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A review by isabellarobinson7
All Clear by Connie Willis
4.0
Rating: 4 stars
I finally got to this book. I know it technically hasn’t been that long, but I really should have started it as soon as finishing Blackout (book/part one; review here), because it was a good hundred or so pages in All Clear before I really started to remember what happened in part one. That being said, All Clear is very good and VERY addictive. I binged this book so hard, I started it one afternoon and the next morning I was done. While Blackout was made up mostly of set up, exposition and banal activities, All Clear is balls to the wall, timey whimey shenanigans, with just so much happening at all times, that I really wanted to know the end.
And the end was also very good. I liked the resolution in regards to what was going on with the slippage, where it was actually about (ok who cares. Spoiler time:)putting the people in the exact time in history they needed to be, rather than out of the places they shouldn’t, as was previously believed. It wasn’t the time stream correcting itself, it was the time stream making sure history happened, which the time travellers were needed for. That was one of my favourite aspects of the whole ending, because it wasn’t too contrived, and it seemed a very reasonable explanation for why everything was going wrong.
I do have some criticisms. Like Blackout, All Clear was probably too long, and needed a bit of editing. Willis got a bit overindulgent with her WWII fact sharing (but to be honest, so do I). It got a bit repetitive, especially in the middle, and parts of it could have easily been condensed or taken out altogether (like one character not remembering the name of a place that is literally one of the most important locations in the entire freaking war). The characters, while mostly enjoyable, were not the strongest, and could have used more in terms of backstory to flesh out who they were as people and why they were reacting this way to circumstances. These kinds of things didn’t really affect my personal enjoyment (especially with All Clear, because I read it so fast so didn’t notice any lull in pacing) but I can acknowledge they might be a deal breaker for some people when it comes to liking this or other Connie Willis books.
My opinions on the characters stayed more or less the same as Blackout, and I did like how there were consequences for the time travel. Ah, whatever, I’ll just go into more spoilers.I could kind of tell that Merope/Eileen would stay in the past, a trope which is a staple of time travel stories that Willis has not yet used in this series. Those kids started getting very annoying at the end there. Any longer with them I might have exploded. Other people might not be able to handle them at all, but for me I could tell their purpose was to be irritating and that seemed to be enough for me to get past their continual nuisance. So Merope/Eileen being able to handle them for decades?! That takes some dedication, and I take my proverbial hat off to her and all other caregivers who have to deal with the little blighters- ah, I mean, darling children.
I was sad thatMichael/Mike/Ernest died, but his ending was really good, and satisfying in that bittersweet way. It’s that unfulfilled personal potential/objective that hurts the most in his story. (Especially when you have Polly, but I’ll get to that). I liked how he kept working at sending coded messages to the future to help him and the others get rescued. And it was structured really well so you didn’t know Michael was Ernest at first, but when you realise what exactly he is doing, you start to understand that it is in fact the same character. Though, I was a bit confused as to why he had to fake his death and not tell the other characters. Wouldn’t his plan work just the same if they knew? I don’t know, maybe I missed something. It was really sad then that after all that work, all he got to do was briefly see the future before dying. At least he got his normal accent back and didn’t have to die sounding like an American. Bleh, who wants that. (I also liked how Alan Turing almost ran him over, that was funny.)
And then there’s Polly. Bloody Polly. She was my least favourite of the threeso it made me mad that she got the happiest ending. Why couldn't she get her foot mauled at Dunkirk and get blown up by a bomb, or be stuck with two annoying children without reprieve from the internet? Why did she have to get back virtually spotless? Yeah, I get she was a nurse and did some good stuff under the name Mary, but Michael was literally in her arms saying her name as he was frickin dying and she was like “don’t worry sir you’ll be fine” and then he DIED. And he did all that work to get back home and he didn't even get to see it! Okay, well, really, I didn’t hate Polly that much, and her being there in no way affected my overall enjoyment of the book. Just comparatively, her ending being so happy made me the most annoyed when her character deserved it the least.
