All Clear, by Connie Willis

All Clear is the second half of the Hugo-nominated Blackout/All Clear two-volume novel by Connie Willis.  I reviewed Blackout even though it was only half the novel, but now I've gotten through both.  And for the most part, it's pretty much like the first part--the four protagonists, historians from the future, are still trying to get out.  They continue to scramble, with less hope. 

But toward the end, the novel finally pays off.  The various theories about time travel and the continuum are woven together, with all the complexities of knowing how things came out faced fully.  It's hard keeping it all straight, but done well.  And I have grown more appreciative of endings since reading Infinite Jest (see earlier post).  This one is very well executed, with all hard work paying off as well as it could.  Was it worth 900 pages to get to that ending?  It's really hard to say.  In her forward she says the book grew on its own, but I do think the action got pretty repetitive--a Reader's Digest condensed version would probably actually work (do they still do those?).  In any case I'll give it 3 stars and say I liked it.