The Plague Tales

Rating:
Summary: Better than many books out there....
Review: Although I do have several complaints about The Plague Tales and its sequel, the two books are still better than many things out there. People complain about this work like there are so many better works to read, and yet many fail to mention a single other suggestion.... I read this book over a weekend, during a horrible winter storm while my husband who had recentally had two serious surgeries, was very sick with the flu. The combination of constant snow and wind, a total lack of sleep, my husband alternatlly wracked with chills or burning with feaver and unable to keep any kind of food or drink in him made this book more real than I hope to experiance again. I have yet to read a historical book that is compleatly accurate, by the way Hot Zone is truely more fiction than fact, and far less intertaining than The Plague Tales.

Rating:
Summary: Audio Version Made better by the Reader's Talent
Review: "The Plague Tales", by Ann Benson. Audio Cassette version read by Juliet Stevenson, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing.

This is an excellent book, set in two different eras: England in the near term future and Europe during the 1300s and the Black Plague. The author switches back and forth from a future where antibiotics do not work to a past where antibiotics are unknown. There are two different stories being told, centering on the threat of the Black Plague, and which are neatly wrapped up and tied together in the last chapter of the book. In my opinion, the characters in the future world, located physically in London and the north of the UK, are not developed as fully as are the characters in the past world. The 14th Century physician, Doctor Alejandro Canches, is nicely portrayed, but unnecessarily complicated (again, in my opinion), by making him a Jew in a Christian world. It was difficult enough to be a physician dissecting cadavers at a time when the dead body was considered sacred, without adding the distrust of being a Jew (an outsider) in a Christian society. However, Ann Benson builds a likeable character in Dr. Canches, a Spaniard, who travels first to France and then to England. Then, it is not really clear how he is able to communicate so effectively in France and in England.

The author's future world, not as fully developed as her past story world, contains some macabre happenings. For example, the main protagonist, a surgeon, Janie Crowe, surgically removes the hand of a dead man so as to be able to open an electronic keypad, programmed to recognize and identify people by their handprint. Besides being difficult to imagine without taking sick, you wonder if this description of mutilation is truly necessary for the advancement of the plot.

The audiotape reading of the book by Juliet Stevenson is a stellar performance. Using a woman's voice, J. Stevenson convincingly represents the royal tones of England's King Edward III, and then quickly becomes the sweet voice of Edward's illegitimate daughter, Kate. By itself, this reading performance facilitates the reader in seeing both past and future worlds and enhances the impact of the book. The talent of Stevenson made the book even more interesting as I drove along I-495, the ring road around Boston.

Rating:
Summary: not too well written,unrealistic plot, but held my attention
Review: A respectable 4.25 stars. It wasn't written well, and very unbelivable, but it really held my attention. Very exciting, reminded me of an unrealistic movie that you can't help but glue your eyes to.

This first think I must tell you about this book is that it takes place in two different time periods, one in 1348 and one in 2005. I think it would have been better to write each a separate book, but then "The Plague Tales" wouldn't work too well as a title. Each chapter alternates, chapter one in the 1300s and chapter two in 2005 and so on and so forth. The story in the 1300s is about a Jewish doctor called Alejando Canches. The story in 2005 is about a former physician named Janie Crowe. Personally I was more held to the story about Janie much more than I was the story of Alejando.

Janie was a physician in the United States when all her family died. A few years later she decided to start forensic sciences and goes to do a project in England.
Alejando is a Jewish doctor in Europe. Because he is a Jew he is not respected as he should be, and eventually he lies about his religious origins.

I admit to some of the other reviews on here, it isn't that well written. And it is pretty unbelievable. But this is Ann Benson's first book, and I congratulate her on seriously holding my attention. It isn't well written, and by the end of the book the story was so unbelievable that it didn't make much sense. A lot of the things that happened where really impossible. But it kept you on the edge of your seat, and I loved it. The plot in general is good ... where a plague begins to spread threw London ... but there are so many little details that go into it that it just gets unbelievable, almost to the point of being ridiculous.

The part that takes place in the 1300s is a little dull compared to the one that takes place in 2005, but I think it is a little bit more believable.

Not too well written, but I loved it anyway. There are quite a few things I would change, but I liked the setting and plot. I really would change the title... "The Plague Tales," that's about as uncreative as you can get.

Rating:
Summary: Promising story marred by inconsistencies
Review: Ann Benson has a formidable task of bring together two very different parallel worlds - one far in the past, one far in the future. The plague is a fascinating and horrifying premise for bring these two worlds together, but I felt the author over extended herself by setting one of the stories in the future. The past story line was very well done, with few inconsistencies and well-drawn characters. However, the future plot line, rather than intriguing me, ended up annoying me with its lack of details and character actions that had no reasonable explanation. I also found the character of Janie rather unsympathetic -- I realize she had gone through quite a bit, with the Outbreaks (and the book never says what that disease actually was), but her refusal to call in the plague when she, better than anyone, knows what is at stake when an outbreak occurs, infuriated me. Also her irrational fear of body printing seemed silly to me. So many of her very selfish actions were driven by not wanting to be inconvenienced by having to be bodyprinted. That said, I still found the book interesting and fairly well-written...

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and Entertaining Read! Would make a great Gift!
Review: Actually I found this book through another Amazon's reviewer's review. I was reading reader's reviews for The Eight by Ann Nevil and a reviewer wrote that The Plague Tales was an even better book. It is!

