I found the [b:Doomsday Book|24983|Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)|Connie Willis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403972500s/24983.jpg|2439628] to be hilarious and oddly moving. I had hoped the semi-sequel, a separate story in the same universe, would be more of the same. So I started in and found our protagonist, Ned, rooting through the wreckage of Coventry Cathedral, looking for a Macguffin.

And I was confused. So confused. See, our story is told entirely in the first person, and at the beginning Ned is suffering from time lag. Time lag is a lot like jet lag, and being easily confused is a symptom. Ned starts spouting poetry and jumping from thought to thought and mishearing characters and bungling plot elements, and as a result I was disoriented.

"Ah-HAH," I thought. "That's just what she wants me to feel. The game's afoot." I read the rest of the book in either gleeful collaboration with or active defiance of her authorial intent. As Ned gets more facts, I the reader get more facts. As Ned is hilariously beset by hilarious Victorian antics, I snicker and chortle in response. And as he sets out to solve the semi-fair-play mystery, I play along at home, cataloguing clues, advancing theories, eliminating the impossible and allowing for whatever remains, however improbable.

It was a delight to read, and I look forward to the day when somebody publishes an annotated edition which resolves each of the manifold literary quotes, references, and allusions.