This is fast becoming an all-time favorite. After all this time of picking it up, putting it down, picking it up, etc., I feel like I've lived with Kivrin and Agnes and the other characters. (Although hopefully I smell rather better.) I am impressed by Willis' command of both history (in the as-lived sense) and the language of flu experts during a pandemic. Seriously considering making this one of my go-to recommendations when a friend needs something to read. So detailed, so realistic, such a lot to think about. ( )

I was really looking forward to reading Doomsday Book. I had read the summary somewhere and I just had to add it to my wish list. It intrigued me, and there were a lot of people saying a lot of positive things about it. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed by it.

At it's core, this is a great novel. The setting is fascinating, the plot is well-developed and addicting, and the characters are rich and interesting. There is a lot to be enjoyed here. With a little work, this could easily have been a 5-star book. But there were just too many nagging little things that made the book nearly unbearable. One of the worst of which is the repetition. The author repeats herself over and over, to the point where I just wanted to strangle some of the characters. If I ever here someone say "But Badri said the slippage was minimal" one more time I'm going to explode. And then I'm going to send whoever said it back to the Dark Ages, and to hell with parameter checks!

The bulk of the novel drags a bit, probably because it feels like the author copy/pasted entire chapters over and over again. It was a confusing situation. On one hand, I was fully engrossed in the plot. On the other, I was getting page after page of "But Badri said the Slippage was minimal" Badri said the Slippage was minimal, Badri said the Slippage was minimal, Badri said the Slippage was minimal. And just when you think the plot is going to advance, guess what!? Bardi says the slippage was minimal!

Fortunately the author finally decides to end the novel. The final 100 pages were somewhat well-written and I found my interest in the novel rejuvenated.. Unfortunately, it only leads up to a VERY unsatisfying ending.

If your a fan of historical fiction set during the Middle Ages/The Black Death, or a science fiction fan who likes Time Travel, you may very well like this. There seems to be a lot of fans of the book and author, so I may just be missing something. ( )

It's been about 10 years since I read the Doomsday Book, and after rereading it I had to drop my rating by a star, to 4 from 5. The last third of the book is absolutely terrific, not to mention terrifying. But to get to that, Willis takes hundreds of pages to set up two parallel storylines, one in the past, one in the near future. The one in the past is compelling, introducing a village in 14th century Britain and the major characters. But the one in the future is a deadly drag, with enormous amounts of repetition, not-too-effective comedy, and too many uninteresting characters. In retrospect, 100 pages or more could have been cut to good effect. Still, highly worth reading.

(It's also amusing to see a book published in 1993 predicting videophones and time travel in the 2020s, but not cell phones! Half of the book involves people desperately trying to get ahold of other people on clogged land lines! How ridiculous!) ( )

This first of Connie Willis' time travel books is incredibly well-written, remarkably researched, and absolutely wrenching in its visceral detail. What would really happen if a time traveler revisited a key turning point in the Middle Ages? Willis leaves you in no doubt. Excellent read.

In summary, a graduate level history student travels back in time to do research on the Middle Ages. Pandemic occurs in both time lines. Chaos ensues as efforts are made, amid the current day crisis to rescue the student.

This dual Hugo and Nebula Award winning science fiction novel certainly generates opinions all over the spectrum. Having recently completed the work, I can verify every negative comment contained in the dozens of “one star” reviews. Without question, the book is extremely frustrating in its repetition and refusal to resolve simple matters. As a result, what could have been a well crafted 400 page novel becomes a 550 page slog.

In addition, fans of “hard” science fiction will be extremely disappointed in what is essentially historical fiction with time travel thrown in as an afterthought. There is very little explanation or “science” involved, beyond the simple declarations of what occurs. Many others have documented very well the “plot holes”, inconsistencies and nonsensical threads that detract from a “hard” science fiction reader’s enjoyment of the story. Readers of Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein or Philip Dick will not stand quietly by.

In fact, with few exceptions, there is very little to differentiate 2050 Oxford from 1970 Oxford. Tossing a “time machine” into the history lab and putting video screens on the rotary phones hardly elevates a novel into the realm of science fiction. Did this novel truly win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards? Really???

That said, this novel has many ardent fans. Those readers simply enjoy a good story and don’t need everything to make sense or fall neatly into place. I enjoyed some of the work, but am simply too anal to look past many of the problems cited above and by others. Too many fine writers have penned outstanding stories AND gotten the science and the plot lines correct to label this work anything close to a masterpiece. The idea that the Dean of an Oxford College would be completely incommunicado in the year 2050 for nearly a month is too absurd to consider.

