So I read 11/22/63 a while ago and thought, wow time travel stories are really fun. So I looked online for more and one that got recommended again and again was Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book. It follows a team of historians and Oxford in the near future who go back in time to the Middle Ages.
It soon became apparent that this was nothing like 11/22/63. No Groundhog Day moments or utilising knowledge of future events, just a trip back to one of the most horrifying times in human history: The Black Death.
At first I found the book honestly to be kind of dull and slow (perhaps due to my expectations), yet around a quarter of the way in I simply couldn’t put it down. Willis creates some brilliant characters and they truly come to life against such a visceral backdrop.
Curious if anybody else here has read it and what their thoughts were?
by zanisar
12 Comments
Doomsday Book absolutely wrecked me emotionally – went in expecting fun time travel shenanigans and got medieval trauma instead lol. Willis doesn’t mess around when it comes to historical accuracy and the plague scenes are brutal but so well done
I love Connie Willis and I think this is one of her best books. (Probably not an uncommon opinion!) It was just devastating, with no romanticization of the past. And I liked the parallel stories of illness spreading in the past and the future/present.
very good
Doomsday Book is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
This book destroyed me and I’m glad I accidentally read the second book – the much more fun To Say Nothing Of The Dog – first. I always recommend reading in that order.
I read it during the pandemic. It was fascinating (and terrifying) to see the parallels in people’s reactions to infectious illnesses.
Connie Willis is a brilliant gem of an author. She can gut you, make you giggle, and gut you again. I think it may be time for me to re-read this. And some of her non-time-travel stuff as well. I love Passage, and To Say Nothing of the Dog.
I do love Connie Willis, and although i think Passage is her best work, Doomsday Book kept me up at night reading as much as I could until my eyes weren’t functioning.
>!The scene with Kivrin and Father Roche was beautiful. How happy he was in the knowledge he was going to heaven because he though Kivrin was a saint!<
Doomsday Book was my first experience with Connie Willis, and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. Blackout and All Clear are also really great, deeply moving, time-traveling historical fiction, set in WW2. Really spectacular books all three.
But I don’t find Willis to be a reliable go-to author. Other books I’ve read by her are laugh-a-minute comedy-of-chaos type things. And while I enjoy that dry British wit, I find I overdose on it quickly. So I will pick up a title by her every few years but not more often.
On par with The Sparrow in facing up to the reality of the circumstances, not the rosy-colored expectations. Brilliant.
I’m not sure I can ever read Doomsday Book again, but I love Connie Willis!
To Say Nothing of the Dog is my favorite of hers and does have funny time travel shenanigans. I also love Bellwether (science rom com) and Passage (funny until it gets emotionally rough).