Bellwether by Connie Willis

Rating: WORTHY!

I was all excited that the narrator of this book was named Kate Reading until a friend informed me that her real name is Jennifer Mendenhall. That sucks! I know the alternate name is funny, but what's the point?! Well, I guess it's none of my business. Her reading voice is fine, to get back on track. She tells a good story and this was a good story to tell, full of understated snark and humorous observation.

The main character, Sandra Foster is conducting a scientific study of fads - that is, if she can figure out the darned grant application forms which are obscure to the point of being candidates for admission to the Parisian Incoherent movement in the 1880's. Sandra works for the HiTek Corporation where two characters fascinate her. Bennet O'Reilly is intriguing because he seems completely immune to fads, and she comes up with a plan to study him and to use methods inspired by watching a child crayon as a means to chart her discoveries! The other person, Flip, is obnoxious beyond repair. Sandra and Bennet find themselves in charge of a flock of sheep where they hope to learn something both about fads and about chaos theory. Will baa charts help ewe? It seems to me they should have simply studied Flip, but what do I know? I'm not a scientist! I have been known to think of really good uses for sheaves of soft white grant application forms, but that's all behind me now....

I loved the sense of humor in this novel and intend to look for more books by this author, despite the fact that she's an award winner. Normally I steer clear of award winning authors, and indeed in this case, had I stuck to that plan, I might have missed this book, because I negatively reviewed another novel by this author back in March of 2015. However, after this one, I might change my vector and chart a new course towards looking for more of her novels that might be like this one!

All Clear by Connie Willis

Title: All Clear
Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Rating: WARTY!

Read shrilly by Katherine Kellgren.

This was awful! I can't believe how bad this was. I think it's very possibly the most irritating and boring novel I've ever not read - I listened to it. Or to as much of it as I could stand anyway. I got only 10% of the way through it before I threw it away. Not literally, I dutifully and promptly returned it to the library.

It’s book 2 in what’s at least a dilogy, something which I didn’t know, going in. Not that it really matters that much. Connie Willis herself warns at the beginning that you really ought to read book one before you start on this, but what’s the point, honestly, of issuing that warning when you’re sitting there driving down the highway (or even up the low-way) listening to it already? What I’m saying is that it’s a bit late at that point!

I got this from the library and there was nothing in the description on the library's website to warn me that I should read book one first – or even to say this was book two! Here’s the library’s blurb:

Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Connie Willis returns with a stunning, enormously entertaining novel of time travel, war, and the deeds, great and small, of ordinary people who shape history.

“Connie Willis returns” tells me this isn’t her debut novel. It doesn’t tell me this is book two of a series! Shame on you librarians who evidently just lifted a blurb from somewhere and thought no more about it! (I love them really!) The reader was Katherine Kellgren, and her voice was appropriate to the era, but this merely meant that it was high pitched and shrill, which was really, and I mean really, off-putting. If you must read this, I recommend that you actually read it, and avoid the audio book version.

As for the story itself, I didn’t see the point. This is supposed to be sci-fi time-travel. To me there’s nothing more exciting, which makes me wonder why so many writers use that frame as nothing more than a bait-and-switch tactic to lure their readers into what is, in the end, merely an historical fiction, or worse, an historical romance. Seriously?

If all you’re going to do with your time-travel story is trap your main character in some historical setting, then I’m sorry but you’re really nothing more than a con-artist mis-representing your story! I will resent your tactics and read no more of your oeuvre. For me, there actually has to be some real sci-fi in a sci-fi story!

In this case, a team of time-travelers, who were evidently studying history (you’d have to have read book one to really understand what they were doing or why it even - supposedly - made sense), were somehow trapped in World War two London in 1940 during the blitz, of course, and were in complete disarray. For the first two disks they were obsessed with a store by the name of Padgett's and with whether three people or five people had died there. It went on and on - for two disks. God it was boring!

They're from the future, but were evidently and inexplicably completely bereft of any kind communication devices, and the entirety of the first two disks consisted of some time-traveler woman whining shrilly about her own personal circumstances amidst the destruction, death, and din of London. That was two disks too much ‘whining and dinning’ for me. I can’t recommend this.