Consider the matter of communications. Much of the book involves numerous unsuccessful efforts to reach others by telephone, the only difference between communications in 1950 and 2050 being a video screen. Now, some have excused the author’s failure to account for advanced communications technology (aka cell phones) by arguing that cell phones were not pervasive when this novel was written in 1992. However, I’m pretty sure bag phones and even clunky cell and satellite phones WERE in existence. Other science fiction writers have shown remarkable vision in forecasting the future. Their work, as a result, remains timeless. This novel, on the other hand, reads silly only 15 years after its publication. H.G. Wells was describing submarines and rocket ships 100 years ahead of his time. Connie Willis fails to recognize cell phones even after their introduction. That is the difference between classic science fiction and run of the mill two/three star work. ( )

Part "science fiction", part historical fiction, The Doomsday book is alternately rewarding and trying. Rewarding because the plight of the characters in the historical fiction parts are vividly portrayed and their situation is dire, trying because it is eternally repetitive and needlessly drawn out. So many times I just wanted to shout "get on with it!!" The intimate minutiae of certain events in both time frames was really dull and added nothing to the narrative, especially not anything like suspense or dread. Many of the characters just needed a good smack upside the head. Reading this doesn't make me want to rush out and buy more from Connie Willis.

There ought to be a screening process for those who want to attempt science fiction. If there were, dear Connie would have failed. Granted cell phones weren't ubiquitous in the early 1990s when this was written, but they did exist and Willis's failure to grasp their significance is shocking. Countless pages are dedicated to Dunworthy's phone and message escapades, all of which could have been eliminated with the invention of the cellphone. But in this curious near-future, we have video phones, not portable phones. Doh! There's also precious little science in the fiction. There are large swaths of text devoted to viruses and their study and control, but all of it is anecdotal. Oh how I missed Greg Bear. And with regard to time travel, there is no explanation there either, just the fact of it. Oh how I miss Michael Crichton. I understand the lure of the novel's construction and I'm sure she thought it was a good idea, but she had almost no vision or ability to make it work. A technical advisor would have helped. It's clear that Willis has no interest in technology or else she would have had more success.

The back and forth with the frigging phones combined with a fever-victim's ability to say almost anything except the one vital piece of information sought made for a very frustrating experience. It did not keep me on the edge of my seat, worrying about the characters as I'm sure was meant. It bored the hell out of me. I was very tempted to fast forward through these bits. Alas, I stuck with them with a vain hope that something new and interesting might happen. Instead I got silly and unimportant vignettes featuring horny students, stern ward sisters, flailing underlings and lavatory paper shortages.

Maybe it's because I'm an American and we don't have a subcutaneous layer of passivity like the Brits in this book, but I really wanted to shake people until they frothed. The amount of obstructing bullshit that the characters put up with in the name of politeness is unreal. I mean, how dire did things have to get before someone told someone else to get the hell out of the way so things could get fixed/solved/done? Honestly, man, no American would put up with half as much. The bell-ringers, over protective mother and prideful, pig-headed acting boss would have all been told where to get off.

The medieval parts were marginally more interesting and had more forward motion, albeit at a glacial pace. Kivrin is also struck with the fever from her present time, despite all the injections and prescriptive against viruses. Her first hours and eventually days in her time trip are spent in a fever haze. When she recovers her senses, she finds herself with a family on the run from something (it turns out to most likely be plague) and living in a strange village. With no specific role and suspicion surfacing in a few, she thrusts herself into the role of nanny to two young girls. Her bond with one of them is very quick and strong and eventually by extension, she forms attachments to their mother. She is also very drawn to the plight of the village priest, an illiterate man much put upon by the lack of understanding from some in her adoptive family. It's touching and full of detail that makes me very glad to have been born in the latter half of the 20th century.

Of course because of her fever she has no idea where the "drop" is and it's vital that she get to it in order to be pulled back to her own time. She spends the majority of the novel trying to figure out how to get the one guy who knows where it is to tell her. Oy vey. In the end, he doesn't know where it is anyway and the one person who does is struck with the plague and cannot take her there. Everyone else in the village dies and she's on her own. Too bad she didn't have a locator like the little twerp at the end of the story was so smart to bring with him on the rescue mission.

