The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 16 March 1999
by Connie Willis
This science-fiction novel is a highly entertaining trip into Victorian England in search of the subtle events in history that have become unglued and threaten the very space-time continuum itself. In 2057, time travel has become commonplace, but subject to some strict legal and natural restrictions. One small event, though, suddenly appears to threaten the "Net" and all of history. In the midst of a chaotic search for a Victorian artifact known as the bishop's bird stump, our heroes must try to repair the small tears in history to keep them from destroying history all together. The title, and much of the story, of this book owes itself to Jerome K. Jerome's comic novel Three Men in a Boat. The book is written very much like an early mystery novel, along the lines of Agatha Christie. Indeed, there are many literary references here, inviting the reader to read everything from P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. To say nothing of Willis's Doomsday Book which contains one of the same characters and the same time-travel mechanism. There are many likeable characters in this book, from ditzy Victorian girls, to a cat named Princess Arjumand. Much of the first half of the book is a comedy of errors as Ned and Verity try to figure out what they can do to correct the fabric of history without screwing it up even more. In the meantime, they search for the bishop's bird stump, in the name of a shrewish woman restoring Coventry Cathedral destroyed in a bombing in 1940. Somehow it all ties neatly together, from Victorian times, to World War 2, to 1395, to the battle of Waterloo. It's a lot of fun.
(This book won the 1999 Hugo award for best novel.)
Also by Connie Willis: [Passage] [Doomsday Book]