These are two novels by Nebula Award winning and member of Science Fiction Hall of Fame American author Connie Willis. I have an inclination towards well done time travel or alternate world scenarios, and as a history major in college also prefer realistic creations or recreations of a past or future era. Perhaps this is one reason, on balance, I find this two volume set (the first is 491 pages) on balance engrossing.
The premise is that in 2060 time travel has been mastered and is run by an academic oriented group led by a Mr. Dunworthy. Researchers are being sent from Oxford to sites all over the past, some mentioned are 1944 Normandy, 1941 Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center, and the American Civil War. Rather like Hogwarts, you wonder where other research centers are, is Oxford just one of many, what are other countries doing, and how do they avoid bumping into each other. (Sort of like thousands of people clustering around Dealey Plaza in Nov., 1963 :) ).
But the story is centered around Britain 1940, and specifically three researchers who find themselves mysteriously stranded when their "drops" back to the future don't work. When she can't get back Merope goes from her assignment as a maid in northern England to find Polly (working as a salesgirl in London) to try to use her drop, as does Michael, from southern England where he was supposed to discreetly observe Dunkirk evacuation, but, of course, gets involved in actuall going to Dunkirk, helping evacuate soldiers, and getting seriously wounded in a foot.
The chief strength of the first book is also a weakness, the attention to detail and recreating London, and to some extent southern and northern England of 1940. The hundreds of pages of tease as to what's gone wrong with the time transports isn't addressed at all through volume 1 (and I haven't gotten to volume 2 yet). :)
Indeed, I'm trying to not indulge in what I frequently do- jumping ahead to see what happens, have the time travel reserachers toyed with causality and changed history so that there is no 2060 Oxford research team?
It isn't all sweetness and heroism in 1940 London (although historian revisionists will not be amused by the bulk of positive portrayals of the populace). Willis does use devices to give her 21st and 20th Centuries universe depth and a mix of characters, while leaning towards the positive. For example, while Polly is doing a bit of sightseeing she gets into St Paul's, looks around and muses:
'It's beautiful,' Polly murmured, and felt for the first time what its destruction really meant. 'How could he', she thought Even if he was a terrorist? He'd walked into the cathedral one September morning in 2015 and killed half a million people. And destroyed this [St. Paul's Cathedral and it's environs] . ... the Fire Watch stone , Polly thought, the memorial dedicated to the memory of St. Paul's fire watch, the volunteers "who by the grace of God saved this church.' And the only thing left after the pinpoint bomb.
And what seemed to be a "date rape' scenario (with an RAF pilot during the BoB!) is alluded to but then passed over.
No. I'm glad you kept me from going. I should never have said yes in the first place. I mean, he's a pilot. They're all terribly fast. Brenda, that's the girl I used to share with, says they're only after one thing, and she's right. Lucille in kitchen wares went out with a rear gunner, and he was all over her...He refused to take no for an answer, and Lucille had to-
(presumably, have an abortion).
On balance, the detailed scenarios and recreation of London will probably either aggravate a reader to give up or, especially if you have a history inclination, to treat it more as a sci-fi soap opera and mystery.
Well, suggestions (including critical) on this first diary effort are welcome, especially if not too harshly put. :)