Blackout

I confess to feeling a little cheated by the time I finished this book - it felt like it had just got going!

I love a good time travel story so it was a no brainer to pick this as one of my Women of Genre 2013 challenge books.

The story is set in Oxford of 2040 when time travel is not only possible but is being used extensively for field trips by historians (who seem to know very little history!) doing research. We follow 3 such as they are dropped into widely different scenarios in WW2 Britain. Of course things go wrong and our 3 time travellers are left stranded in a time they are ill equipped to cope with. Though there is enough foreshadowing for us to be sure of the plot almost from the beginning there is an abundance of build up.

The minutiae of the times is exhaustively described in what feels like authentic detail - but there is so much of it! What started as a time travel story becomes an adventure in war torn Britain. The first time round the bratty evacuees are amusing but it gets old very quickly. Similarly Michael's escapades in Dunkirk and Polly's in the bomb shelter's of the Blitz become stories of their own as they slowly (very slowly with many tangents) converge towards each other and a full appreciation of their predicament. Of course after all this I was then expecting an exciting rescue or escape through time, but once that was set up to happen the book ended!

I will eventually get to read the sequel, but probably not for a while... I love a good bit of world building that comes alive in my imagination but not when it distracts from the story.

I listened to this on audiobook and though it was an adequate performance the reader had some very annoying pronunciations which were nothing like any British accent I have heard (and I am British). Principle among these was her way of saying passage or passenger (more like parse-age).

All in all it had interesting possibilities but feels woefully dated.