Review: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (5-stars)

This is one of the most remarkable novels of any kind that I have ever read, and a truly stunning piece of time-travel/historical/science fiction.

I started reading Doomsday Book because I’d read Connie Willis’s Blackout earlier in this year and was anxiously awaiting All Clear. I knew that DOOMSDAY BOOK was a Hugo and Nebula winning and I knew that Connie Willis was an outstanding writer, so I figured the book was going to be a good one.

It was a remarkably good one. I’ve come across very few books that are both page-turners, and emotionally jarring as well. There have been even fewer books that have moved me to tears multiple times. But this book was one of them. Connie’s portrayal of the middle ages during the plague is brutal, and made more so by her impeccable ability to make the reader feel for the characters as if you know them, as if you are there with them experiencing the horrors. You almost wonder if Connie has the ability to travel back in time and used that ability to form the research for this novel.

Everything about the work is impressive, from the description and historical details, to the humor she injects, to the style of her writing and the care and effort she clearly puts into it.