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Widely praised, Connie Willis' Doomsday Book is a rare bit of time travel fiction: it tells a raw, powerful, and believably realistic story with a very minimal appeal to the "speculative fiction" toolbox. Collins takes the principles of time travel outlined in To Say Nothing Of The Dog and uses them to outline a far more grave and ambiguous story, departing from the farcical comedy of the preceding novel to address the grim subject of epidemics, particularly the Black Death.

The story follows two tracks, one in the 14th century and one in a very familiar 21st century. Both stories focus on epidemics, but do so with the striking contrasts. In the 14th century, the time travel canard permits us the perspective of epidemics in a context of total ignorance and surprise; in the near-future, a state of almost-overpreparedness for contagion reigns. At the same time, the events of the 14th century are known to us despite local ignorance, while the outcomes of the near future are totally uncertain despite advanced epidemiological techniques.

The tone of the book shifts markedly as time passes. It begins innocently enough, having the lighthearted "British comedy of errors" flavor that the author employed in To Say Nothing Of The Dog. This, is appears, is really a means of getting the reader involved in and invested in the medieval and modern characters, whose social networks are appropriately convoluted. The consequence is that when the respective epidemics finally reach full swing, the many resulting deaths have a great deal more impact. While this is arguably a manipulative technique reminiscent of Cerebus Syndrome, my opinion is that it is likely the most effective method to convey the grief and hardship of terminal disease outbreaks. Collins is not trying to betray the reader, in this regard: she is instead trying to be honest about an awful reality. When people get sick and die, especially before their time, it is tragic at a personal level no matter what the statistical size of the outbreak.

That said, the book is not perfect. Its later chapters are emotionally exhausting (which is as it should be), but leave a number of crucial points unresolved. In addition to its shift in tone, the story traffics in red herrings to heighten suspense, which is perhaps necessary to raise the stakes for the reader, but feel a tad overmanipulative in retrospect.

I felt that the book is deserving of the praise it has received, in that it achieves something few works of genre fiction manage: it conveys universally understood human experience in a rich, believable way. The challenge of telling a story about characters on the one hand and about something has wide in scope as disease on the other is no easy task, and Collins' success should be lauded. However, that balancing act requires sacrifices, and in some (arguably small-scale) ways, the strongest human elements of the book suffered for it.