Doomsday Book

Rating:
Summary: Deserved all the awards
Review: After reading all the reviews here, it seems that people are pretty divided on whether they liked this book or not, though it appeared that most were positive. I tend to be in the positive camp. I quite enjoyed this book, for a lot of things. The attention to detail of medeval times is nearly perfect, as far as I can tell. Willis has an almost uncanny ability to portray her characters as such real people, that when the Plague comes (and you it is coming, and you know that everyone is going to die, and yet you hope. Almost like Shute's On the Beach). You can feel the anguish as Kivren is forced to watch all the people she has come close to die off one by one, agonizing, brutal, horrible deaths. Clearly, Willis has done the research and what has emerged is a near perfect masterpiece of writing. It should have won more awards

Rating:
Summary: Impressive and intriguing
Review: I find it curious that of everyone I've spoken to who's read this book, everyone seems to either love it or hate it. Which also seems to be the general tenor of the reviews appearing on this site.

Overall, I was extremely impressed by this book. Medieval history has always been one of my favorite subjects, and Willis' exhaustive research has made the sections of her book set in this time period unflinchingly realistic. It was not an age of reason; it was an age when the church was the source of all knowledge and God was the ultimate authority. Reading medieval history, we are led to understand why so much fantasy fiction is set in this period; it was a time when the distinction between physical and spiritual was much more blurred than it is now.

Willis has worked hard to create believable medieval people, and for the most part has succeeded, in that I found myself sympathizing with characters whose worldview is fundamentally different from my own. As any science fiction fan knows, creating a believable alien culture -- one that is sympathetic, but still alien -- is an extremely difficult challenge. Creating believable characters from another time and place can scarcely be less of a challenge.

That said, the sections of the book set in the modern period were not as strong, and mostly seemed to have been written to create obstacles that would allow Kivrin to endure her ordeal in 1348. Depending on how you like your plot, the constant bureaucracy and the chaos of a modern viral outbreak either add overwhelmingly to the tension or drive you to distraction. Not being too far removed from the academic realm, I found these areas of the book quite believable, and for the most part well done. There were just a few too many of them.

I tend to prefer character-oriented fiction over idea-oriented fiction, and I greatly enjoyed "Bellwether", which was written by the same author. There, as here, the actual hard science content was fairly minimal, and if nuts and bolts are what you like, I suggest looking elsewhere. I found the story itself extremely strong, and an excellent impetus to resume some history reading.

Rating:
Summary: One of the very best!!!
Review: Words fail in attempting to describe the depth of this novel. I can only guess negative reveiws were by scifi fans looking for pure tech. This book goes so far beyond any one genre. Kivrin, Dunworthy, Roche, all the characters became like good friends. Rarely does a book move me to both laugh aloud and cry as well. This one will stay with me a very long time. Do yourself a favor and read it!!

Rating:
Summary: Exceptionally good book with strong story and characters.
Review: This is an exceptionally good book. It is fun to read a good SF story with good science that incorporates the flavors of historic fiction and fantasy. The story is suspenseful and absorbing. Anyone who has every though he or she inhabited Dilbert's world will relate to the bureaucratic muddleheadedness that strands a young graduate student working on a time machine project in the Middle Ages in England. Strong story. Strong characters

Rating:
Summary: Time-travel is not always what it's cracked up to be!
Review: The heroine of Connie Willis's award-winning Doomsday Book is a grad student in history at an English university in the near future. She's gotten approval to go back in time to the 14th century to do on-site research. Armed with her implanted language decoders and her anti-plague shots, she's sent back by an operator who is coming down with a contemporary plague and makes a mistake, putting her smack-dab in the middle of an area soon to be over-run by disease. As she struggles to get back to her own time, her mentor struggles to get her back as well, but bodies are piling up---all over time. A gripping, emotional read that transcends the barriers of genre fiction. Science-fiction is the category that's been assigned to this title, but it is so much more...mystery, romance, historical fiction... A terrific read that will stay with you. You know the cliche, "I couldn't put this book down!" Here, it's true---I hated coming to the end, I loved all the characters so. Jo Manning ([e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Time-travel is not always what it's cracked up to be!
Review: The heroine of Connie Willis's award-winning Doomsday Book is a grad student in history at an English university in the near future. She's gotten approval to go back in time to the 12th century to do on-site research. Armed with her implanted language decoders and her anti-plague shots, she's sent back by an operator who is coming down with a contemporary plague and makes a mistake, putting her smack-dab in the middle of an area soon to be over-run by disease. As she struggles to get back to her own time, her mentor struggles to get her back as well, but bodies are piling up---all over time. A gripping, emotional read that transcends the barriers of genre fiction. Science-fiction is the category that's been assigned to this title, but it is so much more...mystery, romance, historical fiction... A terrific read that will stay with you. You know the cliche, "I couldn't put this book down!" Here, it's true---I hated coming to the end, I loved all the characters so. Jo Manning ([e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Most overrated book in years
Review: I cannot understand what people like about this novel. I could barely finish it. I kept hoping it would get better or end well. It doesn't. The characters are completely unreal and they seem to be controlled by "artificial stupidity." Whenever there is a simple and obvious thing to do which would probably resolve the whole situation, they instead do something silly to advance the plot. It is also virulently anti-technology. We're supposed to believe that a bunch of scientists and engineers have built the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb, or the Death Star, and then wandered off leaving it for these incompetents to screw around with however they please. The people who built this machine would certainly have more sense in their little fingers than the characters of this story all put together

Rating:
Summary: slow start, good middle, contrite ending
Review: Interesting concept. The story started too slowly, and the ending gave me that warm, fuzzy feeling. The historical perspective was interesting, but hardly worth a novel. Perhaps this story should have stayed a novella? I don't think this is as good as the hype.

Rating:
Summary: It's my favorite science fiction book
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read. In fact, I've read it three times and each time, find things I've missed. Time Travel, the Black Death and archaeology all rolled into one. It doesn't get any better than this

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: Quite simply, one of the best SF books of all time. Like LeGuin's "The Dispossessed," this book transcends SF and would be suitable for use in a classroom studying history or sociology. They finally changed the crappy coverart of the first paperpack editions to look less like a romance novel (which it's definitely NOT), but you still can't judge a book by its cover. Even if you don't like time travel stories, or plague stories, or alternate histories (I generally don't like any of those all-too-common themes of the SF genre), READ IT!