In addition to the historian characters that intrigued me, many of the "contemps" are also sympathetically drawn. I was born five years after the war ended, so grew up hearing and reading a lot about it, seeing documentaries and many movies of various military campaigns. Even so, it is difficult for me to imagine the hardships that British civilians had to endure during those dark days, and I suppose even more difficult for younger generations. The only thing that compares today would be if you are in the military, along with what your family has to go through anxious for your safety. But World War 2 was on such a grand scale, the stakes were so high, it is amazing to read of such stoic characters, huddled in the shelters night after night, hearing the planes overhead and the bombs dropping closer and closer. They endured those hardships, and also contributed to the homefront effort in so many ways, confident in their leaders that they would prevail, no matter how bleak the situation seemed on many occasions. Such heroics are as inspiring to me as any soldier attacking a pillbox or an airman downing an enemy plane. Ms. Willis does them, and us, a great service in detailing their adventures. If the time travel elements were removed, this would be an excellent mainstream novel of this historical period.

There are a couple of passages I would like to share that not only express the characters' concerns over what is happening, but also are very good guidelines for us to consider in conducting ourselves in the real world. The second one actually comes first in the book, but could easily have been a response to the later statement. Both of these are from All Clear. Dunworthy has been successful in getting a drop to open for him and he is there to get Polly, Merope and Michael out. He tells Polly:

"...even if you saved Sir Godfrey's life and Mike saved Hardy and I [redacted], we still altered events, and history's a chaotic system where a good action, done with the best of intentions, can have the opposite effect. How can you be certain that even if the contiuum intended us to make repairs, we did? That we didn't make things worse instead?"

Earlier, Merope and Polly are talking about cause and effect:

"I don't think Mr. Dunworthy's right," Merope said the day after Polly told her. "Saving people's lives is a good thing, and after all, Mr. Dunworthy didn't intend to [redacted]—"
"And the German pilots who got lost didn't mean to start the London Blitz," Polly said. "The sailor lighting a cigarette on deck didn't mean to get his convoy blown up. History's a chaotic system. Cause and effect aren't—"
"Linear. I know. But even in a chaotic system, good deeds and good intentions—and courage and kindness and love—must count for something, or else history would be even worse than it already is."

One of the book jacket blurbs for Blackout compares Willis' plotting skills with that of Agatha Christie. That mystery author herself is briefly glimpsed as a minor character in this novel, and Eileen (Merope) is a big fan of her work. One of the things she says about Christie's books is that all of the clues and details are there, but sometimes the reader doesn't see them because of some misdirection, but after the mystery is solved those clues stand out clearly and one wonders why they couldn't put the pieces all together themselves. That is also a very good description of this novel. There were several times I thought things were a bit predictable, but later I realized something entirely different was going on, and in the end all the pieces fit very neatly. I won't say what, but there was one thing I did predict correctly, but many other things took me by surprise.