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Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel #1)

4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 · rating details · 14,784 ratings · 1,781 reviews

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin...more

Paperback, 578 pages

Published July 1992 by Bantam Spectra (first published January 1st 1992)

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Apr 16, 2013 Megan Baxter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Doomsday Book really put me through the wringer. I woke up a couple of nights ago, worrying about the characters. They've popped into my head frequently the last few days. And I was in tears when I read the ending yesterday.

I think this is by far the best Connie Willis book I've read - and I've mostly enjoyed her other works. Everything is working on all cylinders in this book - the writing is superb, the juxtaposition of the two time periods masterful, the characters engaging, the story heartb...more Doomsday Book really put me through the wringer. I woke up a couple of nights ago, worrying about the characters. They've popped into my head frequently the last few days. And I was in tears when I read the ending yesterday.

I think this is by far the best Connie Willis book I've read - and I've mostly enjoyed her other works. Everything is working on all cylinders in this book - the writing is superb, the juxtaposition of the two time periods masterful, the characters engaging, the story heartbreaking.

Against the better judgement of one of the historians (read: time travelers) at Oxford, Medieval History is sending someone back in time. Kivrin, Dunworthy's brightest student, is bound and determined to go, and enlists his help despite his misgivings about the project. And go she does, sent back to England not long before the Black Death arrives. Or is the timing off?

As Kivrin negotiates an illness of her own and the complexities of medieval life, all is not well in the small manor where she finds herself. Unsure where the drop that brought her through is, she is unsure if she'll ever make it back. And then it gets worse.

At the same time, an outbreak of a new strain of the flu in Oxford puts the city under quarantine, and sparks panic and recrimination. The mirroring of plague in England with an epidemic in modern times is chilling and well done.

But the real strength here is the characters. Headstrong Kivrin, protective Dunworthy, intrepid Colin (11-year-old who finds himself in the middle of the power struggle in the modern period to save Kivrin.) And in the medieval period, the characters sparkle, both familiar and foreign. (view spoiler)

Along the way, she challenges the idea of how much we know about the past, and while her medieval setting may or may not be accurate, it is convincing. I loved it for putting a human face on the past, on seeing them as people, not entirely like ourselves, but not entirely foreign either. I loved it for juxtaposing the historians Kivrin leaves behind who prattle about numbers and ignore what those numbers mean with the people she encounters, who are not great, are not important in the grand scheme of things, but who nonetheless, matter.

Crossposted at Smorgasbook (less)

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May 04, 2013 Clouds - (¿head-in-the?) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction-series, locus-sci-fi, hugo, science-fiction, reviewed

Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.

On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.

While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Joel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, audiobooks, sci-fi-fantasy, minus-half-a-star, wishlist, time-travels

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Somehow, by the year 2053, we'll have invented time travel but lost the use of cell phone technology. You'd think that was a pretty good trade-off, right? Well, if you've read a few of Connie Willis' "future historian" time travel books, you know that we're probably better off as we are, because without cell phones, it seems humanity would spend most of its days in fevered attempts to place calls by landline video phone, narrowly missing one another, encountering busy circuits, unable to locate...more

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May 05, 2009 Tracey rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone that wants to become a bell ringer

Shelves: time-travel, 14th-century

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...more

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Mar 24, 2007 Conrad rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, borrowed

What I find most objectionable about this book is its apparent lack of editing. Half the novel consists of people panicking over the phone about other phone conversations other people have had about people getting on and off trains who are the children of WHO CARES. Willis has no sense of perspective, no skill for inventing the suggestive detail; consequently, this novel is a monument to the gods of boredom. This on top of the implausible premise that if time travel were available as a technolog...more

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Mar 11, 2013 mark monday rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: into-the-past, futuristik

and what exactly was the point of this nearly 600-page novel? that people can be incredibly annoying and repetitious? that the Black Death kills? i can't believe i wasted so many hours reading this flabby, irritating nonsense. i could have been spending time with friends or exercising or taking naps. or reading another book. the entire thing is a monument to wasted time - my time and the characters' time and the 5 years of time it took to write this extravagantly dreary ode to pointlessness.

real...more

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Mar 23, 2011 Mariel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Willard

Recommended to Mariel by: the pied piper

I wouldn't write a review of Connie Willis's Doomsday Book (there are loads of great reviews already, what could I add, etc.) if it were not for this little guy:

Not this very same little guy, of course. The rats that caused the black death were black rats (it'd have been neat if they were black and white rats. "The black and white death!" "What's white about it? It's death. There aren't even any grey areas.")