AND PLUSshe technically “got the guy” because it is kind of implied that she gets with Colin (now aged up, because of his various time jumps) after the novel ends. I don’t think I mentioned it in my review of book one, but Colin is younger than Polly, like 17 to her 25, and has a huge crush on her, so he wants her to pass through time normally, but him to go time travelling so he can age faster, and come back to a time when they are the same age and he can date her. It is treated in Blackout like the fantasies of a teenage boy, and Polly rebuffs him (the smartest thing she has done) but in All Clear when he does get older (more through necessity rather than according to his original plans), Polly is like “ooh he’s a big strong man now and doesn’t he kind of look like one of those guys that was hitting on me in 1944?” Because this is after at least three dudes are interested in her over the course of the two books! WHY DID SHE GET LITERALLY EVERYTHING THE OTHER GUYS DESERVED???!!!
(This review was supposed to only be a couple of paragraphs at the most, but I keep finding more stuff I want to say/remember for future reference, and now it has become this long drawn out thesis, most of which is hidden in the spoiler tags because I can’t contain myself. At least I am not leaving it for months after finishing, like last time.)
At leastMr. Dunworthy is ok. I thought for a second Willis was going to kill him, and I was ready to be really mad, but he survived, so that is fortunate. (It’s also kind of weird to think that technically he was born around the same time as me.) He should now get a promotion or something at Oxford and get a nice retirement before dying while looking at St. Paul’s and going up to join Mary in heaven. I will not be accepting any constructive criticism at this time. That is absolutely how his story should end and I won’t hear of anything else.
Man, I just love Connie Willis and everything she touches, and with every book I fall in love with her again. I haven’t really had any duds with her, just a couple of short stories that I enjoyed but didn’t love as much as others. All Clear is perhaps one of the best endings I have read from her, and that’s not to say any of the others were particularly bad, it just shows how good this ending truly was. It proves to me once again why she is my newest favourite author, deservedly up there with the greats like Tolkien, Jordan, Riordan and Sanderson.
I finally got to this book. I know it technically hasn’t been that long, but I really should have started it as soon as finishing Blackout (book/part one; review here), because it was a good hundred or so pages in All Clear before I really started to remember what happened in part one. That being said, All Clear is very good and VERY addictive. I binged this book so hard, I started it one afternoon and the next morning I was done. While Blackout was made up mostly of set up, exposition and banal activities, All Clear is balls to the wall, timey whimey shenanigans, with just so much happening at all times, that I really wanted to know the end.
And the end was also very good. I liked the resolution in regards to what was going on with the slippage, where it was actually about (ok who cares. Spoiler time:)
I do have some criticisms. Like Blackout, All Clear was probably too long, and needed a bit of editing. Willis got a bit overindulgent with her WWII fact sharing (but to be honest, so do I). It got a bit repetitive, especially in the middle, and parts of it could have easily been condensed or taken out altogether (like one character not remembering the name of a place that is literally one of the most important locations in the entire freaking war). The characters, while mostly enjoyable, were not the strongest, and could have used more in terms of backstory to flesh out who they were as people and why they were reacting this way to circumstances. These kinds of things didn’t really affect my personal enjoyment (especially with All Clear, because I read it so fast so didn’t notice any lull in pacing) but I can acknowledge they might be a deal breaker for some people when it comes to liking this or other Connie Willis books.
My opinions on the characters stayed more or less the same as Blackout, and I did like how there were consequences for the time travel. Ah, whatever, I’ll just go into more spoilers.
I was sad that
And then there’s Polly. Bloody Polly. She was my least favourite of the three
AND PLUS
(This review was supposed to only be a couple of paragraphs at the most, but I keep finding more stuff I want to say/remember for future reference, and now it has become this long drawn out thesis, most of which is hidden in the spoiler tags because I can’t contain myself. At least I am not leaving it for months after finishing, like last time.)
At least
Man, I just love Connie Willis and everything she touches, and with every book I fall in love with her again. I haven’t really had any duds with her, just a couple of short stories that I enjoyed but didn’t love as much as others. All Clear is perhaps one of the best endings I have read from her, and that’s not to say any of the others were particularly bad, it just shows how good this ending truly was. It proves to me once again why she is my newest favourite author, deservedly up there with the greats like Tolkien, Jordan, Riordan and Sanderson.