Doomsday Book
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Narrated by:
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Jenny Sterlin
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By:
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Connie Willis
About this listen
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.
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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)
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"It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me… the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father…” So began the story of Martin Reed - a serf whose resentment of the automatic rule of his feudal lord finally flared into open defiance.
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Another winner by Norah Lofts
- By Bird Lady 147 on 10-03-17
By: Norah Lofts
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The List
- By: Patricia Forde
- Narrated by: Imogen Wilde
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the post-apocalyptic, neo-medieval city of Ark, speech is constrained to 500 sanctioned words. If somewhere were to speak outside that approved lexicon, they'd face banishment. The only exceptions to this rule are the Wordsmith and his apprentice, Letta. Together, they are the keepers and archivists of all language. But when Letta's master dies, she is suddenly promoted to Wordsmith and finds the situation more complicated than she knew.
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Love is Language
- By Jennie Smith on 02-19-21
By: Patricia Forde
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Bloodleaf
- By: Crystal Smith
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Princess Aurelia is a prisoner to her crown and the heir that nobody wants. Surrounded by spirits and banned from using her blood-magic, Aurelia flees her country after a devastating assassination attempt. To escape her fate, Aurelia disguises herself as a commoner in a new land and discovers a happiness her crown has never allowed. As she forges new bonds and perfects her magic, she begins to fall for a man who is forbidden to rule beside her.
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Not Understanding All the Praise
- By GPChlorine on 08-23-19
By: Crystal Smith
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The Ashes of London
- By: Andrew Taylor
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path. Even the impregnable cathedral of St. Paul's is engulfed in flames and reduced to ruins. Among the crowds watching its destruction is James Marwood, son of a disgraced printer and reluctant government informer. In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul's, in a tomb that should have been empty. The man's body has been mutilated, and his thumbs have been tied behind his back.
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Entertaining Historical Fiction
- By Simone on 05-01-17
By: Andrew Taylor
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Flamecaster
- Shattered Realms
- By: Cinda Williams Chima
- Narrated by: Kim Mai Guest
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Adrian sul'Han, known as Ash, is a trained healer with a powerful gift of magic - and a thirst for revenge. Ash is forced into hiding after a series of murders throws the queendom into chaos. Now he's closer than ever to killing the man responsible, the cruel king of Arden. With time running out, Ash faces an excruciating choice: Can he use his powers not to save a life but to take it?
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an ironic find
- By avery on 04-08-16
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The Good Thief
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve-year-old Ren doesn't know who his parents were. He doesn't know who left him at St. Anthony's orphanage, or how he lost his left hand when still an infant. He is resigned to life without a family to call his own and terrified of the future. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents is enough to persuade the monks at the orphanage to release the boy. But is Benjamin really who he says he is?
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Close But No Cigar?
- By Andrew Moore on 10-03-09
By: Hannah Tinti
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The Taker
- By: Alma Katsu
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her...despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort.
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Too dark for my taste
- By Margaret on 05-04-14
By: Alma Katsu
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Now & Then
- By: Jacqueline Sheehan
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna O’Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she’s trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them. Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.
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Loved This Book
- By Janina on 03-07-17
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Except the Dying
- A Murdoch Mystery, Book 1
- By: Maureen Jennings
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the naked body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. The young victim was pregnant when she died. Detective William Murdoch soon discovers that many of those connected with the girl's life have secrets to hide. Was her death on attempt to cover up a scandal in one of the city's influential families?
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If you like the show - don't buy
- By Sarah on 06-09-16
By: Maureen Jennings
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Luck in the Shadows
- Nightrunner, Book 1
- By: Lynn Flewelling
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhiminee is many things, none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them. Soon Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, toward a war he never suspected was brewing. Before long he and Seregil are embroiled in a sinister plot that runs deeper than either can imagine and that may cost them far more than their lives if they fail. But fortune is as unpredictable as Alec's new mentor.
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Fantastic Series! Homophobes, shut up!
- By Ted on 09-23-11
By: Lynn Flewelling
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A Vision of Light
- A Margaret of Ashbury Novel, Book 1
- By: Judith Merkle Riley
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Margaret of Ashbury wants to write her life story. However, like most women in 14th-century England, she is illiterate. Three clerics contemptuously decline to be Margaret’s scribe, and only the threat of starvation persuades Brother Gregory, a Carthusian friar with a mysterious past, to take on the task. As she narrates her life, we discover a woman of startling resourcefulness.
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Old fashioned heroine
- By Margaret on 06-22-13
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An index for locating stories
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interesting listen. Different from her other books.
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Terrific, but too short
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The Wang family is hiding a secret—they all have the ability to time travel. When parents Joshua and Lily depart for the past and never return, their children Tommy and Eva are forced to deal with their grief alone. Eva tries to find her place in the present, while Tommy is pulled further and further into a past that he hopes holds the truth. When he falls in love with a woman from 1930s London Chinatown, his inability to confront his own history has serious ramifications for the people who can truly bring him happiness.
