Now, I’m not saying these matter terribly much which is to say, I’m not sure they do matter, especially. Still: there’s no getting away from the question of the anachronisms and historical howlers.
If nothing else, it helps explain why so many Worldcon fans keep voting Willis Hugos for mediocre novels: they’re still basking in the glory of this one – the medieval world feels real, the characters’ deaths (of the Plague) earned and actually moving. I read it because it’s being reissued in the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, and I’ve been tasked with writing an introduction but although, like those other titles, it is lengthy and quite slow (especially in the first half), and like those other novels the mid 21st-century Oxford Time Travel Institute scenes are less plausible than Jedward’s hair, somehow this novel works in a way that those ones don’t. that Connie Willis did, in fact, over the five years Doomsday Book took her to write, open a window to another world, and that she saw something there.This Hugo-winning time-travel novel is much better than Connie Willis’s 2011 Hugo-winning time-travel novel, Blackout/All Clear and much much better than her 1998 Hugo-winning time-travel novel To Say Nothing of the Dog Or, How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last. “The world of 1348 burns in the mind’s eye, and every character alive that year is a fully recognized being.
“Splendid work-brutal, gripping and genuinely harrowing, the product of diligent research, fine writing and well-honed instincts, that should appeal far beyond the normal science-fiction constituency.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The best work yet from one of science fiction’s best writers.” - The Denver Post “A stunning novel that encompasses both suffering and hope.
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