All Clear

Yeah! I finally finished this book!

Okay...honestly...I can say after reading both Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis, that I did enjoy this story. The were both behemoth books, but they do provide rich detail and dialog that one can't help but feel transported back to WWII London during the Blitz. But, I am awfully exhausted after reading these books and ready to step back into 2011!

If you love WWII historical fiction, suspense and a bit of fantasy (i.e. time travel) you will really enjoy this story. Most reviews I've read also echo what I'm about to say. Both books could have used a strong editing session to trim 100 to 200 pages out of each of them. Obviously some of the detail is needed to weave the story completely together, but there were some sections where you felt like you were reading about despairing characters for 60 to 80 pages.

I also felt that both books were lacking in the romantic storyline. Connections and relationships were formed, but Willis never really took time to explore these fully. I think they would have made the characters feel more "real" and human.

Willis is a meticulous researcher and both of these books are a masterpiece in and of themselves in how she pulled the story together. There was a point three nights ago when I held my head and said "it hurt" because I was thinking so hard about how some of the events/plots were piecing together at the end.

I am looking forward to reading some of her other books, but glad I can move on to some other books that have piled up on my night stand.

To recap:

Worth reading? Yes

Recommend to a Friend? Maybe

Worth Buying My Own Copy? Maybe...especially if you take awhile to read books. I kind of wish I had a copy of "Blackout" to reference as I was reading.

Stars: 4 out of 5

Waiting on Wednesday: All Clear

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

All Clear

By: Connie Willis

Publication Date: October 19, 2010

Note: This is second and final book of this duet. The first book was "Blackout." And I am 1st on the library's lending list to read "All Clear" - YEAH!

Description from Amazon.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.

Told with compassion, humor, and an artistry both uplifting and devastating, All Clear is more than just the triumphant culmination of the adventure that began with Blackout. It’s Connie Willis’s most humane, heartfelt novel yet—a clear-eyed celebration of faith, love, and the quiet, ordinary acts of heroism and sacrifice too often overlooked by history.