I loved the rat in the cage parts. They didn't know they were gonna set the plague on Europe! I believed that Kivrin felt an affinity for the little guy locked in the cage. Of course, there's that thing about changing history if you bend one blade of glass, blah blah. Kivrin wasn't trying to force herself to see life from ancient perspectives as dictated by statistics. She looked into the ratty eyes and recognized the basics. There was respect beyond taking notes. It WOULD be boring to walk around with a history book and go, "Well, in 2053 the university department folk are twats so that must mean all with a scholarly bent are twats."

Doomsday Book had a good book inside of a kind of chore.
Confession time: I started to skim any time set in the "present" with the historians running around like, well, rats in a maze. It was too OH MY GOD STUFF IS GONNA HAPPEN! Like watching an adaptation of a long book on tv. Take the I, Claudius mini-series, for example. Or any of the Little Women films. "Something just happened! Oh my god! The collosium fell down! Beth died!" because they didn't have the budget to really show it. That's what large parts of Doomsday Book felt to me.
It's like hanging out with my sister and her little kids. My sister thinks opening her mouth and making an "Oh my god!" face a bunch of times is going to incite excitement in them (it never does). The good stuff was there. It would have been wonderful if the stuff that was really fascinating was allowed to be that without the "Oh my god!" face made at me from the historians. Okay, that's enough similes there, Mariel.

It WAS a fascinating idea, to go back in time. The midevil period is fascinating. All of the work to fit in, how differently people lived and why. It was cool that she ended up in the wrong time, just before the start of the black plague. I just wish that it felt going somewhere more than doing it for the sake of it. Somewhere in the future, someone was going to get a pat on the back from the smug university history department. And that's IT. If only the human connections had been as good as the little rat moment.

P.s. I read this in the airport. There was a roach and I used the book to kill it (murderer! Well, we never soulfully looked into each other's eyes, or anything). Even though I cleaned the book off, I felt the roachyness ever since. That gave the book its plague-y feel more than anything else.(less)

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May 21, 2011 Mike rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, charity-2011

I am very concerned. I read “The Doomsday Book” time travel saga, eagerly anticipating it based on the many Goodreads reviews that highly praise this story. Many reviewers whom I trust rave about this book. I just didn’t see it at all, not a bit. Not only was it supremely boring, but annoying. The first 120 pages can be summarized: “something is wrong”. During the next 180 pages, the rest of the characters realize there is “something wrong”. Yawn! I felt like slapping virtually every character i...more

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Oct 01, 2007 Cori rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone. Ever.

From my blog:

If you haven't read anything by Connie Willis, I highly suggest that you stop whatever you're doing and go out and get one of her books.

Willis is sort of a giant in the science fiction world -- she's won Hugo and Nebula awards, among many others. This is the third book I've read by her (in addition to To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether), and I must say, the woman can write. Her plots are engaging and funny and heartbreaking and her books are nearly impossible to put down.

(Spoi...more

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Feb 27, 2010 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: author-knows-my-life, kicked-my-ass, hugo-winners, all-time-favorites, nebula-winners, affected-me, time-travel, religion-spirituality, spec-fic, the-innocent-get-screwed, that-shit-really-happened

I finished Doomsday Book this morning and immediately moved on to the next book on my to-read list, which happens to be Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Doomsday Book left me a little messed up in the head and I wanted to replace the imagery and train of thought with something new. I figured I'd have to let Doomsday Book mull around in my head for a while before I could write an effective review. I figured the same about Iain Banks' Transition, another book I recently finished. So my plan was to read Hy...more

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Jul 05, 2010 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: Ian Foster

Shelves: the-missionary-position, plague-and-pestilence

Updated: 07/05/10

Connie Willis shows us that we do not need to look to the future for an apocalyptic setting suitable for exorcising whatever demons haunt us, testing whatever faith we may or may not have, revealing the height of humanity's capacity for compassion or the depth of its misery. We had the mid-14th Century for that.