By: Pim Wangtechawat
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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
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Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally.
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Audio Not the Way to Go Here
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Sundiver
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For nearly a billion years, every known sentient species in the universe has been the result of genetic and cultural guidance - or "uplifting" - by a previously uplifted patron race. Then humans are discovered. Having already uplifted chimps and dolphins, humanity clearly qualifies as an intelligent species, but did they actually evolve their own intelligence, or did some mysterious patron race begin the process, then suddenly abandon Earth?
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good, but flawed
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A Ripple in Time Series Boxed Set
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It started as a routine Miami to Charlotte flight for the passengers, crew, and Federal Air Marshal Stephen Mason. But a freak storm over the Atlantic propels the airliner unexplainably back in time to the early 18th century.
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Boring, Two dimensional. (Minor spoilers).
- By Christopher on 04-21-22
By: Victor Zugg
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Darwin's Radio
- By: Greg Bear
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In a cave high in the Alps, a renegade anthropologist discovers a frozen Neanderthal couple with a Homo sapiens baby. Meanwhile, in southern Russia, the U.N. investigation of a mysterious mass grave is cut short. One of the investigators, molecular biologist Kaye Lang, returns home to the U.S. to learn that her theory on human retroviruses has been verified with the discovery of SHEVA, a virus that has slept in our DNA for millions of years and is now waking up.
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A huge let-down
- By Chris on 05-14-12
By: Greg Bear
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Alice Payne Arrives
- By: Kate Heartfield
- Narrated by: Jennywren Walker
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
It’s 1788, and Alice Payne is the notorious highway robber the Holy Ghost. Aided by her trusty automaton, Laverna, the Holy Ghost is feared by all who own a heavy purse. It’s 1889, and Major Prudence Zuniga is once again attempting to change history - to save history - but 70 attempts later, she’s still no closer to her goal. It’s 2016 and...well, the less said about 2016 the better! But in 2020, the Farmers and the Guides are locked in battle; time is their battleground; the world is their prize. Only something new can change the course of the war. Or someone new.
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bad editing
- By Rebecca on 12-03-18
By: Kate Heartfield
What listeners say about Doomsday Book
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- Ilana
- 05-27-12
Cut by half would have made it twice as good.
We're in the middle of the 21st century, and a group of Oxford scholars are now able to travel back in time. Young student Kivrin Engle has a passion for the middle ages, and the object of the next study involves traveling to the 14th century Oxford region in 1320, well before the arrival of the bubonic plague of 1348 which killed off entire villages. Kivrin has spent years preparing for this trip, and even though professor Dunworthy thinks her too young and worries the trip is fraught with too many dangers, she hasn't wasted time learning Middle English and Latin and the various tasks and labours expected of the young noblewoman she is meant to impersonate. But things have gone wrong from the start. When she arrives in the 14th century, she is badly disoriented and falls gravely ill. She is found and brought to the home of a family who do their best to nurse her back to health, but though she has spent many dedicated months to prepare for this journey, she soon discovers all her studies have been for naught, because for one thing, she can't communicate with them. Meanwhile, in the Oxford of the 21st century, things are going very wrong too. Badri Chaudhuri, the young technician responsible for setting up the apparatus for Kivrin's time travel, seeks out Dunworthy to tell him that "something is very wrong", but he can say no more than that, having fallen gravely ill and suffering from high fevers which put his life at risk, so that all he is able to communicate through the better half of this lengthy novel is that "something is wrong" over and over and over again.
The very beginning of the story showed great promise, and I found all the details about 14th century England fascinating, but I felt that for at least the first half of the narrative barely anything happened at all and we were circling round the same details again and again, as if in a bad dream. I quickly lost patience and was ready to give up, but so many fans of this book assured me it was well worth the effort that I stuck to it. The story that finally emerges is a good one, but I would probably have enjoyed it more had there been a serious editing job done, since so much of the book was taken up with what seemed like filler. Had the novel been cut by half, I would probably have thought it was pretty great, but as it is I have a hard time believing that it won prestigious awards (the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards among many others), and had to overcome a lot of frustration to finish it. I think I found a reasonable compromise with my current rating.
You might love it completely, and then again, you may not.
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- LisaB2595
- 04-21-17
Not What I Hoped For
Is there anything you would change about this book?
How many characters do I get? My sub-title for this book is "Or What Happens When Stupid People Get Time Travel." The bone-headedness of all of the characters was immensely frustrating as were the half-baked futuristic elements. We've got time travel, but we're still frustrated by "phone outages" and characters asking to borrow phones although in 1992, cell phones weren't unknown. Surely the author could have seen a future with them? No one can look up an NHS number. There's been a worldwide flu pandemic, but Christmas vacation means no one can do anything. Does anyone actually believe the CDC says "sorry, they're on vacation" when a possible pandemic is in the works? Entire hours are seem to be wasted on the inability of the quarantine area receiving supplies. First: not gonna happen that way, and two, probably not the reason you picked up the book. You probably picked it up wanted to read about life in the 14th century, and there's precious little of that.
