Doomsday Book by Connie Willis Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Doomsday Book
Book Review: A potentially good story mangled by banality.
Summary: 2 Stars
The author takes an interesting idea and nearly ruins it with sloppy, egregiously repetative suspence devices, a la a hackneyed day-time drama. Some characters with vital information are able to ramble on at length, only to faint just before revealing the information they should have in their first utterance. Other characters are unable to piece together information until long after the reader has, resulting in a "page turner" only to the extent that the reader wishes to find the point where the auther gets on with it.The book also suffers from being published some eight years ago. It describes a future (2054?) that seems technologically stunted given our current reality of the internet/WWW and cell phones. While the author brings us a future capable of time travel this same future lacks cell phones, call waiting, answering machines, pagers and, apparently, personal computers and the Internet. Characters have to wait by the phone for hours fearing they will miss an important call. Other characters cannot be reached because they don't happen to be sitting by the phone. I found this maddening! The author's 2054 felt more like 1954.
The story line that takes place in the 14th century is, by comparison, much more enjoyable. However, for all I know, an history major may be has apoplectic about these sections as I was about the "future" sections. Nonetheless, I was glad that it was intended to be historical and not fanciful.
Some tight editing and a good screenwriter and this could be an interesting, character driven film. But I'm sure the studios were throwing money at Crichton before his "Timeline" was even published.
Book Review: A real tour de farce
Summary: 2 Stars
The cover of the book, calls itself a tour de force. I could think of less polite ways of saying it, but the best I can do is tour de farce. The book is simply poorly written. The genre is science fiction. However, to be effective, the story needs to be credible. This is not. A real must miss for any lover of SF.Book Review: A remarkable book
Summary: 5 Stars
A truly remarkable book...not really science fiction at all,
but rather historical fiction. Connie Willis uses the device
of time travel to make the past feel real. Her medieval
characters, from five-year-old Agnes to the social-climbing
Lady Imeyne, are unforgettable. Oddly, Kivrin--the main
character--is not as well developed. But perhaps this
makes sense since she is primarily there as an observerBook Review: A rewarding trip back in time
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Book Review: A romp into the past!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.