Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
After reading To Say Nothing of the Dog last summer I knew I wanted to read more of Connie Willis but I’m just now getting around to it! (And I still want more!)
A few short years into the future (2054 to be exact) and time travel has been discovered (invented?). Kivrin, a young student, is obsessed with the 1300s (considered a dangerous century to visit) and has finally found someone who is willing to send her there. She is assured that she will be going to 1320, a full 28 years before the plague came to England. However, something goes wrong, but the only person who knows what it is falls ills with an epidemic flu before he gets the chance to tell anyone what is wrong. In the midst of a quarantine and opposition from the higher-ups, Kivrin’s tutor desperately tries to discover what the problem is and what he can do to fix it.
I didn’t like this one as much as To Say Nothing of the Dog but I still couldn’t put it down. It had the same dry humour as TSNotD and just as fun of a story. I also love how she’s telling two stories here. The science fiction-y modern day epidemic story and then the historical fiction story. And even though she was telling a story about an epidemic flu that actually killed people, it was all doom and gloom, it was actually very entertaining. I don’t really have much else to day about this one, but I will definitely be reading more of Willis (and hopefully it won’t take me another year to do so).
Tags: Connie Willis