Doomsday Book

Rating:
Summary: Riveting read as the characters are totally enthralling !
Review: Irregardless of its minor flaws, this book as a whole was a brilliant engrossing read for me as I tried to rush through my usual busy day so I could hurry and get back into the story. Oh such anguish and emotion we feel for the characters as the story draws us to their timeless and all too human reactions in the face of ragged emotions of stress, superstitious fear, and abject misery. Take the context away and just apply our own modern woes and voila ! Universal human emotions just as translateable in any time period...The book shows us as vulnerable clay human being equally capable of fierce hate as well as love.The plot runs like a literary roller coaster that gradually but smoothly builds the unlucky current and past events as well as the constant exhibit of blind faith and hope. The gradual but inevitable plunge to the tragic conclusion was just as poignant. ...It was well written in my opinion and flowed very well as I wanted just as fiercely for Agnes and Rosemary and expecially Fr. Roche to pull through...The characters lived and breathed for me and I greatly enjoyed this read ! This is my first read for this author so I am very anxious to try her other novels or short stories...

Rating:
Summary: Good...but....
Review: The story was amazing and it was a fun book to read. Descriptive enough to give a picture of what The Plague must have been like but not so much as to make it laborious. The characters were developed and interesting. The concept of time travel involving historians was alluring.

The downside was the predictability and, as I read in another review, the repetitiveness.

Overall, a good book.

Rating:
Summary: Riveting but predictable
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. It seemed to be well researched, but I found it to be a bit predictable. I found myself a little bored with the modern day story, and flipped to the 1300's for the more exciting story.

It seemed a lot of key points were repeated, as if the author forgot she had told us already. I also found the antiquated medical aspects (even for 1992 standards, when the book was written) were a bit childish (I'm an emergency R.N.) , and there wasn't enough "high tech stuff" (time travel aside) to make me interested in the "modern story."

The characters were sympathetic, and I found I liked them all. The story was thought provoking, and I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Time Travel, medieval lore, or just a good read.

Rating:
Summary: Good, Satisfying, Human-centered Sci-Fi
Review: "The Doomsday Book" was my introduction to Connie Willis, an author I have now placed thouroughly on my "Trusted" list. This is a long book, a dark book, and at times a fairly slow one. (This was, of course, exacerbated by the fact I listened to most of it on tape.) We spend quite a long time it what must really be described a nightmarish dream state in which no character of importance can seem to receive a single straight answer to his or her questions. This (along with some downright painfull discription of both the Flu and the Black Death in three varieties) got under my skin for a while, but then we'd pop out of the rut and get back into the good, interesting stuff. There's a lot of worthwhile insight on the persistance of human nature, how we deal with untenable situations, and the general population of every century with saints, scoundrels, fools, and innocents.
Well worth the read - but do *read* it instead of listening to a recording. It will be a much more satisfying experience.

Rating:
Summary: turgid writing -- beware
Review: There is a great idea buried in a whole bunch of annoying characters many of whom don't do much more than walk around the house waiting for more bad things to happen to them. At the least, Ms. Willis needs to find a better editor.

Rating:
Summary: An engrossing tale of the 14th century
Review: Kivrin, a young student of history is sent back in time to 14th century England to learn about the lives of that time. Unfortunately, she leaves just as an epidemic breaks out at her university in Oxford, and she is herself infected. The story then follows parallel lines, telling of the influenza epidemic in 21st century Oxford, and the onset of the Black Death in Kivrin's villiage in the past.

The main characters, Kivrin and one of her Oxford profs, are well rounded and memorable. You come to care about them and root for them in their trials. The 14th century villiage is a fascinating construction - presumably the author took 5 years to write the book because she was boning up on life in the 14th century. These people ring true, the life in the manor house especially so. Equally fascinating are a number of little true-to-life touches that Willis adds, both to the 21st and the 14th century stories - there is a subtle undercurrent of social commentary throughout. One such example (dear to my own heart) is a general misunderstanding of probability and statistics that pervades the non-scientific personel running the time-travel experiment. Some things never change!