These ain't Jesuits on a distant planet, or a man and a boy wandering down a road.

This shit really happened, people.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A week ago or so, I...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Richard by: Borderlands-Books.com

Shelves: scifi, scifi-time-travel, bookclub, historical-fiction

Connie Willis brings us a deeply affecting story of time travel gone wrong. While the "time travel" element might sounds really geeky, in an important way this science fiction aspect really isn't central to the story. Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots identifies the theme of "Voyage and Return" as one of the basic plots, and the fact that one of Willis' lead characters is traveling through time is merely a specific detail of interest. A similar story could be written of a traveler stra...more Connie Willis brings us a deeply affecting story of time travel gone wrong. While the "time travel" element might sounds really geeky, in an important way this science fiction aspect really isn't central to the story. Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots identifies the theme of "Voyage and Return" as one of the basic plots, and the fact that one of Willis' lead characters is traveling through time is merely a specific detail of interest. A similar story could be written of a traveler stranded on an island soon to be hit by a tsunami, for example.

The real focus of Willis' story is on the personal, which is rare enough in science fiction to be very welcome.

The basic story: time travel has fairly recently been invented, and university history departments are giddy with the new avenues of research thus opened. One incompetent professor sees an opportunity when his dean goes on vacation to exercise his temporary authority to send a willing graduate student back to the dark ages, a mission nominal deemed too perilous. Because his authority expires at the end of winter vacation, the job is rushed and the researcher is dumped in the past with inadequate diligence paid to the risks. This is compounded by a crisis in the contemporary time, making rescue impossible.

So the student is forced to survive on her own wits, while her would-be rescuers struggle against incompetence and catastrophe. Though te two plot arcs are separated by 700 years, Willis unspools them side by side, converging towards either rescue or tragedy, and she maintains the tense uncertainty to the final pages.

The only flaw in this book is that Willis permits too much amateurishness. Given its stupefying ramifications, it is implausible that time travel would be so completely unregulated. Willis includes organizational incompetence among the hurdles her procrastinators must overcome, but the fundamental cause of the problem is precisely the kind of personal incompetence that organizations are quite good at preventing with basic regulatory frameworks that require due diligence and consensual oversight. This is actually similar to the problem Mary Doria Russell presented in The Sparrow: the problems amateurs might face, but in situations where amateur initiative is almost incomprehensible.

Despite this flaw, Willis presents us with characters that are so real and situations so riveting that this quite long book remains a visceral adventure.

(Borderlands Bookstore's Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club met on Sunday, 21 February, 2010, at 6 pm to discuss Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.)

• • • • •

This is the SciFi selection for the Goodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club for the month of March 2011. Visit this link to see all of the discussions, group member reviews, etc.
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Feb 27, 2009 Meghan rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Doomsday Book was, for me, one of those rare books that you pick up, start reading, and then, when you're done, seriously consider starting it over again.

The book straddles an uncomfortable line--neither a full-on science fiction novel nor a historical, it manages to encompass the most interesting aspects of both. The plot is fairly simple: Kivrin, a student studying the Middle Ages, is traveling in time back to the 1320s. Dunworthy, her mentor, remains in the 2040s, and the story chronicle...more

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Dec 29, 2011 Sophia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, sff, given-away

I'm erring on the side of charity and going with three stars for this 2.5 star book, because it was utterly gripping for the first 75 pages or so. Then nothing happened. Then the same nothing happened again. And *again*. By the time you get to the fourth or fifth scene where one of the protags is trying to call someone who may or may not be in Scotland but can't get through because the circuits are busy you want to scream (spoiler alert: we never actually find out where in Scotland that damn guy...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Kelly Maybedog Hawkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: why-favorites, what-sf, why-favorite-authors

This is one of the best books I have ever read, my second favorite book of all time. The amount of detail and research that Ms. Willis must have done is staggering and yet the book is very readable and the people come alive. Rather than either idolizing or condeming the past or the future, Willis presents both in a very real, all-too-human light. Though the book is long, I plowed through it, and was never bored. I like all of her books, but this is one of Willis' best. I don't usually like time-...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Thoraiya rated it 4 of 5 stars

21/4/13 - Connie Willis books are like "Where's Wally." There's so much detail, so many red herrings, that it makes it impossible to guess the twists before they happen while at the same time making it impossible to pretend that there weren't sufficient clues when you finally do get to the reveal.

