This was unnecessarily long. It should have been combined with the first part, Blackout and edited into one book. The characterizations are very good, but what is done with those characters is often pointless. All they do is worry and speculate; running around not asking vital questions and refusing to tell one another the truth. So much crazy squirrel behavior from what are supposed to be highly trained Oxford graduates, it's ridiculous.Because Willis can write and I enjoyed Sir Godfrey and the...

Last time, on Ben's reviews:… there's a very palpable, somewhat ironic fear here, because in a way these three are more frightened of the Blitz than the stalwart contemporaries (or "contemps" as the historians call them).… So for a moment, there's a justifiable and interesting suspense. Unfortunately, Willis attempts to sustain that suspense entirely too long…… all the characters in this book are ninnies … They complain about the retrieval team not showing up and they lie to each other and keep ...

Time-traveling historians fight their way home. This book was ridiculous. I feel bad writing that, because 1. so many people liked it so much, and I'm sad to think I didn't understand how to appreciate it, and 2. it's a celebrated author's book about a WAR. But the only way I remotely got through it was by treating it as a comic novel and mentally tallying up all the ridiculousness, including but not limited to: 1. every time a character's mission was completely stymied by one single, non-malici...

This is a wonderful and amazing book. It really is the second half of a book. On the same day, I went from finishing Blackout and started reading this book, and it was like going from one chapter to another, not like going from one book to another.Thank you to Goodreads friend and fellow group member Sarah Pi who didn’t let me see answers to my questions and therefore helped me avoid unwanted spoilers.I am very proud that less than 1/3 the way through this book, I figured something out, probably...

It's here It's here!The only reason why this is not a 5 is because the middle section of Blackout and All Clear (and I count them as one book, because really they are) annoyed me a bit with the obsession over whether they changed the outcome of the war and where the retrieval team, over and over. I understand why Willis did this (complete anxiety!) but it was too much. Probably because I have gone through times in my life when I too get completely stuck in the broken record of a mind loop, and t...

I have a day job, a night job, and a band. I am working on my fourth album and on a novel and on several short stories. I have a dog and a pony to take care of and I'm trying to teach myself to run by February so that I can join my friends' relay triathlon team. So when I say that I spent four hours curled up in a blanket tonight with my phone set to do-not-disturb because I could not possibly bear to put this book down before I had finished the last three hundred pages, know that I haven't done...

I found this book to be both amazing and frustrating. I don't recall ever having such mixed feelings about a book. When it's rolling it's a rare and rewarding page turner and when it bogs down it feels like a week of reading before the story moves on. There are way too many pages where we go inside a character's head and we listen to that character wonder. She'll wonder if she did something wrong and lost the war for England, she'll wonder where another character is and what they are doing and i...

All Clear (and Blackout) are an excellent way to learn more about World War II/The Blitz in England. It is, however, an extremely frustrating book on many other levels.Of particular concern to me was the tendency for the historians to explain details that the other historians should hand in their degrees for not knowing. It was one thing in Book 1 to have to explain that Agatha Christie was a novelist. It's another thing altogether to revolve a major plot point on the fact that one of the histor...

I hate this book so much. I hate it so much that it hurts. I hate that I spent an audible credit on it. I hate that it's about subjects I LOVE- WWII? Bletchley Park? And it still sucks. It's not badly written- it's just a terrible story, and the lead characters are whiny, dumb, ignorant, and keep switching voices. (that last isn't the author's fault). I HATE that I know more WWII trivia than these "historians" do. That part is the worst. That and the idea that three professional time travellers,...

Let me begin by saying that The Doomsday Book is one of my all-time favorite novels (definitely "top ten," quite possibly "top five"), and I'm also tremendously fond of Connie Willis's Lincoln's Dreams, as well. When I knew she had a new book - well, duology, though the two books are really one chopped in half - set in the same time-travel universe as The Doomsday Book, I was beside myself with anticipation. (I blame her publishers for the decision to splice the book and then wait months between...