Doomsday Book

By: Connie Willis

Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin

Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

One of the most respected and awarded of all contemporary science-fiction writers, Connie Willis repeatedly amazes her many admiring fans with her ability to create vivid characters in unusual situations. With Doomsday Book, she takes listeners on a thrilling trip through time to discover the things that make us most human.

For Oxford student Kivrin, traveling back to the 14th century is more than the culmination of her studies - it's the chance for a wonderful adventure. For Dunworthy, her mentor, it is cause for intense worry about the thousands of things that could go wrong. When an accident leaves Kivrin trapped in one of the deadliest eras in human history, the two find themselves in equally gripping - and oddly connected - struggles to survive.

Deftly juggling stories from the 14th and 21st centuries, Willis provides thrilling action - as well as an insightful examination of the things that connect human beings to each other.

©1992 Connie Willis (P)2000 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award, Best Novel, 1993
• Nebula Award, Best Novel, 1992

"Ms. Willis displays impressive control of her material; virtually every detail introduced in the early chapters is made to pay off as the separate threads of the story are brought together." (The New York Times Book Review)
"A stunning novel that encompasses both suffering and hope....The best work yet from one of science fiction's best writers." (The Denver Post)

For science fiction this was only so-so.

There were two features that detracted:1 the level of detail and repetition were tiresome, very! 2 the character of Colin was annoying even irritating, really!
The premise was interesting and if I ever wanted to know what the Black Plague was like this sure conveyed it.
Helpful editing would easily reduced this book by half or more without losing any of it’s good qualities. Just my opinion

One of my favorite books ever

I liked this book so much that I got two other books from the same author: "To Say Nothing of the Dog," and "Blackout." The narration is excellent, and I would be happy to get another book by the same narrator.

Absolutely Wonderful

This is a new writer for me, and I wish I had discovered her earlier. This was an interesting, exciting tale in which the characters were not only real but entertaining! I enjoyed every second of the listen. The narrater was terrific - the various characters had their own accent and tone. Again, wish I'd discovered Ms. Willis sooner.

Read this book,

But don't bother with Ms. Sterlin's ploddingly slow interpretation. I loved this book when I read it years ago. Unfortunately, Jenny Sterlin reads as if it's the phone book and she's bored witless. Listening to her l.o.n.g pauses between words just puts me to sleep. Yawn.

Sickening but Excellent!

I learnt much about the Black Death from this work, and often felt quite sickened but informed. An entertaining read, with the time-travel theme similar to that of "To Say Nothing of the Dog", which I also enjoyed.

One easily relates to each character, in typical Connie Willis style.

My heart bled for the cow!!!!!

Excellent narration. I loved the British accent, and I love lengthy, quality books from Audible.

Loved it!

It’s official— I love Connie Willis’s writing style. Something about it just resonates with me. I first read To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is a light and delightful confection of a time travel comedy, but somehow Connie made this poignant novel about a very dark time in human history also a delightful read??? The balance she is able to strike between comedy and tragedy, hope and despair, is exquisite. I didn’t find the repetition in the book to be tedious, but perhaps it’s because I’ve realized that repeated statements or concepts are usually important to the twists at the end or bringing home a major theme/element of symbolism. Stellar reader, but some listeners may want to increase the speed.

Decent read, just twice as long as it needs to be

The overall story was good, I can see why others liked it. But much of the stories in both timelines simply dragged on and on and on.... That said, many of the characters were likable, their motivations were mostly clear, and the ending was satisfying. Just be prepared to be somewhat bored in the middle...

Repetitive

Any additional comments?

If you can tolerate a lot of repetitiveness, you will enjoy this book. The listen was good, but if I heard, "Something's wrong" once, I heard it 100 times. I found myself shouting "I know, I get it"! The story was enjoyable, but the author drug it out, which made it seem that much more lengthy.

The Narrator did an excellent job, which is the only reason I persevered to the end.

5-star book hiding within a poorly edited 3-star

There is a 5 star book hiding inside this poorly edited 3 star one. The plot is compelling once it gets into full swing. The characters are well-drawn, some interesting, some annoying. There is good build up and several moments of high emotion.

However, this book should have been at least a hundred pages shorter. I have never read/listened to a book that is so repetitive. What one person says, he'll say at different points to five different people, and then those people will recall through an inner voice what he said throughout the rest of the work, so that many phrases echo seemingly infinitely throughout the novel. This sort of thing happens with so many things said that it became not just annoying, but made me think at times I had made a mistake and was accidentally re-reading/re-hearing a place in the book that I had already read/heard.

One more thing that wore on me after a while was the vast number of times a character would say in their head something that they wanted to say or what was actually true before saying out loud something completely different. To say this device was overused would be an understatement.

I'm glad I read/listened to the book, but have to wonder if this is one of the few times an abridged version might be even better. By the end you really do care about the characters and are affected by the things that happen to them. While some of the plots twists were guessable , other guesses I had made turned out to be wrong and there were some interesting surprises.

For the basic story I gave 5 stars, performance was excellent so 4.5 there (rounded to 5), but overall I gave a 3 because of the annoying repetitiveness that I simply could not ignore.

Grim, depressing, and far too long

I am a Connie Wills fan. The Bellweather is one of my favorite books so I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, the Doomsday Book is nowhere near as good a novel as her others.

The real problem is the length - it is not that I don't like a long saga, but about 1/3 of this book could have been edited out without loosing ANY of the story. There is a character who remain unconscious for hundreds of pages while the reader - and the rest of the characters wait to hear vital information from him - while nothing else happens in the story. There is a really well developed bad guy character that you will love to hate, who basically disappears from the story without receiving his comeuppance. Then there is the endless description of illness and death.

I am sorry Connie Wills - you may have done some fabulous historical research for this book, your characters may be well developed and your story original - but I would rather die quickly of the plague than wade through three volumes of this novel.