To Say Nothing of the Dog
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Wind and the Rain and Jordan.
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Written by Connie Willis.
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($7.99)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel...
Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier.
But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right--not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.
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WriterDan thinks this book is Worth Reading.
Ned is one of a group of people looking through spac-time for a vase called the Bishop’s Bird Stump. (Yes, this is a time travel story.) Leading the assault is an overbearing, whip of a woman named Lady Schrapnel, who is trying to recreate to perfection the old cathedral in which the bird stump once resided.
Ned gets sent into the past so many times in succession that he comes down with time-lag, and has to be sent somewhere to avoid Lady Schrapnel for some recovery time, or risk going completely insane. As such, he is sent into Victorian England for some good, old fashioned rest. Or so he thinks.
This book was definitely a break in the norm of my reading schedule. Instead of being a concerted effort to wander through the mysteries of time travel, this book focused more on the niceties and annoyances of Victorian England at its society.
The book is written quite well. Characterization of secondary characters is quite specific and good. The story also starts off to be quite interesting.
Unfortunately, for me, everything got fairly boring after the first 200 pages or so. The only thing that really kept me reading was the occasional humor. It did have that going for it. Still, I found myself struggling to read anything after that point. Finally things ended, and I decided that I really didn’t like the way things ended up. I think that this comes mostly from the fact that this book is really just a Victorian romance novel hidden within the trappings of Sci-Fi. And that really didn’t appeal to me.
The idea of time “fixing itself†really didn’t work for me in this case, and the “revelation†at the end of the book really just made me frustrated more than anything. However, this book did make for a good reference on Victorian England, had numerous literary allusions and inclusions, and painted a fairly decent romantic interest story.
I think that this book will probably only appeal to a small group of people. I think that lovers of sci-fi and time travel will become quickly annoyed by the intent focus on Victorian England and seeming innocuous event there; lovers of historical fantasy fiction and romance will become bogged down in the science of time travel and its ramification; leaving only those individuals who are lovers of light, airy, romantic fantasy fiction and have a slight penchant for the scientific realms of time travel.
So, if you find yourself in that group, by all means, pick this one up from the bookstore. It’s humorous, and light, and will occupy for a decent amount of time, and more than likely not leave you wanting more, as it did for me. Definitely worth reading, for those with these interests.