All Clear

After reading The Anubis Gates  the first of February, I decided that I'd read only Sci-fi novels focusing on time travel for the next few months. I've just finished my fifth novel on this subject - All Clear by Connie Willis. All Clear is the 4th of Willis' so-called, "Oxford Time Travel series", the first three being The Doomsday Book ,To Say Nothing of the Dog , and Blackout .

All Clear is essentially the second part of a two part novel, Blackout/All Clear , which tells the stories of time traveling historians who've gone to the past in order to research World War II.

Willis has done an excellent job chronicling the lives of Brits living through those difficult times. The novels feel as if they were written during the war.

Being a time travel novel, there are, of course problems involving the numerous paradoxes brought on by time travel. A good deal of the two novels focus on the difficulties the time travelers have trying to return to 2060.

All four of Willis' time travel novels have been awarded the Hugo Award - making Willis the first author to win Hugo awards for all books in a series.

Earlier, I gave To Say Nothing of the Dog a rating of 5 stars out 5......a perfect score. Of the four, "the dog" is my favorite. I'm giving each of the other 3 novels in the series a rating of 4.9 stars out of 5. I've enjoyed all four, but I can't give the others an equal rating with my favorite.