BLACKOUT

The new Connie Willis novel finally arrived. After I paid full price plus shipping for the hardcover, I quickly realized I was never going to have time to read an actual book, so I paid another $9.99 for the Amazon Kindle edition on my iPhone, which I read in about a week mostly in late-night baby holding sessions of furtive reading in the dark over her head....

So, the book. Is lovely. I missed the world of Oxford's time traveling historians. And this book had just enough early mentions of Mr. Dunworthy, Colin (who is all grown up at 16 now) and their adventures in the middle ages with Kivrin that everything quickly felt familiar. And then the new characters, as they went their separate ways into the past and then gradually their stories intersect within the London Blitz....
The plot devices of Connie Willis -- people remembering wrong information, worrying about things, near misses, coincidences, and time travel malfunctions -- are all tied together by her constant refrains -- in this book, it's everyday heros and every citizen being part of the war effort.
Everything was going along dramatically until the "to be continued" hit me out of nowhere.
Now I'm not-so-patiently waiting for the second part to be published in October...
491 pages