Rating: 4 stars
Cover synopsis: A crisis strangely linking past and future strands time-traveling historian Kivrin in the 1300s, as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.
Connie Willis is a science fiction writer, but this book is more historical fiction. It's set in the future, (2054, I believe), and historians time travel back to periods in time to learn more about how life really was. Kivrin plans to travel back to 1320, but something goes wrong and she ends up in 1348 -- when the black plague hit England.
Simultaneously, her team back in 2054 is experiencing an unusual outbreak of disease. The parallel is well written. And I found Kivrin's descriptions of life in the 1300s fascinating and suspenseful. As Collin, a character in the story would say, this is "apocalyptic!" My only beef with the book is that the author seems too preoccupied with tiny details (in both time periods) that slow the narrative down. I think she probably could have shaved at least 150 pages of text without hurting the story at all.
This book certainly opened my eyes to the importance of being prepared for disasters. If I had to be quarantined in my house for a month, could I survive? Time to assess my food storage...
