Rating: 
Summary: How did this win the Nebula and the Hugo?
Review: People have been recommending this author to me for years, and I finally picked up her Nebula & Hugo award winning title... and wow, was I disappointed. Read the Amazon editor's sumation and other reviews for the storyline, but here's my complaints:- contrived plot that doesn't explain itself
- many 2 dimensional characters that were uneeded, except as comic relief and a way for Ms. Willis to demonstrate her obvious knowledge regarding 14th century England This book would have been much better with characters who had believable motivations and if the project had a better editor; no matter how long a book takes to be written, any good editor would've chopped well over 100 pages off this.
Rating: 
Summary: An Amazing, Enthralling Adventure
Review: This book is an absolutely incredible. It's like a perfectly crafted action-adventure movie, with drama, humor, suspense and excitement all expertly balanced in an engrossing story. It takes hold of you and doesn't let up until you reach the end. I literally could not put it down, I had to know what happened next. The characters draw you in and you can't help but care what happens to them. Will Kivrin survive her journey to the Middle Ages? Will Mr. Dunworthy find out just what went wrong? Will Dr. Ahrens discover the origins of the mysterious virus that has taken hold of the city? Is the virus connected some how to the time Kivrin has traveled to? Could it be the plague? (Will William Gaddson get caught making out with one of his many girlfriends by his mother? ^o^) These are just some of the questions you find yourself desperate to learn the answers to. The pace is relentless, the story never drags along waiting for the next thing to happen, something is always happening. The dialogue is natural and the story-telling is fluid. There is nothing I can complain about in regards to this book, I loved the whole thing from beginning to end. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a really good story.
Rating:
Summary: A romp into the past!
Review: I am not certain why, but I REALLY enjoyed this book as I have not enjoyed a book since Katherine Neville's The Eight. Just enough twists to keep me unable to figure out what was coming next and characters I could become attached to. I have never been a great fan of Sci Fi, but I may have to try another Connie Willis book now.
Rating:
Summary: Historical fiction and science fiction side by side
Review: Most people who aren't big fans of science fiction (myself included) avoid it because the authors tend to get so wrapped up in the "coolness" of the fantasy or futuristic elements that character development is completely neglected. Not so in this book. Willis treats her science fiction elements subtly, using them to create the circumstances for the story, but not showcasing them in a distracting way. She focuses instead on the incredibly compelling plot, which grabs you within the first few pages, and her complex, sympathetic characters. As impressive as Willis's nonchalant use of science-fiction elements is her skillful blending of the genres of historical fiction and science fiction (which, in a way, can be though of as opposites). She sets up two parallel stories, one set in the 1300s and one set about 75 years from now (linked by one time-traveler), and leads the two sets of characters through situations that are remarkably similar, even 700 years apart. In both storylines the characters find themselves in the middle of a devastating plague, and readers will certainly be extremely tense for most of the second half of the book (especially since anyone who has any knowledge of history knows how the Black Plague of the 1300s typically played out). In fact, I would recommend reading this book only when you have several uninterrupted hours, because tearing yourself away is nearly impossible. (I would also recommend that anyone who is highly anxious about anthrax or a smallpox epidemic NOT read this book right now.) This is a great book that's equal parts adventure, mystery, tragedy, and science fiction. One of the best I've read this year.
Rating:
Summary: Scared of Anthrax?
Review: In a modern world where even time travel is possible, society faces a deadly plague. And a time traveler, copes with one of the worst plagues is history. Connie Willis shows how two societies -- one past one future -- struggle with the onset of uncontrolled disease. In our post September 11 life, this book is both diverting, and ominous.
Rating: 
Summary: Get them a cellular and a answering machine!!
Review: Although I really like the story, it keeps annoying that the communications in 2050 is not in sync with the devices of today. In half of the story (in 2050) the communication is disrupted and I keep thinking: you need an answering machine and/or a cellular phone. Why do people in 2050 miss the current available devices.
Besides this annoying fact, I loved the book.