Sometimes this is enjoyable. But sometimes you are too tired and just want someone to point to fricken' Wally. Dunworthy just made about 20 pointless phone calls, nobody has mobiles, and half the time n...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Melissa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: apocalyptastic, hell-yeah

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "You are here in place of the friends I love."

Here’s the thing: I do not care for time travel at all. I read “The Sound of Thunder” at too tender of an age & now you cannot convince me that there's any way of returning to the past without deadly ramifications for the present. If you step on that butterfly, we will all rue the day. Luckily, this book also doesn’t care about time travel. At Oxford in 2048, you go into the “net”, you get “dropped”, there are coordinates (which are apparently pr...more "You are here in place of the friends I love."

Here’s the thing: I do not care for time travel at all. I read “The Sound of Thunder” at too tender of an age & now you cannot convince me that there's any way of returning to the past without deadly ramifications for the present. If you step on that butterfly, we will all rue the day. Luckily, this book also doesn’t care about time travel. At Oxford in 2048, you go into the “net”, you get “dropped”, there are coordinates (which are apparently pretty easy to mess up), technicians get the “fix” on you & good luck in the middle ages! There are also some mild contingencies for paradoxes, as in, oh, the net won't let you do anything that would affect the course of the future - (never mind that dropping a whole new person in the Middle Ages would invariably affect the future, which is the main reason I don't like time travel in the first place) - but no one cares too much about these. Without a lot of sci-fi mumbo jumbo to get in the way, this book is basically thus: historian Kivrin is sent to 1320 to investigate the villages around Oxford during that time period. Almost as soon as she is “dropped” in 1320, things start going really wrong in 2048. The back of the book calls it “a crisis strangely linking past and future” but oh my god it is way cooler than that sounds. As future Oxford struggles to keep from dropping dead en masse from an epidemic, Kivrin eventually finds out that she’s been sent to the wrong time. Instead of 1320, it’s actually 1348, right at the moment that the Black Death arrives in her village & the realization dawns on her that this plague is going to touch the lives of all these people she's come to care for. Then she witnesses, one by one, their horrible deaths - all while she remains totally untouched by sickness.

I don’t know if I can say what needs to be said about this book. I finished it yesterday & I am still quietly devastated. This knocked me down & ran me over & utterly crushed me in a good way. Rosemund dropped her apple & that was it. It may not seem too significant that I cried four times while I read this since I cry at any little old thing since I had a kid, but this book made me weep just the same. Colin, the nephew who thinks everything is either “necrotic” or “apocalyptic” and who is basically the only person who doesn’t get deathly ill in this entire story. Agnes, the 1348 five-year old who would have her bell now! Father Roche, the 1348 priest who thinks that Kivrin is an angel since he saw her “drop” into his time. Eliwys, who keeps an eye out for her missing husband in 1348 while Kivrin watches her daughters & watches out for her mother-in-law. James and Mary & Finch in 2048. If I could go back & read this all over again for the first time, I would. I left a little piece of myself with this book, and I am happy & depressed that I read it.
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Apr 07, 2013 Serkan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, historical-fiction, novel, league-of-the-witch-and-the-lord

3.5 Yıldız. Zaman yolculuğu yapan tarihçiler konseptini çok beğendim. Bu konseptin müthiş bir potansiyeli olduğunu düşünüyorum. Ama bu kitap bu potansiyeli kullanabilmiş mi derseniz, cevabım hayır. Ama kullandığı kadarı ile bile sürükleyici ve dokunaklı bir öykü anlatmayı başarmış.

Bu konu üzerine bu kitapta yer verilenden çok daha güzel twist'lerin ve çok daha güzel karakterlerin kurgulanabileceğini düşünüyorum. Ama sanırım yazarın amacı kitabı biraz 'light' tutarak sadece bilimkurgu fanlarına...more 3.5 Yıldız. Zaman yolculuğu yapan tarihçiler konseptini çok beğendim. Bu konseptin müthiş bir potansiyeli olduğunu düşünüyorum. Ama bu kitap bu potansiyeli kullanabilmiş mi derseniz, cevabım hayır. Ama kullandığı kadarı ile bile sürükleyici ve dokunaklı bir öykü anlatmayı başarmış.

