491 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 2010 by Spectra Ballantine Books.
When a time-travel lab suddenly cancels assignments for no apparent reason and switches around everyone's schedules, time-traveling historians Michael, Merope, and Polly find themselves in World War II, facing air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history--to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control.
There's clearly a pattern to these books. Historians in danger of getting stuck in the past, experiencing a lack of modern medicine, and chaos back home in Oxford. Overall, the department seems to be very poorly run.
This is the first book of several set in WW2, and despite the aforementioned repetition, I'm going to read the second part to find out how it ends.
I was totally stressed out by this book, so I can't say I enjoyed reading it, but it has stuck with me for years. Very impressive work.
At her reading in Portland, she said that after Doomsday Book, she was asked to put a body count warning label on her book jackets. She said that Blackout's body count is higher than To Say Nothing About the Dog, but lower than Doomsday. That's quite accurate. Even though the body count isn't very high (remember, it is WWII) she does a great job of building suspense as you go from the satire of chaotic academic bureaucracy in Oxford to the historians' assignments in WWII. I felt really immersed in that 1940s world, without any sense whatsoever of 'As you know, Bob.' Great stuff.[return][return]I am now, at least a bit, on tenterhooks until All Clear comes out in the fall.
