Huh, how should I say this.

First off, let me just say that I fully did not expect this book to be the kind of book where people actually died. I thought it was going to be one of those zany time travelling adventures. (It didn't help that the only other CW book I've read is To Say Nothing of the Dog.)

The ending of this book made me cry and it was precipitated by about a hundred pages of heart rendering desperation. The scene where Father Roche tells Kivrin that he thinks she's an angel was incredibly touching. It was only then when I realized why the back of the book was babbling about "the indomitable human spirit" and "an angel in one of history's darkest times."

However, let me just say a great deal of this book was extraneous. A huge chunk in the middle with Mr. Dunworthy couldn't reach anyone and everyone was just running around frantically trying to do something about the sickness and Kivrin was in the Middle Ages talking about Christmas and trying to find Gawyn. For a while there, I thought that CW had forgotten the plot. Basically almost all of Book 2 is useless. In fact, the only really great part of this book that's worth all the hype is Book 3.

Well, the best way to put it is that this book is the most realistic book I've read in a long time. Yes, in the real world, there's a great deal of useless running around, awful connections, missed chance and impersonal deaths that just happen because that's the way life and disease is. This is not a complete compliment you see, because books shouldn't be that realistic. Real life makes for a terrible novel.