond that major problem, I didn't really care for the book. The characters weren't all that compelling, and many times, the story seemed to just plod along. I won't be getting the sequel.

I was partly disappointed by this book. The initial idea was excellent and a great amount of research and work was invested in this project, but the final result is not so great. Below, more of my impressions, with some LIMITED SPOILERS.

The story begins in 2060 in Oxford, with three young historians, Mike, Polly and Merope, preparing to travel back in time, to observe some of the events occurring in United Kingdom in 1940: Dunkirk battle, London in time of Blitz and the life of children evacuated from cities to the campaign. Once gone on their separated missions, they make a lot of discoveries and face many difficulties, about which I will not say anything here. The story lines which began in this book conclude in the follow-up novel "All clear" (which I didn't read).

I bought this book encouraged by the fact that it got Hugo prize (in 2011) but especially because of my previous readings of Connie Willis short fiction, which I found almost always well written, witty and interesting. "Blackout" was however the first of her novels I read and for me it became immediately clear, that here she is on a less familiar ground… This novel is clearly many degrees beneath her usual level of excellency.

There are good things in this book, beginning with the general idea of writing a SF novel, which would also be a respectful tribute to the very real heroism shown by British people in the darkest and most difficult moment of the WWII, the world changing year 1940. Connie Willis made a lot of research to write "Blackout" and it shows – I actually learned things from it. This book also gives a general feeling about the Blitz which by moments really transports us in those times.

Some secondary characters are also quite interesting, beginning of course by the Hodbin children (a boy and a girl) who to their entourage seem a greater menace than Nazi invasion…))) Amongst other secondary characters it must be said that Vicar Goode, a provincial clergyman, is a particularly endearing person and in another part of the book the high-born girls who joined the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) provide a splendidly entertaining moment.

That being said, there are also numerous things which prevented me from fully enjoying this book, beginning with the fact that it is TOO DARN LONG! Occasional human interest, humour and wit are thus spread thinly, very thinly indeed and especially there is not enough events and drama to fill 624 pages. The result is that somewhere at the page 400 I got bored and I mostly "fast forwarded" the rest – and I don't think I missed a great lot…

The second big problem is the character development of the three main heroes (the three time travellers) – or rather the lack of it… Mike, Polly and Merope are indeed boring and BLAND and at no moment I could relate to one of them or even bother whatever the heck happens to them. I must acknowledge that there are some extenuating circumstances for that, because Connie Willis mostly trapped herself when she adopted the (very logical) rule that time travelling historians must not affect the events and therefore remain as passive during their stay in the past as humanly possible. That certainly contributed to make this book more logical – but also made it much less interesting…

This second problem is further compounded by the third one – the narration in form of internal musings of the three main characters. ON. EVERY. SINGLE. FREAKING. PAGE! They sure offer a lot of exposition about the Blitz times but on another hand, considering how supremely uninteresting the three "heroes" are, they quite quickly got on my nerves and ultimately greatly contributed to wear me down. Once again there are extenuating circumstances here – time travelling historians go on their assignments alone and they cannot reveal who they are, therefore their reflexions on the past must be purely internal ones. This trap could have been avoided – and the book bettered – by pairing them (teams of one professor and one student) and making them discuss between them. Connie Willis made a different choice, as was of course her right, but at least in my modest opinion it wasn't the good one…

All this made it impossible for me to really finish this book. As already said, somewhere around page 400 I started to "fast forward", which means I skipped a paragraph here, half a page there and honestly I don't regret it. When closing this book I was tired and partly disappointed and definitely relieved that it is over rather than elated. I knew that the story continued in "All clear" but I was only very mildly interested in what followed and therefore decided against buying the second novel, especially after seeing that at 800 pages it was EVEN LONGER! I actually looked up the synopsis on the internet to know how the whole story will end, rather than continue to displeasure myself with another huge brick… Then I moved to another, completely not related book, written by somebody else about something different.

