Review: Doomsday Book

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Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Doomsday Book was my first taste of Connie Willis' writing. She is something of a staple in sci-fi and I was teased by regular references to her work. The premise of the book was tempting enough - in the not-too-distant future, time travel has somehow been discovered and a historian is sent back in time to one of the most dangerous periods in history and is entangled in the crises of the time while her modern counterparts faced a new plague. This sounded to me like a plot that would easily equate to awesomeness.

Unfortunately, the potential of the plot was overshadowed by excessive descriptions of boring events. As many other people have mentioned in their reviews, the book was 150-200 pages too long. The most exciting moments in the book took place in the last 15% or so but by that time I had lost every tiny bit of interest I had.

The most interesting parts of the story were easily those which took place in the past. It seems that Connie Willis put more time into the historical aspects of the story than she did the sci-fi stuff. Echoing what others have said, the future was so un-futuristic that it felt like Willis gave up on that part of the story. Technology and medical advances that already existed in the 90s (when the book was written) was somehow not available in the future world of Doomsday Book.

I felt like Doomsday Book just kind of dragged. It took me far too long to read it because I simply couldn't invest myself in the story. Kirvin's character and her experiences were interesting but the other half of the story was snore-inducing. If I try another Connie Willis book, it will definitely be one of her shorter ones so that I won't feel like I wasted so much time if it is as slow as this was.



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