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A review by katiescho741
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
2.0
This book was a major letdown. The only reason it gets two stars is that the start of the book is pretty good - it's tense, exciting, and I found the sections on the process and rules of time travel to be really interesting.
Then all of sudden it's about someone's great-nephew's train journey, and a group of bell ringers from America. The same conversations about running out of eggs and bacon are had so many times and huge chunks of the book are taken up with people missing each other on the phone. Considering this is advertised as a book about The Black Death, the plague doesn't even show up until about 400 pages in. The sections on the plague may well have been good, but by the time I'd waded through all the previous bloated chapters I had very little interest in continuing. I started skimming the last third of the book.
There was some interesting stuff about life in the 1300's, such as how a time traveller might want to have their sense of small dampened while there, but even the sections set in 1348 dragged on. I think the main character Kivrin is supposed to be a fearless and independent woman but she comes across as moany and helpless.
A massive letdown of a book...I have no idea why it's in the "Sci-Fi Masterworks" set.
Then all of sudden it's about someone's great-nephew's train journey, and a group of bell ringers from America. The same conversations about running out of eggs and bacon are had so many times and huge chunks of the book are taken up with people missing each other on the phone. Considering this is advertised as a book about The Black Death, the plague doesn't even show up until about 400 pages in. The sections on the plague may well have been good, but by the time I'd waded through all the previous bloated chapters I had very little interest in continuing. I started skimming the last third of the book.
There was some interesting stuff about life in the 1300's, such as how a time traveller might want to have their sense of small dampened while there, but even the sections set in 1348 dragged on. I think the main character Kivrin is supposed to be a fearless and independent woman but she comes across as moany and helpless.
A massive letdown of a book...I have no idea why it's in the "Sci-Fi Masterworks" set.