RSS Dooms Day Book by Connie Willis
Filed in Reviews| It’s the 21st century, and time travel has been invented. Historians are making carefully planned trips to the past–a special inbuild protector will not allow them to do anything that changes the course of history. Kivrin has been studying hard and is now ready to go to the 14th century. When she is sent, though, the technician who sent her collapses…muttering something about “this is not right.” |
It is definitely not right. Kivrin arrives, with a cover story of a traveler robbed and left for dead, just in time for the onset of the Black Death. Meanwhile, the technician has come down with a particularly virulent strain of the flu and cannot help, so Kivrin is stranded. Torn between office politics and a sudden difficult quarantine, her mentor, Mr. Dunworthy, struggles to find out where she actually went and to figure out how to rescue her.
Having read this book just after Passage, it was interesting to see where the author was at times formulaic. The characters, for example, were eerily similar in the two books: a strong female lead who has a mishap, a guardian/mentor, and an obnoxious officious so and so whom you just love to hate. The story, however, couldn’t be more different, and it’s a fascinating one because there are almost two novels in one: Kivrin’s struggle in the bowels of time, and the “contemporary” fight to get her back home before it’s too late.
A liberal sprinkling of “dark” helps to make this book rich and textured. Watch out for the twist that binds the seemingly disparate stories together: it’s rather neat. :)
This is a huge novel — almost six hundred pages — and I had a very hard time putting it down.
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2 Comments, Comment or Ping
pussreboots (157 comments.)
I have Dooms Day on my TBR shelf. I got it from you. I’m still registering the books I picked up from you last year. I was excited to see it in the box because it’s been on my wishlist for a while. :D
Nov 16th, 2007
Linda R. Moore
Heh. Looks like I have/had two copies, then. *grin* This was one of the few novels that I hung onto because I figured I’d like to read it. I’m glad I did!
Nov 16th, 2007
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