Yes, naive Kivrin needs to be rescued by the manic Professor Dunworthy and a tagalong 12 year old. They fortuitously come upon a horse only half starved and still able to carry the both of them to the village. It's the wrong village, but the tolling of a nearby bell leads them to the right one. Because of the tagalong's rabbit out of a hat trick with the drop locator, they are able to find the spot easily and head on back to the 21st century. What a cheat. Again, Willis misses obvious technology for too long and thus when she thinks of it she pops it in like a magician. I half expected a cell phone or a GPS to show up, too.

Read more: http://thebookmarque.blogspot.com/#ix... ( )

We recently read this in our book club and I must admit I really struggled to get through it. Usually I can easily slip inside a book and feel a part of the story. Not this one and the ending had me tossing the book on the floor in disgust. ( )

I typically enjoy time travel books, so I expected to love this one after hearing so much about it. I thought it was horrible. Even though I have read and somewhat enjoyed other books by this author, I just could not get into this one. It was just a little "too science fiction" for my taste. ( )

Why didn't I enjoy this book?
a) nearly the entire "Dunworthy" part of the story is told via conversations between characters; I like dialogue as much as the next person but half a novel of dialogue is just too much talking.
b) the Dunworthy part of the story's dialogue is among people who are not behaving "normally". i.e. someone is very very sick and Dunworthy's colleague spends several pages (of dialogue mind you) harping on and on about Dunworthy's incompetence. Sure, he might mention it, once or twice or 3 times, but not 11 times in 3 pages. This is just one example of how the author spends page after page going over the same attitude/concern/worry, all via dialogue.

The part of the story set in the 1300s is actually quite good - if only the modern day part didn't harp on so much this would have been a great novel. ( )

Un lirbo que recomendaría a cualquier tipo de lector. Trepidante, emocionante, engancha al lector desde la primera página y ya no te suelta hasta que acabas la historia y te quedas con la sensación de querer más de lo que acabas de probar.

El primer libro que leí de esta autora y desde entonces una escritora a seguir. ( )

There are two settings in this book: the Oxford University History Department in 2054, and Medieval England in 1348.

In 2054, Oxford is using time travel to amend and correct historical records, and so it allows Kivrin, a young woman studying history, to go back to 1320 for research. Unfortunately, an error drops her 28 years later, right into the time period of the Bubonic Plague.

The book alternates between 2054 and 1348 as the historians try to get Kivrin back, and as Kivrin fights for her life. As we get to know the people with whom Kivrin stays in 1348 and learn to care about them, we live through the Plague as vividly and poignantly as she does. And we live through Kivrin’s terror that she may never get back.

Connie Willis is a remarkable author for several reasons. One is that she so thoroughly researches her work that this account of Medieval England is as extensive and accurate as any you will get in any academic study. The second is that books by Willis focus extensively on miscommunications – sentences only half spoken, or misunderstood, or never conveyed, or conveyed too late, or lost in dreams. The tragic as well as comedic consequences of not communicating well are a recurring theme in her work and serve to provide dramatic tension as well as sociological commentary.

This book is classified as scifi rather than historical fiction, but it could certainly be well-suited in either category. ( )

Not a bad book, but not a very good one. Maybe the best thing to be said about it is that it was better than Timeline by Crichton? :) ( )

Naturally, when time travel is invented, it will be invented at Balliol College, Oxford, my beloved alma mater, and once it has been invented, it will be protected and controlled not by money or barbed wire but by a large pack of dizzy academics and a heavy haze of bureaucracy. This is of course how everything ought to be, and the first reason why I loved this book (and, indeed, the series it forms part of).

Doomsday Book is set in Oxford in the 2040s, where a little has changed, but not a lot, and time travel is administered by the history faculty, who send historians on controlled "drops" into the past, allowing for paradoxes and slippages and whatnot. Kivrin is young and very dedicated and wants to go the Middle Ages, the first historian to do so; her longsuffering tutor, Dunworthy, wishes she wouldn't, but knows he can't stop her. And so she goes, and Dunworthy stays behind, and the point of view alternates between them.

There is a disease in modern Oxford, beginning to creep; in the past, there is a great deal afoot, which is obscured and made mysterious very effectively by how Willis writes Kivrin's disorientation. The details of both places are beautifully written, beautifully realised, and the research on the past that must have been done is palpable. Even so, I mostly prefer Dunworthy's sections with their larger, more vibrant cast - Colin, the unfortunate small boy trapped in the Oxford quarantine is an unexpexted joy, and so is Dunworthy himself, a quiet epicentre of chaos.

