All Clear by Connie Willis

All Clear is the final part of a duology by Connie Willis. I read the first part, Blackout, in November and wrote a post about it in the beginning of December. I mentioned in my post that I had asked Santa to bring me All Clear and the good girl that I am :) he honored my wish and there it was under the Christmas tree: a nice copy of All Clear! I started reading my new book during the Christmas holidays and finished the mighty tome (of 793 pages) on January 2. That made All Clear the first book I finished in 2012.

I'm not going to recap the plot of Blackout here. Do take a look at my post on Blackout to learn a bit more about that. I'll just say that All Clear continues exactly where Blackout finished. And as the following is going to be a bit spoilery, if you haven't read Blackout yet but wish to do so, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

Blackout ends with the three historians from 2060 being in London in 1940. They have found each  other but they are stranded in the past and they don't know why their drops (=their gates back to their own time) don't open.

All Clear follows the destinies of Michael Davies, Merope Ward and Polly Churchill as they try to find a way -not only back to their own time-but to survive in World War II London. Back in 2060 Oxford Mr Dunworthy and young Colin Templer (who is very much in love with Polly) are desperately trying to find a way to save the historians stranded in the past. Not only have the three historians been in WWII longer than expected and don't have any information about where the bombs and rockets will fall, but one of them has a deadline. One of them has done an earlier trip to 1944 and if they don't get back to the future before that, that person will die. Unfortunately it starts to look like time travel itself has disturbed the past and that the travellers are straded for good. What if the time travelling historians have inadvertently changed the outcome of the war?

All Clear was a worthy ending for an interesting story started in Blackout. Sometime towards the middle part of the book I felt that the story dragged a bit, but it definitely did not last long and,  oh boy, Willis had quite a few surprises weaved into the narrative before the end! I'll repeat what I said about Blackout that also All Clear is a wonderful piece of historical fiction as well as a worthy time travelling novel. Willis has clearly done her reseach and written a very believable WWII story.

I cannot finish this post without mentioning my favorite characters in this duology: the Hodbin children Alf and Binnie, who enter the story as evacuees in the beginning of Blackout. They are portrayed as total nightmares! If something went wrong, got broken or dissapeared, it was a safe bet one of the two, is not both of them, was behind it. However, as the story progresses they start to play an important role in the narrative (which does by no mean mean that they better their ways :)). While reading All Clear I kept wishing that the story would tell what happened to them after the war and luckily Willis provided a very satisfactory answer to my wish. :)

I have now read all 4 of the time travelling novels Willis has written. There is still a short story called Fire Watch to read. And, of course, there are all her non-time travelling novels to explore. Her novels will surely keep me nicely entertained for a long time to come. :)