Subject: Review of _Doomsday_Book_ by Connie Willis

From: [email-masked] (Doug Ingram)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 07:08:04 GMT

Doomsday Book
			   by Connie Willis
		
                 Review copyright (c) 1994 by Doug Ingram

	Every once in a while, I manage to overcome my general stodgy
nature and venture out to the bookstore to buy a new book based solely
on a hunch.  This hunch is usually related to a book winning some sort
of award I respect, such as the Hugo or Nebula, but sometimes I shamefully
admit that something as simple as the cover art can draw me in.  Given
the rather drab cover of the newest version of _Doomsday_Book_, then,
it must have been its award-heavy resume.  I've had good luck in the
past with award-winners, so what the heck?

	The overall plot of the book starts out promisingly enough.
It is a few decades in the future in England.  Historians have begun
to use time travel to observe various historical periods first-hand, 
overcoming all the objections which I'm sure would have been raised by 
anyone familiar with speculative fiction dealing with time travel.
Fortunately for the historians, Willis' version of time-travel has
some odd rules that seem to disallow paradoxes.  The way this works
in the book is never clear, but it is worth suspending disbelief.

	A young female historian named Kivrin has volunteered to go
back to the Middle Ages in England about 30 years before the arrival
of the Black Plague.  This expedition is about to occur over the
objections of Kivrin's tutor, Mr. Dunworthy, who is worried that the
actions of Kivrin's advisor, Mr. Gilchrist, are endangering Kivrin's
life.  This is because Gilchrist is acting as department head due to
the absence of the real chairperson on vaction.  As acting chair, 
Gilchrist plays fast and loose with the rules in order to arrange
what Dunworthy thinks is a very unsafe trip for Kivrin.

	Despite Dunworthy's protestations, the transfer of Kivrin
to the middle ages does take place.  Soon, Kivrin wakes to find herself
in the countryside of England in the 1300's while in the present day,
the problems begin.  First, the technician who oversaw the time
transfer (or "drop") falls ill.  Before he goes completely unconscious,
he tries to tell Dunworthy that something went wrong with the drop,
but Dunworthy can't determine what exactly went wrong.

	Soon it becomes clear that the technician is only one of the
first of a great many cases of an outbreak of a mutant flu virus
that creates a near-panic and quarantine conditions for a large
part of England.  As the first of many parallels between two times,
Kivrin soon finds herself somewhat ill and eventually is caught
in the middle of the outbreak of an unknown sickness herself.
Fortunately, Kivrin is taken in by a small family where she befriends
two small children, Agnes and Rosemund, as well as the rest of a
somewhat suspicious household (many of whom don't quite know what
to make of a woman found alone in the country with some odd habits).

	In the present, Dunworthy keeps trying to determine the problem
with the drop, but the technician remains too ill and Gilchrist impedes
Dunworthy at every step.  And so Dunworthy and Kivrin both try to
overcome the immense problems faced in each of their respective ages
in order to get Kivrin home safely with her observations of life in
the Middle Ages.

	In _Doomsday_Book_, it felt to me as if Willis were trying
to write a speculative fiction version of Barbara Tuchman's famous
_A_Distant_Mirror_.  Willis wanted to give a vivid portrait of life
in the Middle Ages and to tell a story about the problems inherent
with time travel, all the while drawing dramatic parallels to the
present.  Unfortunately, the book fails on the plotting level and
only remains modestly interesting as a historical work.

	The various subplots in this book are all fairly pointless
(except for a few in Kivrin's time that attempt to demonstrate what
life was typically like) or, in the case of events needed to drive
the story, the subplots seem to plod on forever.  For example, I grew
very tired of the countless times Dunworthy would try to talk to
the technician to find out what went wrong with the drop.  By halfway
through the book, Willis hasn't gotten past the maddening and
repetitive stage of having the technician say "Something's wrong"
over and over.  The characters in the present are all fairly
forgettable, if not downright annoying.

	As I briefly stated, the subplots taking place in Kivrin's
time tend to be somewhat more interesting and at least advance the
cause of the book as a historical novel.  I was interested in what
would happen to the various members of the family that Kivrin stayed
with, much more so than any character in Dunworthy's time.  Perhaps
the book would have been stronger had it spent twice as much time in
the past, developing the story there and the relationships some more.
Many subplots simply ran out of time and/or space because so much
time was spent in the present following inane details.

	I can see why so many people liked this book.  After all, it
is quite an ambitious undertaking to write a compelling SF story
and a relevant and interesting historical account.  Unfortunately,
there are plenty of better SF stories out there, and there are better
historical accounts of the Middle Ages as well.  I could get a much
more satisfying experience from reading _A_Distant_Mirror_ (for
history) and one of many plague novels (_The_Stand_ and  _The_White_Plague_
to name a couple off the top of my head).  

	I know that Willis is a well-liked author and that this is a fairly
popular book with many critics.  Maybe how much you like it will depend
upon just what you are looking for in a book.  I just couldn't find
anything here that I hadn't seen done much better in other novel.
The seeds of an interesting story are here, but Willis loses her way
by concentrating too much on the most uninteresting parts of her tale.
It is a rare thing for me to do, but I don't recommend this novel.

Doug Ingram -- [email-masked] // "Carpe Datum."
	More SF reviews:  http://www.astro.washington.edu/ingram/books.html

%A Willis, Connie
%T Doomsday Book
%I Bantam Spectra
%C New York
%D 1994
%G ISBN 0-553-56273-8