I'm sure some of you were wondering what prompted me to post a belated review [link] of Blackout yesterday. Well, there's the short answer, and the long answer.
The short answer is, I've been sitting on it for something like two years to date, and I didn't want the week to begin without blogging about something on The Speculative Scotsman. I dare say it would have otherwise: I'm covering another tutor's classes at the education centre I work at this week, plus I have a few deadlines to attend to in the meagre remains of my free time.
Oh, and it's my birthday today... but hey, who wants to celebrate being older?
But why Blackout? Why in the world has it taken me so long to publish this particular piece?
Well, because I always planned to review All Clear right alongside the first part of Connie Willis' wartime tome. It only seemed decent, considering they form a single story.
To do that, though, I'd have to read All Clear, and though I did indeed begin it immediately after finishing Blackout, I put it down soon afterwards. To the best of my recollection, I did this to remind myself that books could be good—
—but no, that's not fair. Blackout wasn't that bad. What I mean to say is that I started in on something else to remind myself that books could be enjoyable, as well as academic.
Anyway, All Clear has sat heavily in the bedside cabinet wherein I keep all the books I should really read ever since, and I realised, quite recently—whilst reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson for review at a later date on Tor.com—that there's no reason a serious novel about the war couldn't be objectively entertaining, which Blackout (to my mind) simply wasn't.
So what happened was, I admitted defeat. I said to myself: Niall, you clearly don't want to read this book right now, and you certainly won't for a while after the lovely likes of Life After Life, so why not just file it away for the time being?
Well, dear reader... I did. And I immediately felt like a great weight had been sitting on me for years. A weight of words that I'm now without.
Happy birthday to me! :)
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