There are a few points that detract from the overall enjoyment of the book, most notably Willis's irritating tendency to allow her characters to blindly ignore the obvious for hundreds of pages after the reader has already figured out some important point. This wouldn't be so annoying if Willis didn't leave such obvious hints to both the reader and the character. Secondly, I have to question her description of the poor 14th century peasants. While I believe they would be dirty, have poor clothing, etc., I don't believe they would be so stupid (or lazy, or overworked) that they would not fill in the cracks in their walls with mud or straw, and simply allow the winter wind to blow through. I'm more inclined to agree with the descriptions in Crichton's Timeline: people may be superstitious and vicious, but that doesn't mean they are stupid.

However, the narrative is engrossing, the characters well-written, and we get a fascinating glimpse into 14th century life. I prefer Timeline, that has more action, more science, and a more plausible time-travel system, but for character development and a thoughtful look at the timelessness of human nature, Willis's book is heartily recommended.

Rating:
Summary: excelent, deserving of the nebula
Review: From the point of view of a historian this book is an excelent attempt at viewing the past how it really was with an engrossing spin of sci fi added. Willis obviously did a great deal of research before writing this novel because many of the misconceptions about medival times are not illustrated here, instead she manages to accuratley portray a time that is virtually unknown to us even though it is on our very own planet.

Rating:
Summary: Great Concept But Falls Flat
Review: After reading all the wonderful recommendations for this book, I decided to give it a try. What a dissapointment! Granted, perhaps at the time this book was written, the idea was rather original but the author was so long-winded that it made it a frustrating read. The reader has to get to halfway through the book before the plot finally got interesting, but by that time, I found most of the characters so irritating that I skipped several pages at a time to get to the end of it!

I would recommend you check this out from your local library before spending precious $$ on this book.

Rating:
Summary: Moving depiction of the Middle Ages despite some illogic
Review: I've read this book over a dozen times, in two languages, and am still moved by it every time I read it. This story of Kivrin, a young university student in the near future in England, who becomes the first person to time travel to the 14th century, jumps between the 1300's and the near future. Yes, as many reviewers have noted, the futuristic portion of the book is somewhat weak and not nearly as interesting as those set in the fourteenth century, but the portions set in the middle ages make you forgive everything else.

Kivrin arrives in the fourteenth century ill and confused. She is rescued and taken in by a family in a small village, and engaged to look after the two young daughters of the household. As she comes to know the people in the village, we come to care deeply about the family and the townspeople and their fate in an uncertain time. I've cried everytime I've read this book, and not in a cheap heart-string tugging way, but over the faith and humanity in the face of an ugly time, a message that is as timely as ever. Moreover, Ms. Willis' details about day-to-day life, including religion, medicine, and child-rearing, are fascinating and well fleshed-out.

Get past the logical inconsistencies in the modern story. This is a much better book about the middle ages than the scientific gobbledy gook and swashbuckling of "Timeline," and a great introduction to one of the worst periods and places in human history.

Rating:
Summary: Nice
Review: I picked out Doomsday Book along with a long list of other recent Hugo award winners, with no conception of what it was other than glancing at the editorial review. On the whole I'd say it's a nice read, but it did not grab me.

The descriptions Willis gives of the fourteenth century are vivid and meaningful, and come across as quite true. I understand she spent five years researching and writing Doomsday Book, and it paid off in the attention to detail in Fourteenth century life. There is an apocalyptic feel to the story, probably from all the deaths that take place. Given how many characters were killed, it was actually refreshing to read a story where you really can't assume that certain people will survive.

Unfortunately, there is a certain shallowness to many of the characters, and the actions of some of the 'villains' come across as cookie cutter fiction (like Gilchrist or Mrs. Gaddson). I don't mind that so many secondary characters are not developed, we only see them as Dunworthy or Kivrin meet them, so if these two don't get to know them there's no reason we should either. Willis uses the hundreds of minor things that happen to the main characters to give a believable mental image of the events, even including some humor and light heartedness, but the cost is that the story drags. I debated giving this three or four stars, it's somewhat borderline (Amazon.com, why do you only provide a five star system?).

On the whole, I'm pleased that someone is writing historical science fiction, an area I've long wanted to see developed. I'll plan to read more of Willis's work. I'd have to say that Doomsday Book is a pleasant, but not gripping novel.