Bu konu üzerine bu kitapta yer verilenden çok daha güzel twist'lerin ve çok daha güzel karakterlerin kurgulanabileceğini düşünüyorum. Ama sanırım yazarın amacı kitabı biraz 'light' tutarak sadece bilimkurgu fanlarına değil, tarihi romanları ve hüzünlü hikayeleri seven daha mainstream bir kitleye hitap etmekmiş ki bunda da çok başarılı olduğunu söyleyebilirim.

Konudan kısaca bahsetmek gerekirse; Kivrin Oxford üniversitesinde bir tarihçi, ortaçağı incelemek üzere geçmişe - 1320'lere gidiyor, bu esnada da onun geldiği yüzyılda beklenmeyen bir sürü olay oluyor. Bir yandan kivrin'in yaşadıklarından orta çağı tanırken, bir yandan da gelecekte onu gönderen ekibin başına gelen gizemli olayları inceliyoruz.

Bu iki paralel öyküden geçmişte Kivrin'in başından geçenlerin her satırını büyük bir merak ve dikkatle okudum, ancak gelecekte geçen öyküden o kadar etkilenmedim. Gelecekteki karakterlerin bir kısmı gereksiz yere detaylandırılmış, bazı olaylar adeta sayfa sayısını artırmak için uzattıkça uzatılmış. Ayrıca konu ile ilgisi olmayan karakterlerin günlük hayatları ile ilgili de bir sürü detay verilmiş. Yazar bu kadar tecrübeli olunca bütün bu detayların gizli bir şeyler ifade ettiğini ve bir yerlere bağlanacağını düşünüyorsunuz, ama öyle olmuyor, kitap tahmin edilebilir bir şekilde bitiyor.

Tahmin edilebilir bir şekilde bitiyor diyorum, ama bu sizi yanıltmasın kitabın son bölümü oldukça iyi. Bana yaptığı gibi birçoğunuzun gözlerini dolduracağından ve kalplerinizde istemsiz bir sıkışıklık yaratacağından eminim.

Sonuç olarak çok daha iyi bir öykü olabilecekken daha mütevazisi ile yetinmiş, ama ona rağmen sürükleyici ve sizi içine çeken bir kitap. Tavsiye ederim. (less)

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Mar 15, 2010 Charlotte rated it 5 of 5 stars

Connie Willis' Doomsday Book might well be one of the best books I ever read, if not the best one, although it surely isn't an easy book leaving you unaffected.
Set in Willis' universe of the near future, in which a very plausible system of timetravelling is used by historians in order to research the past, the story develops in the there present and in 1348, the year the plague arrived in England.
Fast paced and very well researched, the Doomsday Book doesn't only shine through it's brilliant pl...more

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Feb 11, 2011 Nikki rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: speculative-fiction, historical-fiction-alternatehistory

It took me quite a while to read Doomsday Book. I was intrigued to find it was about Kivrin, who was mentioned in Fire Watch, but it took so, so long to get off the ground. I figured most things out ages before any of the characters did. Following sick protagonists really is no fun at all, and it's frustrating for the same conversations to be repeated over and over again -- "Where is Basingame?" (who never appears), "Did you get the fix?", "I must speak to Gawyn"... The parts in which Kivrin's r...more

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Jul 25, 2008 Jeffrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Okay, I've been ignorant of Connie Willis for way, way too long. This is the second book of hers that I've read and the second of hers that I've adored. It wasn't nearly as funny as To Say Nothing of the Dog, but given that a large part of the book was set in the early 14th century in England rather than late 19th century, that is hardly surprising. We are back in the same world of Oxford with the struggling history department sending out historians to do on site work. I wasn't careful with some...more

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Sep 30, 2007 Jes Logan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I cannot remember how I stumbled on this book by Connie Willis--I just know that I'm grateful I did, because Willis has become one of my favorite authors based on this book.

