Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) in Pick-a-Shelf

Jun 24, 2024 emily rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, audiobook, owned-physical, fiction-historical, arthuriana-medieval, cw-body-horror, to-say-nothing-of-the, anglophilia, book-within-a-book, cw-animal-death

4.5 stars rounding up to 5
for the Pick-A-Shelf "Lost" Challenge : read the 10 books that have been on your TBR the longest.

This was an incredible book. As someone who studied a lot of medieval history and literature in my school days, the depth of research Willis must have done to write this is staggering. I'm not sure why I expected this to be funnier-- maybe because the other works of hers I've read have all had me laughing? There was humor in this, for sure, but it was not a funny book. In f 4.5 stars rounding up to 5
for the Pick-A-Shelf "Lost" Challenge : read the 10 books that have been on your TBR the longest.

This was an incredible book. As someone who studied a lot of medieval history and literature in my school days, the depth of research Willis must have done to write this is staggering. I'm not sure why I expected this to be funnier-- maybe because the other works of hers I've read have all had me laughing? There was humor in this, for sure, but it was not a funny book. In fact, it was quite bleak-- the summary on the back doesn't prepare you for the fact that this is a book about a woman who goes back in time and lives through the onset of the Black Death in England. They repeat the statistic often, that the plague killed 1/3 to 1/2 of the population of Europe; they say often that many places reached a point where there was no one left to bury the bodies. But nothing is quite as human as Kivrin watching everyone around her, from the priest to the old woman to the five year old child, fall ill and die in the most painful and gruesome way.

A few notes from my updates that I wanted to capture : it's so rare to come across a child character in adult literature who feels accurate to the age that they're supposed to be, showing both how damned annoying kids can be to adults, but also maintaining that they're people with minds and personalities who deserve respect and agency. Agnes was a great character-- she was such a pest, but was such a bright spot in the landscape of the family, and by the time it became apparent that she too was going to die, it was absolutely gutting.

Also, Willis has a gift of capturing the mundanity of workplace politics and drama and making it, if not interesting, at least funny. It's the entire substance of her short story Bellwether, which I remember really enjoying, and although I'm not an academic, I've heard enough stories from my friends and family who are to know that this portrayal of departmental negotiations, blame-dodging, ambition, and PR is all too real. I had real sympathy for Dunworthy in that regard, even as I laughed at him.

Something I also really liked about this book is a thing I'm not sure I can explain concisely, but the parallels and themes that are common to both timelines, that don't have a Message per se but add to the richness of the story and make it feel like all one thing instead of two separate storylines. The only thing I can compare it to is Kraken, where ink and light and physical bodies and spaces are all important ideas to all the various threads of the plot. Here, bells play a part in both timelines in several ways; there are strong similarities between Willy's mother and Lady Imeyne, between Imeyne and Mr Gilchrist-- and in fact, just looking up how to spell Imeyne's name led me to this essay by Kristin Cashore that explains exactly what I'm talking about much more eloquently and with more details. Check it out here: --Cashore is much more familiar with the book than I am, so I only picked up on some of what she talks about in the essay, but I did notice some of it and really enjoyed it.

Really Cashore's essay says a lot of what I want to say about this, namely that this book is a masterpiece, it's very sad, but very human, and reading it in a post-COVID world was a bit of a mindfuck but only added to how hard it hit me emotionally. Really glad I finally got around to reading this.

Also the audio narrator is delightful. ...more

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Jul 15, 2015 Cora rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, christmas, time-travel, science-fiction, historical-fiction, plague, alternate-history, audible, england, illness

I really liked this book. It was a different way of looking at time travel than other science fiction novels I have read. I appreciated how the author described the people and events of the middle ages and how Kivrin coped with knowing the outcome of the plague while getting to know and care about people that could soon be its victims. I also liked how the near future time period was a satire of current day responses to epidemics and university culture. It also provided much needed comic relief ...more

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Nov 14, 2007 Joanna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi, 2014-read, historical-fiction, rws-2014-summer

I can't believe I never read this book or this author. I've been meaning to get to this one forever, but always was a little daunted by the length and a bit dubious that time travel to the Middle Ages would actually be entertaining. I loved the historical sections; the modern day sections tended to drag and seem rather annoying by comparison.

This author did a great job making the characters come to life as fully realized human beings with plausible actions and thoughts. I appreciated the treatme ...more

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Apr 25, 2010 Becky rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, science-fiction, medieval, 5-or-4-stars-standout

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 03, 2021 Soelo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio, popsugar2021, nebulaaward, locusaward, hugoaward, mythopoeicaward

What a great story, even in the slow or sad parts! There is plenty of action and dialogue but also some very detailed prose. I find it easier to listen to longer books and this was no exception. The metaphor near the end about the responsibility we feel when sending others to a place with unknown dangers gathers the whole narrative together.

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Jun 05, 2011 Nicole rated it liked it

Shelves: 2012

I liked this book where historians time travel to for science, but I would have liked it so much better if it was about 200 pages shorter. While it was good, it wasn't quite good enough to keep me interested for that long. ...more

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