Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Spoilers about "Doomsday Book" ahead, read with caution.

A few weeks ago, I was planning a trip to the book store to stock up on some new books. The last time I splurged I only purchased recommendations from friends; which I have discovered is, by far, the best way to purchase books. The last time I went to the store, I branched out and decided I would pick up a few books that I have never heard of, simply because they are award winning books.

Those of you out there that have been reading SciFi books know that there are two major SciFi awards out there, the Hugo awards and the Nebula awards. I figured if I picked a book that had won BOTH awards, I would be in good hands. So I grabbed "Doomsday Book" as well as a few others, simply based on the awards they had won.

Doomsday Book takes place in a future where historians are able to travel back in time as observers and witness history first-hand. A young student at Oxford College named Kivrin is sent to the middle ages to study and observe the people there shortly before the arrival of the black plague. The day that Kivrin is sent back to the middle ages(inadvertently to the exact year and month that the black plague arrived), a corresponding pandemic outbreak happens in the future(present). The book is split between Kirvrin's experience in the middle ages, and the the flu outbreak in the future.

Before I get too into this review, I want to make this point clear: I really enjoy old SciFi, some of my favorite stories were written years before I was born. However, I've found that as time moves on and technology progresses, if a book posits a future in which some of the most basic elements of technology (like cell phones) don't exist, it takes me out of the moment. I know this is a petty complaint, but it's hard for me to really buy into a society that can send people back in time, but still uses land-lines. It removes me from the world and makes me scratch my head. This wouldn't normally bug me, but a major part of the future storyline involves a character constantly asking people to be at his home so they can intercept important calls for him. Maybe I'm spoiled or just being snooty, but this really irked me. This, unfortunately, isn't the only thing that didn't work for me with this book.

I found the medieval storyline to be incredibly fascinating and exciting. A young woman, stuck in a different time, trapped not only by her distance in time, but by the restrictions of being a woman in that time-period. It was the only part of the book that really made me enthusiastic about continuing to read. However, the energy and excitement of the medieval storyline is constantly interrupted by the future storyline, which felt tonally very different. Where the medieval storyline is tense, scary, dirty, anxious, and exciting; the future storyline is slow, plodding and comical at times.

This difference in tone is really what kept me from enjoying the book. It felt less like two different stories in the same book, and more like two different books. There were very basic links between the stories, but not in a way that felt at all satisfying to me. Overall this just kept me from really throwing myself into the book and allowing myself to immerse myself and enjoy it.

The comic tones of the future storyline are quite funny at times, and I can see why so many people have enjoyed Willis' other book "To Say Nothing of the Dog" but when you match a comedic storyline with a serious and bleak storyline (like the black plague) as a reader, I don't know what to think or feel. And while I don't NEED an author to tell me what and how to feel, I definitely need a consistent tone from which to gather my impression of the book and story. For me, this book just didn't work.