≡ Download Free All Clear Hugo Award Winner Best Novel Connie Willis 9780553807677 Books

All Clear Hugo Award Winner Best Novel Connie Willis 9780553807677 Books

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All Clear Hugo Award Winner Best Novel Connie Willis 9780553807677 Books

Since BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR are two parts of the same story, I have reviewed them as one unit and posted in the review section of both books. I hope it isn't confusing that the two reviews are identical, but what I have to say about one is pretty much the same as what I have to say about the other.

I read Blackout/All Clear for the first time 6 months ago and like every other Connie Willis novel I have ever read, I couldn't put it down. The story was longer than it had to be, but overall I enjoyed the read and found the ending to be satisfying. For more details, see below:

First The Negative: The story is long, and at times slow moving, and has plenty of things that don't make sense if you really think about it. The negative reviews aptly spell out everything that was wrong with this book so I won't waste time here telling you all the plot weaknesses. Most of the negative comments are true, and the people who don't like this story have a well taken point. I will limit my own negative comment to the fact that these book(s) are too long and should have been condensed into one single book with neater and tighter story. This didn't need to be two books and if you ask your fans to pay double for a story, you should really deliver something that warrants it. I think that with some skillful editing it could have been more readable without losing anything except some flab. But the bottom line was that it was gripping enough to keep me engaged for more than 1200 pages and I liked it enough to read both books a second time.

Now For The Positive: I liked the story; cared about the characters and rooted for them. I enjoyed the wit and humor, the mystery, and the romance that are woven into the storyline. The plot is extremely complex and the way Ms. Willis takes a multitude of disjointed plots and sub-plots and weaves them into a neatly ending story is such fun to read. Her drawing room wit, comedy of manners and sense of the ridiculous makes me think of Jane Austen and the way she handles complexity is reminiscent of Charles Dickens. (Please be kind! I realize that her works aren't the social masterpieces that Dickens produced - I am only commenting on the style of complex storylines full of coincidence, irony and surprise. She does this well, although not as well as Dickens.)

I find it interesting that some of the things that people don't like about Connie Willis stories are also criticisms that are often leveled at Charles Dickens: namely that the stories are long, boring, and complicated. These are the very aspects I find to be so entertaining about both authors. And while Dickens does a better job of tying up every single loose end, I have to admit that I prefer Connie Willis's lighter approach of weaving humor and satire into even the heaviest of storylines.

Blackout and All Clear, just like Doomsday Book before them took me into a world that I had heard of but didn't come close to understanding. I had no idea that the Blitz was so destructive to the people of England and was entirely oblivious to the suffering and deprivation Great Britain and all of Europe suffered during WWII.

Some people (especially British folks who tried to read these books) were put off by the poorly done accents and the stereotypes. But I think that is excusable because the books have a strong element of comedy and farce - everything in them is a caricature. Even the American tourists that pop up in the 1995 portion of the story are overblown to the point of ridiculous. This is a deliberate writing style and one that I enjoy. The tone of the story is exaggerated, almost like a stage whisper, and the accents and stereotypes are not problematic at all when taken the the intended spirit.

In spite of the obvious weaknesses, I found it to be a fun story and Ms. Willis succeeded in taking me out of my own world for awhile and into the Blitz of WWII. It was done in such a way that the serious and tragic nature of the subject matter was served up with enough humor to make it bearable - even uplifting. I was stimulated and entertained and at the end of the day, isn't that what fiction is all about?


Tags : All Clear (Hugo Award Winner - Best Novel) [Connie Willis] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In Blackout</i>, 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,Connie Willis,All Clear (Hugo Award Winner - Best Novel),Spectra,0553807676,Fantasy fiction,Historians,Historians;Fiction.,Time travel,Time travel;Fiction.,World War, 1939-1945 - England,World War, 1939-1945;England;Fiction.,England,Fiction,Fiction - Science Fiction,Fiction Historical,Fiction Literary,Fiction Science Fiction General,FictionHistorical - General,Historical - General,Science Fiction - General,Science Fiction And Fantasy,Science fiction,World War, 1939-1945

All Clear Hugo Award Winner Best Novel Connie Willis 9780553807677 Books Reviews

This is the first time in years I've stopped reading a book in the middle. I bought this book in the foolish hope it would somehow pick up the pace after the first volume. As with many books, it starts slow (think the whole first volume) but it never redeems itself in the second.
I guess Hugo/Nebula awards have lost much meaning.
That time travelers can't make their scheduled rendezvous and then chase each other around in circles, losing and finding each other like a Keystone Cops movie is bad enough, but pages and pages repeatedly, neurotically and uselessly agonizing whether the sequence of events was still on track, puzzling endlessly how to contact the future, find numerous (organized) travelers, and nobody ever put a simple backup contact plan or message drop in place ahead of time - in 20th century LONDON, REALLY?
Just plain absurd.
This ain't a story about a lone traveler in the Jurassic.
Plot holes everywhere, and wrong opinions (like the V2 "if you hear the bang, you already survived" was somehow far scarier than the 'here I come' ... then ominous silence, anticipation, of the V1 - opposite of what my own family said everyone felt) make this a tedious, annoying read.
A good editor could have chopped the thousand page two volume set into perhaps one 350 page book easily.
This book, the second half of the omnibus novel started in Blackout, isn't for everyone, but for those who are willing to immerse themselves in the story, it's absolutely mesmerizing. Taking place during the WWII, the story jumps between several time "historians" who are time travelers from 2060 and are there to document various aspects of life during WWII. I found Michael to be rather annoying because he would fly off the handle so easily, but Polly and Merope/Eileen were just brilliant characters, as were many of the other characters, particularly Sir Godfrey and, of course, the Hodbin children. Alf and Binnie Hodbin are, without question, the naughtest children in the history of the universe, but their resourcefulness and sheer chutzpah are astonishingly entertaining. The story jumps between characters and time periods and is a bit confusing at first, but it's all sorted out in the end, so if you hang in there, you'll find out who everyone is and what happens to them all.