The novel bounces back and forth between a "modern" time (set in the future in Oxford) and past times in Medieval England. When told from the perspective of Kivrin, the history student who unwittingly travels back to the Dark Ages to experience the Black Death, this is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking books I have...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Apatt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This is one of the elite novels that won both Hugo and Nebula awards, there are not many of those and they are generally very good books though you and I can always find some titles to be undeserving, c'est la vie. Before starting on reading this novel I looked around Goodreads and Amazon for some consensus of opinion among other readers. I found the prevailing opinion to be on the positive side but it is always interesting to note the negatives also, in case the reviewers hate the same things I...more This is one of the elite novels that won both Hugo and Nebula awards, there are not many of those and they are generally very good books though you and I can always find some titles to be undeserving, c'est la vie. Before starting on reading this novel I looked around Goodreads and Amazon for some consensus of opinion among other readers. I found the prevailing opinion to be on the positive side but it is always interesting to note the negatives also, in case the reviewers hate the same things I do. Among the unfavorable reviews a common criticism seems to be that this book is boring. While I don't quite agree with this sentiment I understand it. We are bored by different things and have different levels of tolerance for certain kinds of plot or pacing.

While I enjoy time traveling stories I tend to prefer those with a lots of paradoxes, going back and forth, becoming your own granddad, causing a massive rift in the space time continuum, that sort of thing. My favorite examples of this would be The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold and the short story "All You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein. Any way, just going to one time period and getting yourself in trouble because you are just too damn modern doesn't really do it for me. So Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" does not do much for me and "Timeline" by Michael Crichton is possibly the worst time traveling book I have ever read (I like other Crichtons though).

Having rambled on thus far I have to confess that I like this book a lot (and I can't italicize it enough!). Connie Willis' prose is nice and smooth, it reminds me of Lois McMaster Bujold's prose style, with just the right amount of elegance and witticism without sacrificing clarity. The novel is immediately accessible from page one, which is always a bonus. This book is clearly character driven, though there are a few clever scifi concepts like the non-mechanical translating device recorder implant etc. Also, as this is generally a dark novel, the occasional interjections of humor is very welcome.

The main character Kivrin is a wonderful creation, by the end of the novel I feel like this is a real person I have come to know very well. She is courageous, compassionate, intelligent and vulnerable, Ms Willis certainly puts her through the wringer with this one, poor lass. Back to the "boring" allegation, there is some pacing or progression problem with this book, at times characters seem to be running around circle not advancing the plot very much. The search for Kivrin's entry point to medieval time also gets a bit tiresome. That said, whether you will find this book intolerably boring will very much depend on how invested are you in the characters and their plight. I am totally sold on them.

A very interesting question that the novel raised in my mind is since what happened in the medieval time has already happened as far as we in the present time are concerned, all the characters from that period have been dead ages ago, so does it matter to the visiting time traveller if they die or how they die? I think it does because when they are with you they are just people.(less)

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Jan 28, 2013 Francine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who like worrying about toilet paper shortages.

Shelves: adventure, fantasy, historical-fiction, medieval, modern-lit, sci-fi, time-travel, speculative

This was a great story...if only I didn't have to wait until getting to 80% of the way in to figure out where this story was going!

So here's the thing. I didn't hate the book. I actually liked it, especially the last 20% of the story. That part had my attention. That part was really good and hit all the right spots. But why did I have to slog through 80% (470+ pages) to get to the good stuff? And here's the thing: I don't mind a lot of set-up; I don't mind a ton of exposition. I don't mind if t...more

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Jan 22, 2009 Marc rated it 1 of 5 stars

Why I hated this book by Marc.

I read a lot. The number of books I list on my read list here is a fraction of what I read. And for the most part, none have reviews, just ratings, because I have little time to write reviews. But I just had to comment on "The Doomsday Book". I fell into a trap. I read reviews of the book before I bought it, and those reviews help convince me to give it a try. That is something I usually do not do. I usually read the back cover, and if it sounds good, I buy it. But...more Why I hated this book by Marc.