(Note: a lot of people criticise this novel because so much of the plot could be resolved by the invention of the mobile phone, which had been invented when I came up to Oxford in 2005, so it is a great shame that Willis doesn't include it; but that said, her particular type of plotty politicking couldn't work otherwise (Passage and Lincoln's Dreams wouldn't work with mobile phones, either), and it's easy to suspend one's disbelief when the rest of the novel is so richly written.)

In the end, the novel comes across as a real achievement - it balances theme, plot and character beautifully, with some oddly effective mirroring between times (the absent Head of History, Basingame, for example, ends up playing much the same role in the twenty-first century as God does in the fourteenth), and it never does anything easy, or simplistic. Not as technicaly sophisticated as To Say Nothing of the Dog, set in the same universe, but deeper. ( )

too much holes, no technological details, tried too hard to write like a Brit. ( )

In the near future, humans have figured out how to time travel back to the past. This leads to historians visiting the past to learn about time periods but the technology is new enough so they have not travelled to "dangerous" periods yet. Kivrin, a young female historian, has decided to be the first person to travel back to England in the Middle Ages, a dangerous time. Mr. Dunsworthy is her mentor, but he is constantly afraid that bad things will happen to Kivrin, but he helps prepare her, nonetheless. On the appointed day, Kivrin is sent through time successfully, but she becomes sick on her arrival. Her technician becomes sick, as well, which leads to parallel stories in time for both Kivrin and Dunsworthy (who frantically tries to get Kivrin back).

For a Hugo and Nebula winner, I felt this book underperformed. In my opinion, the real genre of this book is historical fiction. Anything that had to do with the time travel, or "science" was glossed over with the barest of explanation. I still have no idea how the time machine worked, yet with any mention of a time "fix" it seem presumed that we knew what that meant. For another example, the author explains away the problems of time paradoxes by saying (paraphrasing) "Time does not allow time travellers to disrupt anything important in temporal history. If it is important, the person the machine won't allow the time fix and we can't send the person back". I'm really sorry, but that feels like a huge cop out. Don't worry about paradoxes! Time doesn't let them happen! Forget about it! As a Trekker since I was two years old, I have a massive affection to what is known as the "Temporal Prime Directive". And because of it, any book I read about time travel I expect some sort of rational explanation of how people make sure they don't accidentally kill the Lincoln's mother, or something-or-other. The fact that this book kept glossing over any "Sci-Fi", irritated me throughout the book.

However, anything that had to do with history and the Middle Ages was amazing. Willis obviously did a lot of research and is able to craft a tale where I felt I learned so much about the early 1300s while this part of the story was engaging. You really feel the muck, the dirt and the disease that was prevalent at this time. The relationships between an individual, their community and how they see their place with the world was thoroughly explored. The author even uses an ingenious way of making the reader learn how Middle English evolved and was spoken. You feel for Kivrin as she tries to fit into this world even though many of her assumptions (and the history texts) were wrong.

In the end, I only give could only give this book an average rating. There were a lot of plot devices and plot holes that should have been tied up at the end, but were not. There were too many instances of where I couldn't become engaged in the story because it asked to turn off the rational part of my brain (ie. Why would a newly-graduated student be allowed to time jump to a dangerous period alone? Wouldn't you send her to the 1960s first for some experience? Why do people go alone - that seems dumb?). The time travel explanations irked me and Willis didn't incorporate new and obvious technologies when she wrote this in the early 1990s such as the coming age of cellphones (everyone in the book has a land line in the mid 2050s). It seemed that the author put all her effort into researching history and none into researching time travel and science. ( )

One of the best books about time travel ever (along with other Connie Willies titles...)! ( )

Again I must say, this was one of the best books I've read this year. It was entertaining and enlightening and all those other things that make novels particularly impressive. It didn't mess with history for the sake of the narrative and it didn't try to create romance in a situation where romance would be seriously out of place.

Other than that it's hard to really describe this one. As I was reading other more negative reviews, I could see where most of their writers were coming from. If you are looking for a particularly fast paced novel, this probably isn't the book to pick up. It steadily works it's way towards the conclusion without cutting corners or forgetting to detail the mediaeval world that makes this book so engrossing. The modern storyline could become tedious, but I found the way Willis tied the two together engaging. Without Dunworthy's story, I'm afraid the message of historical repetition would have been lost on me. The future also let in the comic relief that was necessary to cut the high drama of the mediaeval sections for me.