Connie Willis creates characters in such depth that you feel as if you're living inside their skin, especially if you listen to the audiobook while reading, which is narrated brilliantly by Katherine Kellgren. I honestly felt as if I were there in the shelters during the Blitz, living in the blackout, and dealing with the shortages and rationing. And I recently discovered a website called Bomb Sight which shows the location of just about every bomb that fell on London during the war, which will be a wonderful resource for locations when I reread this omnibus book (because I definitely will reread it; there was so much detail I lost the first time through, it will take a second reading just to have a better handle on what was going on). Connie Willis did a truly stupendous amount of research on WWII England, and it really shows. I found myself regularly doing independent research on wartime events that I might have heard of briefly in passing but had never looked into in detail, or researching people I'd never encountered before, and that added to the entire reading/listening experience for me.

I know some people find the book(s) tediously long, but I didn't. I didn't mind the historians' introspection -- since they couldn't reveal their true identity to the "contemps," after all -- especially since there's always a voice or three narrating life in my head, too. If you have plenty of time to spend and really want to learn about WWII England and immerse yourself in the life of these time travelers to the past, I highly recommend Blackout and All Clear. (And read them in that order or you'll be beyond hopelessly confused!)
Since BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR are two parts of the same story, I have reviewed them as one unit and posted in the review section of both books. I hope it isn't confusing that the two reviews are identical, but what I have to say about one is pretty much the same as what I have to say about the other.

I read Blackout/All Clear for the first time 6 months ago and like every other Connie Willis novel I have ever read, I couldn't put it down. The story was longer than it had to be, but overall I enjoyed the read and found the ending to be satisfying. For more details, see below

First The Negative The story is long, and at times slow moving, and has plenty of things that don't make sense if you really think about it. The negative reviews aptly spell out everything that was wrong with this book so I won't waste time here telling you all the plot weaknesses. Most of the negative comments are true, and the people who don't like this story have a well taken point. I will limit my own negative comment to the fact that these book(s) are too long and should have been condensed into one single book with neater and tighter story. This didn't need to be two books and if you ask your fans to pay double for a story, you should really deliver something that warrants it. I think that with some skillful editing it could have been more readable without losing anything except some flab. But the bottom line was that it was gripping enough to keep me engaged for more than 1200 pages and I liked it enough to read both books a second time.

Now For The Positive I liked the story; cared about the characters and rooted for them. I enjoyed the wit and humor, the mystery, and the romance that are woven into the storyline. The plot is extremely complex and the way Ms. Willis takes a multitude of disjointed plots and sub-plots and weaves them into a neatly ending story is such fun to read. Her drawing room wit, comedy of manners and sense of the ridiculous makes me think of Jane Austen and the way she handles complexity is reminiscent of Charles Dickens. (Please be kind! I realize that her works aren't the social masterpieces that Dickens produced - I am only commenting on the style of complex storylines full of coincidence, irony and surprise. She does this well, although not as well as Dickens.)

I find it interesting that some of the things that people don't like about Connie Willis stories are also criticisms that are often leveled at Charles Dickens namely that the stories are long, boring, and complicated. These are the very aspects I find to be so entertaining about both authors. And while Dickens does a better job of tying up every single loose end, I have to admit that I prefer Connie Willis's lighter approach of weaving humor and satire into even the heaviest of storylines.

Blackout and All Clear, just like Doomsday Book before them took me into a world that I had heard of but didn't come close to understanding. I had no idea that the Blitz was so destructive to the people of England and was entirely oblivious to the suffering and deprivation Great Britain and all of Europe suffered during WWII.

Some people (especially British folks who tried to read these books) were put off by the poorly done accents and the stereotypes. But I think that is excusable because the books have a strong element of comedy and farce - everything in them is a caricature. Even the American tourists that pop up in the 1995 portion of the story are overblown to the point of ridiculous. This is a deliberate writing style and one that I enjoy. The tone of the story is exaggerated, almost like a stage whisper, and the accents and stereotypes are not problematic at all when taken the the intended spirit.

In spite of the obvious weaknesses, I found it to be a fun story and Ms. Willis succeeded in taking me out of my own world for awhile and into the Blitz of WWII. It was done in such a way that the serious and tragic nature of the subject matter was served up with enough humor to make it bearable - even uplifting. I was stimulated and entertained and at the end of the day, isn't that what fiction is all about?