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A review by shanellewrites
All Clear by Connie Willis
2.0
So...here's the thing...
I adore Connie Willis. Her writing is exquisite. Her plots are amazing. She is pure genius. The plot of this book (and by that I mean both Blackout and All Clear, which I will treat as one book here) is pretty incredible. The ending is like, my mind BLOWN! Brilliant.
BUT...there were some MAJOR issues with the line/content editing. This book is extremely repetitive. I honestly felt like I read the same three scenes for more than half of it. Also the use of cliff hangers and then "oh, just kidding" was ridiculously, annoyingly overused to the point it backfired major time. This book really needed some tightening. And I noticed numerous sentence fragments. Those can be great tools when done well and sparingly, but there were too many - especially at the first part of All Clear - and it just made me annoyed at the editor. Again.
Again, I don't think Willis' writing is the problem here. I think it was poor line/content editing. So many parts are absolutely brilliant, but they really got muddled down with an insane number of scenes where I just rolled my eyes and legitimately thought, "We're going through this thought process AGAIN?" I honestly thought at multiple points throughout the book that nearly half of it could be cut without really losing anything.
That said, again her writing is gorgeous. Characters are wonderful, plot is not only brilliant of itself but brilliantly executed (minus the repetitiveness).
I really wanted to give this book four or five stars, but through so much of it I was so annoyed that I really couldn't. However, I am still a huge Connie Willis fan and am excited to read more of her books.
Anyone else feel it was monstrously repetitive? Or at least does anyone else have extremely conflicting feelings about this book? (In fact, I don't think I have finished any other book in my life feeling more conflict about it than this one...)
I adore Connie Willis. Her writing is exquisite. Her plots are amazing. She is pure genius. The plot of this book (and by that I mean both Blackout and All Clear, which I will treat as one book here) is pretty incredible. The ending is like, my mind BLOWN! Brilliant.
BUT...there were some MAJOR issues with the line/content editing. This book is extremely repetitive. I honestly felt like I read the same three scenes for more than half of it. Also the use of cliff hangers and then "oh, just kidding" was ridiculously, annoyingly overused to the point it backfired major time. This book really needed some tightening. And I noticed numerous sentence fragments. Those can be great tools when done well and sparingly, but there were too many - especially at the first part of All Clear - and it just made me annoyed at the editor. Again.
Again, I don't think Willis' writing is the problem here. I think it was poor line/content editing. So many parts are absolutely brilliant, but they really got muddled down with an insane number of scenes where I just rolled my eyes and legitimately thought, "We're going through this thought process AGAIN?" I honestly thought at multiple points throughout the book that nearly half of it could be cut without really losing anything.
That said, again her writing is gorgeous. Characters are wonderful, plot is not only brilliant of itself but brilliantly executed (minus the repetitiveness).
I really wanted to give this book four or five stars, but through so much of it I was so annoyed that I really couldn't. However, I am still a huge Connie Willis fan and am excited to read more of her books.
Anyone else feel it was monstrously repetitive? Or at least does anyone else have extremely conflicting feelings about this book? (In fact, I don't think I have finished any other book in my life feeling more conflict about it than this one...)