I can see why this was given so many awards, it was well researched and put together and allowed me to recall the power of storytelling (something I believe every good novel should do). This is highly recommended to those who like science fiction, historical fiction, or stories of good and evil. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. I was completely engrossed in what was happening to Kivrin and found myself (as some of these other reviewers mention as well) skipping through the rather tedious scenes set in the future. I found the author's depiction of medieval times to be gripping and heart wrenching, and the sense of panic and fear Kivrin feels throughout is quite tangible. Willis paints this period in history in vivid detail.
I love her interaction with the 'contemporaries' and her relationship with Father Roche is tastefully understated and well written. I find myself longing for more medieval time travel stories after reading this! Would highly recommend it. ( )

I found the writing style to be painfully slow, though the story was interesting. The author spent so much time discussing the limited supply of "lavatory" paper and then didn't mention whether that was solved prior to the book's abrupt end. Gasp! ( )

Since this book received both the Hugo and Nebula awards, I had very high expectations. While I found the author's research of the Middle Ages admirable and the premise of history students traveling back in time to study the past interesting, the alternating story in the 21st century was tedious. I found myself racing to get through to get back to the time travel storyline. Overall, an interesting read, but had a lot of flaws. ( )

I was expecting a lot from this novel because of the honors it received (and I love time travel stories), but it didn't live up to it.

The single twist took forever to show up and wasn't that unexpected as it was heavily hinted at earlier.

The two stories lines had very little connecting them and didn't meet up until the very end.

This was published in 1992, but the only apparently new technology in 2054 was that video has been added to the phone system (still analog circuit switched) and a bit of immune system enhancement (that doesn't work that well). ( )

Doomsday Book takes place about fifty years in the future, when science has perfected the art of time travel and students of history are now able to study the past in a very personal way. The fourteenth century is just barely allowed, for safety and health concerns, and that's where a young student named Kivrin gets sent. The scenes of medieval life were vivid, and the reader is figuring things out and learning about this world at the same time that Kivrin is. She finds a family who takes her in, and bonds with the people around her; it is engrossing.

These chapters are interspersed with scenes of Dunworthy - Kivrin's mentor - fretting over her back in the "real world." But the real world has its own sort of plague to deal with, a mysterious illness which complicates the already delicate procedures involved in time travel. These scenes parody beaucracy and pompous know-nothings, and they're alright but clearly the less enchanting half of the book. Still, good and very fun book that I absolutely devoured ( )

Excellent book. Historians in the future study the past by visiting it. While one historian is travelling to the middle ages a virus breaks out at the university and the preparations go awry. We get to see the parallel progressions of epidemics in the past and future. One of the strong points of this book is its relative plausibility. The middle ages Willis describes seem very well researched, and the future seems relatively realistic. Willis does a great job conveying the humanity of both settings, and her characters are great. I also liked her version of time travel; the time travel device only allows time travel that won't cause paradoxes or change the course of history, and time progresses normally and irrevocably for time travellers. It's a relatively plausible time travel setup that still addresses the difficulties involved. Very well done. ( )

OMG I am finally finished! What a travel down a monotonous road. I will not attempt to say once again what has been so eloquently said many times before. But one thing that I had to mention was a phrase that has stuck in my mind for days. I found myself last week picking up the book so that I might be able to put closure on it. So there I am reading (ok skimming) this book as some say “Best time-travel novel I've ever read!” or “a study of people's behavior” what behavior, all the characters did the same things repeatedly over again throughout the novel. Ah but I digress… so there I am reading this when suddenly out of nowhere comes the words “I brought a locator” … ok on I read…. What! What the fuck a locator, so I went back and re-read it again , no that really can’t be. Kivrin the young historian who travels back in time and seems to have only one concern and that is to find the "DROP" which turns out to be a very tedious endeavor for her and me. Why wouldn’t she have taken a locator with her in the first place! Please if she can have a recorder (chip corder) and an interpreter then why wouldn’t she also be able to have a locator. Just think I would have been spared about 200 pages! At this point I was going to toss the book over the balcony, but then I realized this was an autographed book, just my luck. ( )

A young history student travels in time to the 14th Century to study medieval society first hand. But she lands in the wrong year and finds herself in jeopardy. Very good: lots of historical detail. Sympathetic characters and believable situations. ( )