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
Characters that are smart and capable. The characters were all so slow on the uptake. Forgetting important concepts until 10 minutes into the conversation. I'd be mentally reminding them to ask about "X" while I listened to character blab on about stupid stuff that wasn't story. The historian is particularly susceptible to being an idiot, taking forever to realize what's going on (The whole "wicked man" episode in the church was particularly grating.) There was so little actual medieval history or culture in this book, IMO, and waaaaay too many annoying children (yes, there are TWO.) Also, some resolution to where the actual director of History had gone off too. They spend the entire book looking for him, entire sections devoted to "finding Basingham (?)"
What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
My frustration with the characters probably has roots in the way the reader would repeat a question like she'd never heard of the concept before. Typical exchange: "Yes, but what if Kivrin catches the flu?" "Kivrin?" said like they'd never heard the name before. OMG. It was head-bashing frustration at times to listen to this book.
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
Probably because a movie would certainly cut out all of the over-writing. If this author could find a way to make something more time-consuming, she would. Everything skitters out of reach requiring a second try. Everyone gets sick and has to bring the story to a stop while we have scene after scene of "no visitors!" or "you're not supposed to be out of bed."
Any additional comments?
What sold me on this book was the fact it had won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. As science fiction, I found it lacking. As history, I found it lacking. By the time the "real" story starts, you're ten hours in. This book would have been more enjoyable with a length of maybe 15 hours.
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- Ellen
- 10-04-10
Good if you want to be depressed
I had read Connie Willis' book, To Say Nothing of the Dog. It was lighthearted, historically interesting, fun. This was dark, dismal, historically interesting and so depressing. A good read if you don't mind death, pestulence, putrification. I couldn't wait for it to end.
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- Anne
- 10-18-12
Stunning, moving, thought-provoking
This is a long book, and I think it was good that I happened to be able to listen to it when I had long stretches of uninterrupted time. I was able to be drawn fully into the story. It might not be an easy book to listen to in short stretches.
I found it emotionally wrenching - the details were so vivid and the characters and situations so compelling. As others have noted, not all of the endings are happy ones. I couldn't wait to listen to more because I wanted to know what happened. I was very sorry to reach the end, and found myself thinking about it for weeks, and telling others about the book, too. (I did that also with Blackout and All Clear - highly recommend them.)
Connie Willis's attention to historical detail is amazing. I became fascinated by the particulars of daily life in the Middle Ages, which are presented in a way to make the characters and situations come to life.
There are parallel plots, one set in the current day of the time travelers and one set in the middle ages. The intertwining of these situations caused me to reflect on our attitudes towards medicine, technology, and faith. Each society's assumptions and beliefs play a role in the story.
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- Pie
- 10-14-09
An entertaining story
The science fiction elements are few but required as they are the bits that allow the story to be. The people are the bones that walk the story forwards. An interesting presentation (flashing back and forth between times and situations) of memorable characters.
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- Carrie
- 07-19-09
Simply wonderful!
Yes, this book is long. Yes, this book is detailed. But these are two of the things that make this book really great. The performance was incredible, and you really felt like the characters were real. The story comes alive. It is poignant and heart wrenching, but so wonderful. WONDERFUL!!
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- L.
- 12-15-13
An endless back and forth
Seems to be needlessly drawn out with something ALWAYS, ALWAYS standing in the way of our heroin discovering the obvious. It's a very tedious listen.
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- Katya A
- 10-29-12
Litlle long, but very engaging
I have to agree with most listeners' reviews for this book - it could be edited down to 40% of original length before it would start loosing details. But if you, like me, listening to audiobooks while working it's actually a plus - if you spaced and missed something, the narrative will loop around to revisit missed plot point again. And maybe again sometimes later.
The story is very character driven but i was hoping for more historical details. Both in the future and past plotlines focus on human interactions, which is great, but could use little more backdrop, so to say. Main characters are very endearing - and maybe just a touch too anecdotal - every female from the future plot sounds like Mrs Marple.
Everyone who is complaining about state of technology in the future part of the novel has to realize that the book was written in the 90s', way before smartphones, WiFi, GPS devices and other awesome things we're so used to take for granted. Yes, it sounds a little odd now that someone would have to sit by the landline phone waiting for a call in 2056, but future ain't what it used to be, eh?
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- Sheri
- 01-01-10
I was so sorry that it was over!
I absolutely love this book. The story is wonderful and the narrator is fantastic!
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- John
- 08-06-13
Enthralling, funny, compassionate and wonderful
I have now listened to this book a second time, simply to enjoy it once more and i did enjoy it just as much as the first.
The story is engrossing. A very different variation on the time travel genre, I love the way it interweaves the 14th and 21st centuries.
I found myself totally enthralled by the story, really caring about the characters, crying and laughing. What more can one ask from a book?
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