Rating:
Summary: Great even for non-scifi readers.
Review: After reading Doomsday Book, I loaned it to my mother (a devoted reader of mystery)... and never got it back. A thoroughly engrossing read, you'll be wanting to take it with you wherever you go until it's finished! You get caught up with the lives on both sides of time, and, indeed, at times it is harrowing. I don't think that reading should always be comfortable, do you? Especially if it means you're learning something about yourself and your views on others.
Rating:
Summary: Willis Does It Again--My Newest Favorite Story
Review: This was the second book by Connie Willis I read (after the charming "The Bellwether".) I'll be brief--this is one of the best stories I've ever read. It is intelligent, witty and highly informative, full of interesting historical bits about the subject (the first wave of bubonic plague in Europe), as all of Willis's books are. But it is also bittersweet and poignant, and I cried at the end. Clever parallels between the development of the plague during the history grad student heroine's time-traveling internship, and the super-flu epidemic in the modern era she's left behind. Timely in light of our current anthrax scare, and a fascinating study of how people behave in times of sickness and terror.
But the single biggest attraction of this story--and I think of it not as a book but a good, a very good story--is Willis's incredible gift of pulling the reader right into her characters' lives. She's got it all--the big picture, the endearing details, the thrilling plot and the heartbreaking intimacy. I highly recommend this book if you love history, if you love a story with a plot and a heart, if you like an intelligent writer, if you like a story that will keep you thinking for days, weeks after you read it. Some of Willis's earlier works & collaborations read like a Harlequin romance, but this is not one of them. This is a powerful book, about people that will feel as real to you as any you've ever met. By the end of this book you will truly care what happens to them, and you will be devastated by what seems to be a truly hopeless situation. Until you realize that Willis, as usual, isn't writing about the big stuff but the little stuff that *makes* us big--faith, love, charity, and that tiny thing called hope that ultimately makes heroes of us all.
Rating:
Summary: Takes you to a different time
Review: This book is very good. It took me a few pages to really get into the book, but once there, I really wanted to know more about Kivrin's escapades back in time. I love the relationship she has with the little girl, Agnes. The book takes you to a different time.
Rating:
Summary: A rewarding trip back in time
Review: As one who has an interest in the Middle Ages I was eager to see how Connie Willis handled the era, and more importantly, the people who lived in it. My eagerness was not misplaced. Her characterization of the people is consistent with what I have read about 14th century. The plot centers around a young scientist (Kivrin) who is part of a team at Oxford in the year 2050 that time travels to various periods in the past in order to learn more about them. The story bounces between the Britain of the near future and of the 1300's where Kivrin is supposedly gathering cultural information in the years before the Bubonic Plague struck Europe (1347) with its culture changing devastation. Unbeknownst to her colleagues in the 21st century (except for a suspicious mentor) she has actually dropped in right as the plague is making its way through England. But plot complications ensue in the Britain of the future, primarily in the form of virulent influenza that threatens to reassert itself on the heels of a recent worldwide pandemic that was apparently the plague of the early 21st century. So Kivrin is alone as we watch her deal with the dawning knowledge that she is WHERE she should be but not WHEN she should be. And that is the brilliant part of the book: how she and the contemporaries deal with a killer that is indiscriminate, horrific and invisible (except to Kivrin who has no antibiotics and little hope of explaining the concept of bacteria to people with a 14th century knowledge of the world.) What isn't brilliant (and why this book only got four stars) are the cast of characters inhabiting 21st century Oxford. They are either excitable, paranoid, crippled by arrogance, two-dimensional or some combination of the four traits. To me the sections in the middle ages are bright and alive with personalities that seem stunningly human as they deal with the issues of their time with the mindsets of the time. The sections of the book set in the future seem dry and flat in comparison and I found myself anxiously awaiting the book's return to the past. I didn't even care about the mounting fear and tension as Kivrin's benefactors race to rescue her. I wanted her to stay and be a part of that world even as it fell apart around her.
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