My Kindle tells me I'm 73% into this book, and I've finally given up. I usually enjoy Connie Willis's efforts - Doomsday Book being partiAaaarrgghhhh!
My Kindle tells me I'm 73% into this book, and I've finally given up. I usually enjoy Connie Willis's efforts - Doomsday Book being particularly good. But somehow her tendency to have people chasing around missing meetings and agonising over their situation (which in earlier books seemed like real life) has totally taken over to the extent that there's no coherent story at all.
Somewhere in all these pages (including the other half of the book, All Clear)is probably a really good story of the Blitz in England, ready to be brought to life by giving us real sympathy for living people, not just dead historical characters. But I'm never going to find it because I just can't get past all this rubbish about missed meetings and rushing about.
As I see others have pointed out (and I recommend Kemper's review), a competent editor should have extracted the good novel in here, at about a third of the length. An editor would also surely have pointed out a few of the absurdities, like the girl who thinks she has to travel back to 2060 to get a black skirt, when she works in a clothing shop, and to learn to drive a 1940s car when the vicar is going to teach her anyway.
On a positive note, for a Yank Connie has most of our British peculiarities about right. I only spotted a few oddities, and I'm picky: - we wouldn't know what a flashlight is - we have torches - we never write someone - we write to them (though oddly we do email and text people) - lots of the kids keep saying "I'll wager . . . ". I'm sure this expression only ever appeared in Enid Blyton books, and I've never heard it in the flesh. What you do hear is "I'll bet . . ."
Oh, and the willingness of people to drive about: this was a time of very strict petrol rationing, I can't believe people would be so casual about it.
I don't think I'll be queueing for the next Connie Willis book!...more
I've always liked the way Ian Rankin fills out the characters in his books, so you get to know the people pretty well. Over lots of books this really I've always liked the way Ian Rankin fills out the characters in his books, so you get to know the people pretty well. Over lots of books this really fleshed out Rebus, his friends and enemies in the police, his romantic entanglements and even the criminal world he confronted. He's doing the same thing with Malcolm Fox. The problem for me is that Malcolm's a much duller character than Rebus, and his conflicts with the rest of the force lack the sparkle I've come to expect.
This one starts *very* slowly with too much dull stuff about how dull things are in the Complaints, turns into a page-turner about halfway, and ends up with some excitement - overall a good read but not Ian's best.
(view spoiler)[ I have two Complaints about this effort: 1 things only really take off when Malcolm forgets about the investigation he's meant to be doing and follows his nose into resurrecting an old mystery, leading to murder investigations then and now. If this is to be a continuing thread, it's really a confession that the basic premise of the Complaints doesn't do the job, and in order to spark things off we have to leave it behind.
2 the outcome, with the chief constable's dodgy past, her very dodgy husband and their history, not to mention the way Fox saunters into their lives and asks awkward questions, stretched my credulity too far! (hide spoiler)]...more
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