The three main protagonists are likeable enough characters, and they are instilled with humour, compassion and worry. However, I didn’t feel that this style of writing hurt the book in any way after all it is a novel about time travel, which in its nature jumps around from one place to the next.
This can become a little confusing at times if, as a reader you are not used to either this Authors writing style, or the jumping around from one scenario to the next. The book is broken down into three episodic narratives, each from the point of one of the historians covered in the book, and it tends to jump from one narrative to another as it progresses. Both books centre on time travel from Oxford 2060 back into the past to recover historical items, in this case for the rebuilding of a certain Cathedral. Together they come to some 1168 pages and, personally, I feel that they could have been published as one novel rather than splitting them in two. This book is actually the first half of the All Clear duo. By the second half of the book I was completely absorbed, and now I'll be anxiously awaiting the second half of the story in All Clear, which is due to be published in November. Blackout is the first of two companion novels, so I suppose that there was so much groundwork to lay that it took a while for the story to build. Although the action and intrigue were very slow to build, the characters and setting were as captivating as I hoped. I was about halfway into the book before I started to feel really hooked. To be honest, Blackout seemed much less compelling than her previous books. Willis mixes humor, historical fiction, and science fiction with mystery to create the perfect kind of book to get lost in for days. I loved To Say Nothing of the Dog and The Doomsday Book for their compelling plots, interesting characters, and rich settings. Blackout has the same premise as the other two books by her that I've read - it's 2060 in Oxford, and there are historians who regularly time travel to the past to study and observe. I'm a big fan of Connie Willis, and my hopes for this book were very high.
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