All Clear by Connie Willis
The sequel to Black Out, which I contend should have been trimmed by 40% of each book and turned into a single volume. Was works for different reasons in Firewatch feels bloated here, and what worked well in Doomsday Book and was boring in To Say Nothing of the Dog, fails here too. I kept waiting for this book to end, and my god the book seemed like it was dying to end. But it didn’t end. Until it finally did. The issue with this […]
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Series: Oxford Time Travel. I read Book One (Doomsday Book) in 2010. What I remembered about this series prior to reading this book: A friend recommended Doomsday Book to me because of the Middle Ages setting and the references to bubonic plague (infectious diseases are my jam). What I chiefly remember about it now was that I couldn’t get into the story because I kept waiting for the buboes to show up (plague doesn’t come into the story until well over halfway through, as I […]
Uncharted Territory by Connie Willis
This is a reread of a Connie Willis novella from the 90s. I reread it because this is a new audiobook version. We find ourselves on a kind of archeological/anthropological/paleontology survey of a foreign planet. The survey crew is abuzz because of a new member showing up that day. Evelyn is not a woman to the chagrin the male members of the crew and to the delight of at least one of the women. The novel then goes into the rules, regulations, and guidance that […]
Crosstalk by Connie Willis
This is another comedy of errors/romantic comedy in the vein of To Say Nothing of the Dog, but not one tied to a historical/time travel narrative. In that way, it’s also quite similar to Bellwether. Briddy works for a global communications technology company and the word is out that she and her fiance, one of the junior vice president types in the company are about to be engaged. Before they get engaged though, her boyfriend has asked to her have a EED, an empathetic implant […]
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
I absolutely devoured Doomsday Book a few weeks ago in a matter of days, which at 600 pages, was a relatively fast pace. This book, 500 pages, similar in its conceit took me longer in terms of days and a lot longer in terms of energy spent. I languished with this one at times, and while I sometimes run cold with Willis, I was hoping for a similar set of reactions to the previous novel of hers that I read. So the conceit here is […]
