This near future spy book involving coureurs and homages to Le Carre finally did a hard right into good ole sf by way of a worthy digression about 19th century [redacted] and I couldn’t be happier. The narrative is disjointed at times and has liberal uses of flashforwards but its worth it

protag spy-in-training should have realised he was being setup to be the fall guy when his fake ID was “Rocco Siffredi”

You know what? After a bumpy, jumbled start, I ended up enjoying Connie Willis’ blackout. Once each historian was trapped in their own lil corner it made the story much more enjoyable. The problem is, when you saddle the main character with two little monster, two little shits of a children, you end up saddling the reader with them too and it made reading those segments that much more annoying. I mean it’s good and bad, you feel the horror, but you also feel the horror and want to move on.

A couple of decent misdirects too