That being said, after seeing the synopsis of the "All clear", I realised that those two books form in fact one huge and very complete novel in two parts – it is just that at 1424 (one thousand four hundred twenty four!) pages it is much, much, much too darn long! The whole action of "Blackout" and "All clear" could be compressed in 700 pages (it is already a big book) and it would be then a much, much better thing, as the whole story, once all threads completed, is actually not bad. It just doesn't deserve 1424 freaking pages!

One final reflexion before concluding. As I already mentioned, this novel got the Hugo prize in 2011. That made me think of some previous novels which won the same prize (I quote here only those which I read AND loved): "A canticle for Leibowitz", "Stranger in a strange land", "The man in the high castle", "The wanderer", "Dune", "To your scattered bodies go", "Rendezvous with Rama", "The forever war", "When late the sweet birds sang" and "Ender's game". Then I compared those great novels of yore with "Blackout" – and I felt a little bit sad…

Bottom line, I rate this book 2,5 stars, somewhere between "It is barely OK" and "I mostly didn't like it". I do it without any enthusiasm, much to the contrary in fact, because when opening this book, I really didn't expect that I will end giving such a rating to a Hugo prize winning novel by one of my favourite modern SF writers… If you want to give a chance to this book, which is NOT ENTIRELY without merit, be prepared that it will also be necessary to go through the second part and that in all it means 1424 pages of mostly not very fascinating reading. Me, I decided that I will not read the second part and I will not keep my copy of "Blackout". Read at your own risk and make up your own opinion – you might enjoy this book more than me.

My grandparents lived through the Nazi Blitz on London during World War II and I remember in the the late 1940s and early 1950's visiting London as a young boy and seeing the devastated neighborhoods which took years to rebuild. Willis books "Black Out" and "All Clear" give such a visceral, frightening sense of what day to day life was for those Londoners during those years from 1939-1945. Talk about the power of writing in creating empathy and understanding concerning the unthinkable horror of civilians in war!

Enduring the unedited, mind numbing minutia that is called blackout is like watching a mentally unstable person play 50 hours of the Sims without their Prozac. Over and over this book tries to create epic problems around things that normal people can resolve in about 10 seconds, here is an example (without spoiling anything) of what I am talking about: one of the main characters needs to get from point A to pint B ... But how can I get from point A to point b?!??!? I will ask the baker. They don't know - OH NO!!!!!! I will ask the butcher - they don't know either - OH NO!!!!!!! I will now ask the candle stick maker - they don't know - OH NOOOO!!!!!!!! It is the end of the world!!! Oh my gosh! My shirt has a wrinkle on it, OH NO!!! My ear is itching, whatever will I do?????? Darn it, my shirt is the wrong color, how can I go on living???? And it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on ... I don't understand how 99% of the problems presented in this book would be considered anything more than mundane for anybody but the severely depressed. Reading about how someone does their laundry in 1940 is no more exciting than watching someone do laundry in 2010 - this does not add historical flavor. The characters are wooden and supremely dense. The entire premise is absurd; can anyone explain to me why a future government that has figured out the intricacies of time travel would then handle the life or death transactions with the casual unorganized style of a flea market? If you enjoy the luxurious detail of watching characters micro-manage trivial issues, then you might like this book. If you want sweeping epic or a real flavor of history, find something else.

I have always been an Anglophile and, unfortunately, a somewhat diletante student of WWII, so I had no idea about the extreme level of terror Londoners experienced during the Blitz and the V1 and V2 rocket attacks, and the courage with which they faced the terror. Connie Willis probably showed great restraint in describing the aftermath of each air raid and rocket attack to spare the sensibilities of unknowing readers. Now, weave in time travel, and you have a properly intense story with the possibility of an unthinkable ending. No spoilers, but the lesson the main characters learn is that, during war time, there is no room for diletantes.