I read a lot. The number of books I list on my read list here is a fraction of what I read. And for the most part, none have reviews, just ratings, because I have little time to write reviews. But I just had to comment on "The Doomsday Book". I fell into a trap. I read reviews of the book before I bought it, and those reviews help convince me to give it a try. That is something I usually do not do. I usually read the back cover, and if it sounds good, I buy it. But I read the back cover of this, and it sounded interesting, maybe something great, but the reviews pushed me over. "A book to read again and again", "It will capture the imagination". Nebula and Hugo winner. I was sold. Like a fool. Is it just me or are the Hugo winners, many times, just boring to read. I mean, they sound good in summary, but when you read them many make you go "Meh". (Canticle for Lebowitz, I am looking at you.) This book, again, started well. But heck, by page 200, all the plot that had developed was what I had read on the back cover. By 300, little more had changed, except I learned about bell ringers. At that point (The book is 600pgs at least), I had enough. I put the book down. Again, it was an interesting premise, but way to verbose. And I like verbose, when it suits the book. (See China Mievile) But not here. I don't need to know a conversation between two doctors about how they like to drink their tea. Some call it a writer's style, I call it filler. So I put the book down. Then I did something I have never done before. I went to Wikipedia and I looked up the book. I mean, I invested a day's reading into it, and I at least deserved to know how it ended. Well, lets just say I would have been disappointed if I had stuck with it. I am not sure why it would have taken 300+ more pages to get from where I stopped to the book's resolution, but evidently it did. Here is where I am torn; I think Willis is a good writer, but it is just not my cup of tea. So I won't tell people not to read the book, as some obviously love it. (It seems to have a cult following) But I will tell people who are looking for a hard scifi book to stay away...you will be sad. (less)

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Apr 30, 2011 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: speculative-fiction, kindle

I enjoyed this book very much. It is set in Oxford in the near-ish future, after time travel has been discovered by for-profit corporations, then abandoned because the laws of the time continuum prevent time travelers from bringing anything forward from the past, or from affecting events in the past in any significant way. With the lack of a profit motive, time-travel is now the exclusive purview of historians. A young history graduate student, Kivren, is preparing to go to the Middle Ages, to 1...more

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Nov 27, 2010 Bondama rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This is one of my favorite books - I read it years ago, when Willis won the Hugo Award for it -- but, speaking as a historian, I've rarely come across any other book with such meticulously accurate research behind it.

The protagonist is a young woman who wishes to travel (this is in the future - time travel is now possible, though extremely fraught with difficulty) all the way back to the Middle Ages - but BEFORE the advent of the Black Plague, which decimated Europe and Asia. In order to qualify...more

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May 28, 2010 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, mine, historicalish, time-travel, favorites, nebula, hugo

It is Christmas, the year 2054. Time travel science is here. In Oxford, the medieval department is gearing up to send one of their best and brightest back to the 14th century to document village life.

Enter Kivrin Engle.

She’s smart and eager. In preparation for this jump, she has learned to speak Middle English and Latin, how to milk a cow, how to ride a horse, how to embroider. She has been inoculated against every possible disease. Her costume has been hand-stitched and dyed with real woad. Sur...more It is Christmas, the year 2054. Time travel science is here. In Oxford, the medieval department is gearing up to send one of their best and brightest back to the 14th century to document village life.

Enter Kivrin Engle.

She’s smart and eager. In preparation for this jump, she has learned to speak Middle English and Latin, how to milk a cow, how to ride a horse, how to embroider. She has been inoculated against every possible disease. Her costume has been hand-stitched and dyed with real woad. Surrounded by capable experts in the department’s time lab, she makes the unprecedented leap back 700 years, arriving safely in a peaceful forest glade. Distant bells are ringing. It’s very beautiful. Everything seems fine. After all, every contingency has been considered.

Except one really, really giant one.

Both timelines are thrown almost immediately into total chaos, confusion and panic. The differences between the centuries are blurred as they both face eerily similar catastrophes, and the potential for human depravity plumbs the same considerable depth.

There is not a lot of room for character development in this frantic plot, and much of the cast suffers from acute lack of dimension. Basically, you’ve got Good Guy from the Future, Good Guy from the Past, Adorable Child from the Future, Adorable Child from the Past, Kivrin, and a bunch of extras. It’s hardly noticeable, though, what with all the excitement and mass graves.

