[fantasyfan]

Well, my review is going to be a bit long {and opinionated} so I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with me but I'll chance it.

I've noticed that this book really divides people. It is divided against itself. One part of the story is set In the 14th century and has some good characterisation, some nice plot twists, an effective sense of darkness and foreboding but tends to be a trifle slow-moving. The other setting is in the mid-21st century and is simply boring.

It is in that latter setting that the novel fails badly. Science-fiction set in the future should normally involve some amount of believable extrapolation. Cell Phones were not all that rare when this book was written and James H. Schmitz writing in the seventies postulated the idea of the web with remarkable prescience. However, Connie Willis gives us an Oxford which--other than the perfected methodology of time-travel--seems to be technologically behind the present!

A more serious failing is that the Oxford characters tend to be two-dimensional. Gilchrist, Mrs Gaddson, and her son William are little more than comic book figures. Even Dunworthy, the main character in the Oxford setting, isn't particularly memorable.

The medieval setting is altogether much more convincing. Kivrin Engle is very well portrayed. She grows and develops as a character and at the end we realise how much her experiences have deepened her, Kivrin forms a maternal relationship with Agnes, the young daughter of the Lady of the manor and this child is completely successful as a character--unlike young Colin in the modern setting. The saintly Father Roche is another great success. In fact, there is no weakness at all in the characterisation of any of the significant figures in the Medieval setting.

That the Medieval world is so much more vivid than the modern setting is probably because Willis was working with material that she enjoyed and knew something about and thus didn't require any scientific extrapolation (clearly her weakness as a science-fiction writer).

When the two worlds collide at the end we have one of the weakest moments in the plotting of the novel. Asimov once said that no good science-fiction writer should ever solve a plot problem by simply making up a device--he used the term “pocket Franistan”--to eliminate the difficulty--a kind of science-fiction equivalent of the deus ex machina. It has been pointed out by some that unfortunately Connie Willis does just that. The problems of Kivrin revolve around the fact that she can’t locate the”drop” the point of entrance and exit between the time lines. But when her two rescuers come the eleven year old boy thinks to have a “locator” with him so that they will always find their way back! Again, the point has been made that Kivrin was able to have a translator and recording apparatus with her. Considering the danger of the journey why couldn’t she have had a locator too? {of course it would have allowed her to escape and thus destroy the entire plot--but that simply shows how weak this aspect of the plotting is.}

Despite that weakness, this book has the substance of a deeply moving story in the portion set in the Middle Ages, but it is spoiled by the section set in the 21st century. It is certainly far too long and there is a danger that a reader may become so utterly bored with the Oxford setting that s/he may not bother to give the other part of the story a chance,

While Willis is a competent writer and though this novel has some saving graces, I am amazed that it won both the Hugo and Nebula Science fiction awards.

I would give it 3 out of 5--mainly because of the Medieval story.