This fascinating book is set in essentially two locations....Oxford University, and the surrounding town, in the mid twenty-first century, and secondly in the nearby village of Skengate, circa mid-fourteenth century.

Oxford has a sucessful history department, utilizing time travel to investigate the past.


Kivrin Engles is a first year undergraduate with a burning desire to see the middle ages. She is willing and able to put in extensive preparation for her proposed project, including three archaic languages, learning to spin, weave, and milk a cow, as well as basic country medicine and a course of immunizations which would make even a Conan-Doyle adventurer flinch. Despite all of this, up until now, she has been forbidden to proceed with travel to such a location....perhaps with good reason.

Dr Gilchist, temporarily in charge of Medieval Studies over the Christmas break sees potential kudos for himself in permitting such an endeavor, despite not understanding even the first fundamentals of time travel himself. He turns a deaf ear to the advice of more sage counsel, that the middle ages is too dangerous both socially and medicinally for a very young woman to travel alone. Rape is common, woman have few legal rights, should her arrival be seen she may be hanged as a witch, and should she survive all this, there is scrofula, scurvy, tuberculosis, tetanus, and no sewerage to contend with. Gilchrist arranges her imperilment for his own advantage, with the utmost delight.

Dr Dunworthy, Kivrins tutor, and admiring supporter, is desperate to retrieve her from the middle ages almost as soon as she is gone. Confirmation that all has gone well requires some hours for technical reasons . Unfortunately by that time, the technical operator of the "drop", Badri, who placed her in the past, is delirious, repeating over and again that something is wrong. But he is extremely sick, and no sense can be got from him. Does Badri mean something is wrong with him, or was something wrong with the drop? There is no way to be sure. And no time to find out, as his sickness rapidly spreads and becomes an epidemic. Soon Oxford is in the grip of widespread hysteria, and is placed under quarantine. People are dropping like flies. Where has this virus come from? Is Kivrin Safe, landed where and when she should be?

Meanwhile, Kivrin arrives in the fourteenth century. Almost the moment she arrives she falls under a delirium, struck down by the same sickness as Badri. She is found by some locals, and she is taken in by a family of minor nobility, who take her for a high-born lady who has been attacked and is amnesiac. But Kivrin now has a serious problem. She has no knowledge of where she was brought from, and cannot re-locate the drop. If she cannot find it in two weeks, she is lost, and will live out the remainder of her life in the fourteenth century.

Bad enough, you might think, in both versions of Oxford.

But alas, dear reader, worse is to come

Dr Dunworthy, Kivrins only capable link to her home century falls sick himself under the epidemic. How ,now, can she possibly be retrieved?

And Kivrin fairs no better...she learns with the last coherent communication of a fevered and dying cleric that she is not in the year 1320 at all.... his swollen armpits give testament to the truth of his words, Kivrin has landed in the end of thirteen hundred and forty-eight, and bubonic plague is ravaging England around her.

I confess, when I started reading this story, it didn’t seem particularly an original idea. After all, people have been getting lost in perilous time periods other than their own ever since the very earliest writings in Science fiction. However, there's plenty going on in this story, and all of it is interesting. Connie Willis manages to carry all the storylines simultaneously, and balance them. That is a great credit I give to her. It would be easy for a complex plot like this to have fallen to pieces, leaving the reader without a sense of believability in the players, but I was held throughout.

Oxford University will, of course, never change...there will always be dueling dons, and Bright Young Things. The writing of these characters was colorful, but predictable enough. What truly gave life to Willis' Oxford were her minor characters... undergraduate William Gaddson and his mother for example - the mother, a clucking hen, over-protective and ridiculous, forever haranguing Dunworthy to care more about her delicate child, and William himself, an accomplished philanderer, unbeknownst to his mother, with an unusual affinity for pretty student nurses.

It is with her minor characters that Willis ties her story together, and gives it true life. They leap from the page with vivacious believability, coloring in the occasionally drab archetypes of larger players.

The focus of the story in the middle ages is almost exclusively the interaction of the noble family, Kivrin, and the bedraggled but beautiful village priest. Little attention is paid to the architecture, or environs, and by the plot device of England’s bleak midwinter, all else is snow, and the story revolves around hearths and hearts. This is not to the detriment of the tale. The medieval piece is touching, we observe through Kivrin, as a family learns first the remote, and finally the direct effects of the plague on Europe, England, and then their own village life. At times this story is moving, Kivrin feels loves, hates and losses with the family, and the entire time in which she is trapped. We examine loyalty, the true nature of piety and godliness, and deaths senseless loss.

I must recommend this book, of course. It is a fast read despite its length because the writing style pulls one along, ever wanting the next page to reveal something new. In way of minor criticism, and not for the first time in her work do I observe this...Connie Willis occasionally uses writing techniques which are antiquated the say the least, and facile, should it not be too bold to say so. For example, in the scene after the drop, we find Dunworthy waiting anxiously for Badri to have the details confirming all is well. Badri stumbles unexpectedly into the bar, clearly with something to say. Obviously, we are waiting to hear this, and Willis interjects three happenings and three more arrivals before Badri can actually open his mouth. All the time reminding us, he is trying to say something important. Excuse my yawning.

Anyway, you'll enjoy this book, I don't know anyone who didn’t. There’s enough history, mystery, suspense (some more realistic than some other!) and humanity in the tale to make it a grand ride. Well done Mrs Willis!

Some of my other science fiction book reviews:

Rama Revealed
Prelude to Space
Stand on Zanzibar
The Demolished Man
The Stars my Destination
Cat's Cradle
The Gods Themselves
Watchmen
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hammer of God
The Left Hand of Darkness
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of Light
Rendevous with Rama
The Tombs of Atuan
The Dispossessed
I am Legend
The Einstein Intersection
Earth Abides
Peace on Earth
The Farthest Shore
Methuselah's Children
A Call to Arms
To your Scattered Bodies Go
The Lion of Comarre / Against the Fall of Night
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Doomsday Book
Frankenstein Unbound
Batman - The Dark Knight Returns
Imperial Earth
A Case of Conscience
Solaris
The Sands of Mars
The Land of Laughs
Eden
His Masters Voice
Citizen of the Galaxy
King David's Spaceship
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Double Star
The Fabulous Riverboat
Songs of Distant Earth
Way Station
The Fountains of Paradise
The Long Tomorrow
Lincolns Dreams
Alas Babylon
More Than Human
1984
The Forever War
All the Myriad Ways
I Sing the Body Electric
Gateway
Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
This Immortal
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Recommended: Yes