Willis wrote this book over a span of five years, painstakingly researching the time period, which must have been quite the chore, since the Dark Ages are called that for good reason. (And it’s not because they didn’t have electricity.) It has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best science fiction/fantasy, as well as the prestigious Katie Prize for Rollicking Good Read.

(I made that up just now, yes.)

(It struck me as kind of funny that in the mid-21st century, we have the ability to dash back hundreds of years in the blink of an eye, but evidently no one has bothered to invent the mobile phone. Chalk it up to the book being written in 1992, which makes sense, but still. Very odd.)

In a nutshell: A bit slow in parts, but worthwhile. Really good book. (less)

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Apr 12, 2008 Karin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Karin by: Nils Henriksen

I'll read any book about time travel, and the concept of this book was certainly interesting, but it did not inspire me as much as other time travel books have. What I liked best was that it put a human face on what it meant for a third to half of the population to succumb to the plague. It's so easy to have this be just a line in a book and not ponder too much of what that meant in people's lives.

It bothered me greatly, though, that it is the year 2054 and no one has a cell phone or any more s...more

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Apr 14, 2011 Metagnat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I fell in love with Willis' conception of time travel upon reading "To Say Nothing Of The Dog" several years ago, and that story remains my favorite of her novels.

I found Doomsday Book captivating. I could barely put it down and stayed up way too late for a few nights in the reading of it. The novel intertwines a past story that, in some aspects, is well-known to any student of history and a "present" set in a believable near-future. Both stories are full of well-rounded characters and interesti...more

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About Connie Willis

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.

She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Ficti...more Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.

She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).

She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. She also has one daughter, Cordelia.

Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students and faculty of the future University of Oxford. These pieces include her Hugo Award-winning novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog and the short story "Fire Watch", found in the short story collection of the same name.

Willis tends to the comedy of manners style of writing. Her protagonists are typically beset by single-minded people pursuing illogical agendas, such as attempting to organize a bell-ringing session in the middle of a deadly epidemic (Doomsday Book), or frustrating efforts to analyze Near-death experiences by putting words in the mouths of interviewees (Passage).

Other themes and stylistic devices include:

a scientist as protagonist (the main theme of Bellwether, but also present in Uncharted Territory, Passage, and—to a lesser degree—the Fire Watch universe stories)
an aversion to rampant political correctness (notably the over-appreciation of indigenous cultures in Uncharted Territory, anti-smoking stances in Bellwether, censorship of "addictive substances" in Remake)
the inclusion of meticulously researched, detailed trivia related tangentially or symbolically to the narrative (fads in Bellwether, mating customs in Uncharted Territory, old movies in Remake, the Titanic disaster in Passage, famous pairs of ill-fated lovers in To Say Nothing of the Dog)
the constant presence of trying to come to terms with grief, loss, and death; this is often attributed to her mother having died while Willis herself was still a child.[citation needed]
Willis is acclaimed as a science-fiction writer, most often exploring the "soft" or social sciences. She weaves technology into her stories only to prompt readers to question what impact it has on the world. For instance, Lincoln's Dreams plumbs not just the psychology of dreams, but also their role as indicators of disease. The story portrays a young man's unrequited love for a young woman who might or might not be experiencing reincarnation or precognition, and whose outlook verges on suicidal. Similarly Bellwether is almost exclusively concerned with human psychology.

Among other themes, Uncharted Territory contemplates the extent to which technology shapes expectations of gender; "technology" here ranges from a land rover and binoculars to Bult's online "chopping" and the pop-up holograms—even socioexozoology. Remake embraces old movies and the computer graphics revolution, as well as intellectual property, digital copyright issues, and the question of public domain.

Other Willis stories explore the so-called "hard" sciences, following in the classic science fiction tradition. "The Sidon in the Mirror" harks back to the interplanetary and interstellar romanticism of the 1930s and 1940s. "Samaritan" is another take on the theme of Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man", while "Blued Moon" is similarly reminiscent of Heinlein's "Year of the Jackpot".
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“Belki bizim zamanımızın sorunu da budur Bay Dunworthy. Kurucuları Maisry, piskoposun elçisi ve Sir Bloet ne de olsa. Roche gibi kalıp yardım etmeye çalışan bütün insanlar vebaya yakalanıp öldüler.” — 1 person liked it

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Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel #1)

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