The stories alternate between the 14th and 21st Centuries. In the story pertaining to the 14th Century, our hero, Alejandro Canches, a Jewish physician battling the bubonic plague, flees across Europe to escape death for performing the heretical deed of performing an autopsy. Then, in her story, Janie Crowe, a 21st Century American government-designated archaeologist, who was a physician before the "Outbreak", a futuristic, antibiotic resistant disease that wipes out a great deal of the world's population, battles a strain of the plague that threatens the population that remains after the Outbreak.

Their stories parallel as Janie accidentally unleashes a new strain of the plague while digging in England. The character Janie is a bit wooden and does things that lose credibility, for a modern physician simply would not ignore simple infection control procedures as this character does. Alejandro's character, on the other hand, is compelling and facinating. There are other snippets in this book which are a bit far fetched and completely unbelievable but Ann Benson weaves these tales of fantasy in a manner that makes it "work". Never have I been a historical novel reader. The Plague Tales is the exception.

I have just received the sequel to The Plague, Ann Benson's The Burning Road with hopes that it will hold a candle to her first novel.

Rating:
Summary: The Dog Tales
Review: The first fourth of this novel is completely absorbing, but after that it gets more and more unbelievable until by the end I could hardly bring myself to finish it.

The characters are completely inconsistent. Gentle Alejandro commits murder. Ted, who is supposed to be a compulsive stickler for rules, subverts them all. Caroline has no character at all, but she is sick for days with the plague when everyone else who gets it dies almost immediately. Characters in a novel don't have to make the same choices that I would make, but they should make the choices that make sense for them. These characters are just pawns of the plot.

The overall story is OK, but a good many of the details are terrible. There's an incident with a hand - Janie cuts it off a corpse, another case of unbelievable behavior on the part of a character - which is completely grotesque and doesn't further the plot at all. In the prologue, a feather is misplaced. By the end of the book, it's back in the right location. Geographical locations seem to move closer and farther away, depending on how long the author wants the characters to run away. Many of the details just don't add up.

I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone. Read "The Doomsday Book" instead.

Rating:
Summary: What a fabulous read
Review: Ann Benson did such a beautiful job in telling tales of two different time periods all to come together in the end. Not only was the book ladeled with education pertaining to the black death but you also get caught up in both time period stories without getting lost. This has been one of the best books I have read in a long while. Ever so captivating was this novel I hated to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: This book is engrossing and informative, gives the reader a very personal glimpse inside a time period that is not a common backdrop for a story. Highly recommended for the story, the science and the characters.

Rating:
Summary: two gripping stories
Review: I immensely enjoyed the two gripping stories told in Ann Benson's The Plague Tales. I am a medieval buff, so naturally found the story of Alejandro Canches the Jewish doctor from Spain interesting. Alejandro has a great desire to be able to cure all patients. When he is unable to cure a Christian patient of his, he unwisely exhumes the body to discover what really caused the death. He is caught and thrown in prison. His father arranges his release and from there we follow his adventures which are interwoven with the other plague tale of Janie Crowe. Janie is a surgeon who is undergoing retraining to be a forensic archeologist. She lives in a slightly futuristic world which seems much different than the one we would expect in 2005. Benson has rewritten history to include a world decimated by a virulent disease which wiped out millions.

As some readers have noted the story is flawed in ways. A setting to be a little more in the distant future would be more believable. It stretches credulity to have professional people who have lived through an era of disease, be so reckless with unknown and known bacteria. In additions both stories endings are quickly patched to gather and leave the reader hanging.

I would recommend this book to those who like science fiction or medieval settings and can get past a certain amount of the unbelievable happening.

Rating:
Summary: One Great Book
Review: This is one outstanding book! I have been an avid reader for 50 years and I thought I have read them all until I read Anne Benson's "The Plaque Tales." For anyone who feels they were a "Physician" or "Healer" in some part or past life then this is the book to read.

"The Plague Tales" touched me deeply. I felt myself...(as will you) that I was actually living Allejandro Cinches' life trying desperately to find a cure for the Black Plague that was killing hundreds of thousands of people of Western and Central Europe during the 14th century.

But beware, the scenery Allejandro finds as he travels the many small towns and roads may give the faint of heart a sound tremor.

Allejandro, is a good man, and a great Physician of great pride and determination. His life is dedicated to the understandings of the human body and all it's workings and weaknesses. As an early physician practitioner he battles an overwhelming disease amidst the fourteenth century Catholic Church's idiocy which is fighting him all the way, although the church members are dying themselves from this unexplainable black demon.

With a vanishing world falling around him and a small journal that he has kept since his physician school, Allejandro holds all of man's destiny of past and present in his own hands. He must comprehend and try to find a cure for this incomprehensible disease if at all cost.

Fortunately, there lay someone in the dark shadows that recognizes a treatment for this disastrous infection. But can Allejandro grasp the concept and apply it?

This book is also in a rotation chapter with a modern day physician, Dr. Janie Crowe and her assistant, who is living in a new plague asylum world of their own.

Seven hundred years later a nightmare breaks lose when this 14th century plague erupts again in present day London England through a strange line of unlikely coincidences.

You will thoroughly enjoy this book if you appreciate medical thrillers as well as history.

Everything is combined to give you one hell of a ride from start to finish!