Connie Willis took a long hiatus from writing and publishing SF, and this was hailed as a great return to the field. I'm sorry folks, but I'm gonna be brief and to the point. This story is about a bunch of college history students who travel back in time to observe historical events. Despite talk of the Crusades and other bloody eras, the only one Ms. Willis takes us to is Great Britain during WWII. There are a handful of protagonists in this book, each observing various aspects of the war, such as the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Blitz, and the evacuation of all the children from the cities to the country (as seen in the first of Narnia Chronicles by Lewis). Unfortunately, I never felt any connection to any of the "heroes", and by time I was half way through the novel, I hadn't any great desire to find out what happened to them. It seems as if someone was trying to figure out what to do with all the random trivia they studied in their Masters in English History, and tried to turn it into a time travel story. If you're a serious anglophile, go for it.
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