All Clear is the sequel to Blackout, but it's more like the author wrote so much that the book would be too heavy and intimidating. Blackout ends at a chapter ending, so it was pretty suspenseful. They could really be spliced together into one volume without too much effort, other than the fact that you can suck more money out of readers by making them buy two books instead of just one book. In any case, here's what happens in both books. (I'm mashing the reviews of Blackout and All Clear together.)
Polly, Merope, and Michael are time traveling historians exploring different aspects of World War Two. There are also several other historians whose stories are interepersed among this main storyline (but they're actually the same historians at different times under different names). Their drops, which are portals back to their home base in Oxford, won't open, so the three of them just try to survive in the middle of the Blitz, hoping that a retrieval team will come through and get them. But time is winding down, and Polly has a deadline coming up. That means she was in London previously (relative to her life) but at a later time (relative to history). I'm not sure what happens if you're in the same place at the same time twice, but it's not a good thing. Maybe disappearing from the space-time-travel continuum? That would be odd, because of the matter can't be created or destroyed, but then, who knows? Connie Willis is a great author and I'm sure she'd come up with something a lot more intricate than that.
The character development in Blackout and All Clear was masterful and I was totally invested in the characters by the end. Except . . . except Colin. The parts about Colin that made me like him were at the beginning of Blackout, and I'd nearly forgotten. No matter /how/ much I hated the running around in Passage, I really think we could have used a little more time watching Colin's frantic efforts instead of just being told that his efforts were frantic.
There were a few things about Colin that I wouldn't have minded being told straight out. Number one: Did he do flash-time drops or not? I know Polly said/thought something about him looking old at the end of the book, but that might have been because a) she'd been away from him for months or b) he was worried about her/Merope/Dunworthy/the entire blasted problem. Him looking old isn't a conclusive point for him being flash-time dropped. Number two: Was he Merope/Eileen's grandson? Polly mentioned the resemblance and the dear-boy-ing, so I assumed it was a genetic relationship (and obviously, Merope must be Colin's ancestor, because he wasn't married or anything at that point and Merope was in the just-post-WWII age and Colin was in 2060 . . . anyhow, I'm rambling, but it's sort of obvious).
In addition, it did get long-winded and confusing at times, where the things that we were told about way before in the book happened afterwards, or happened twice from two different viewpoints. It really couldn't be helped, though, since it's time travel.
Merope seemed to be Pollyish and grown up when the story was told from her viewpoint, but she was far more childish when other people were narrating the story. She seemed to be an inconsistent personality.
Stars: 9 for an amazing adventure, in-depth research, and likeable characters.
Violence: 7. It's the Blitz. Bombs are going off, people get cut in half, and at one point it looks like there's a pile of bodies in front of a store (they're actually mannequins that got thrown out of a store window by the force of a bomb.
Romance: 4.5 since Polly and Colin have a slight relationship throughout both books (which gets put on hold when Polly, Merope, and Michael are stuck in London during the Blitz). Colin (who's seventeen) suggests doing a bunch of flash-drops so he can catch up with Polly in age so it wouldn't be too awkward.
Language: 6.5 for English swear words such as bl--dy, d-mn, etc.
Appropriate for: teen to adult
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