Despite its lackadaisical pace, I was into it. Don’t read too far into how the time travel and discrepancies work, and don't expect the historians to do any kind of realistic scholarly research, because you will be in for disappointment, if that is why you read genre fiction.

I’ve read a complaint or two that Connie Willis has British Victorian dialogue all wrong, which may or may not be accurate. Even if she gets it wrong, though, she is wrong consistently enough to eliminate it as a distraction.

The characters are fleshed through their excellent, tangential conversations, and the tone of the entire book is light-hearted. It is funny in parts, but not forcibly so, as in “funny” novels people have recommended to me. Instead, each sentence, each line of dialogue compelled me to read the next.