My favorite category of time travel fiction sends cautious but dauntlessly curious academic types into the past to research history and Blackout, set during the Blitz of London, stands out in this group because it also includes plenty of humor, lots of period details about ordinary lives, and a large cast of intriguing characters all having different experiences. I loved the story and highly recommend it, but there were a few things that marred its perfection for me.

It’s a long book, over 500 pages, and too much of that length is taken over by the repetitive thought processes of its worried main characters. Also, I was well into the novel before I could figure out its overarching plot direction--lots of interesting things happened but I didn’t see their connections. And then there’s the fact that the story just ends, and I don’t mean in a cliffhanger it simply stops to be continued in All Clear, the second book in the duology.

But in a strange way those complaints actually helped prove to me how great a book Blackout is because even with a few minorly exasperating elements I was still totally invested in the story and characters. Blackout is suspenseful and moving and full of the courage, perseverance, cheerful defiance, and ongoing heroism of WWII Londoners amid bombs, uncertainty and destruction. Plus there’s all those fun time travel paradoxes, conundrums and embedded dangers the main characters have to cope with.

I listened to the audiobook version of Blackout with a wonderful narrator who managed to give distinct voices to each of the story’s many characters. In theory I planned to take a break and listen to another audiobook when I was finished Blackout rather than going on with its sequel All Clear, but no way that ended up happening. I started All Clear during the same car ride that I finished Blackout. The story goes on and so do I.

I enjoyed the two book series "Blackout" and "All Clear" because it winds up a lot of the questions raised in her other books of the Time Traveling Historians...but I'm a fan. Objectively speaking though the story gets a little drawn out at times...as if this was enough material for one and a half books but not two. I believe it would have been better as a single, longer book with a tighter plot.

Nevertheless I enjoyed both books.

This book could easily been edited down to 200 pages and merged with All Clear to create a good 400 page book. Instead, it goes on and on about trying to locate people but just missing them by minutes or going back and forth to the same locations over and over again. It became so boring and repetitive that I skimmed the last 100 pages of Black Out and read the All Clear plot summary on the internet so I wouldn't have to read another 500 pages of the same annoying events. After reading the plot synopsis of All Clear I feel I made the right decision. I do not recommend this book and I am confused on how it won the Nebula and the Hugo awards.

This was a pretty good book. It kept me interested. It was about historians who time traveled. There were three main characters Mike, Eileen and Polly. They all traveled back to different points in WWII. They weren't supposed to change anything that originally happened. I found the book very interesting. The interactions between the people in the shelters. How close they became. I guess if your stuck together night after night for hours you build a relationship with those around them. I could never begin to know what it's like to live in a country a war. I think the author did a good job portraying this. I just found the topic interesting and not something that has been written too much about.

Blackout by Connie Willis 4 stars

Willis just gets better and better with another tale of time travel the way it would probably work (or not...) This entry in the Oxford Time Travel series is the first of a two part story (to conclude in All Clear) that finds our intrepid historians stuck in London as World War II rages. The book does take its time getting started as Willis re-introduces us to these characters and gives a little background on how the 'net' works to hurl them through time.

I've found with Willis to just read on without trying to make sense of it because she will eventually tie all the pieces together-is there anything better in a book than those "Ah Ha" moments when you figure it all out?!

If you have read the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, I urge you to read this series-Willis knows how to make history part of the story instead of turning the story into a textbook. She brings the story to life with authentic details about the War, the Blitz and how folks went about their daily lives during that terrible time. From the Acknowledgment page, Willis thanks the Imperial War Museum ladies for sharing their stories with her. Willis works these personal reminisces into her book in such a way that Blackout is really elevated into more than sci-fi.

I did give this book only 4 stars since I got bogged down in the amount of padding Willis threw in: characters gathered to discuss the same events over & over, there was a lot of running around on trains, buses and subways that had no purpose and a couple of characters that seemed like they had more of a part to play in the plot but just went away and were never mentioned again. I haven't read All Clear yet so maybe things will be resolved in that book. 4 stars.