A thoroughly engrossing book that I took my time reading. My favorite character was Colin! ( )

1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel Winner
1993 Nebula Award Winner

In mid-21st-century Oxford, historians travel back in time to study the past. Fortunately, historians are the only ones interested in doing this because the space-time continuum protects the timeline from paradoxes via “slippage” in time or place whenever someone travels back through the “net.” This prevents historians from landing too close to an exact time or place where their presence could create a paradox or significantly change the future.

Until the story opens, nobody has attempted travelling back to medieval Europe, since most centuries in that era are considered a “ten” on the danger scale. However, Kivrin Engle, a student of medieval history, desperately wants to go, and her colleagues arrange to send her back to the year 1320 to experience the holiday season in a small village.

When everything that can go wrong does go wrong, Kivrin is left wondering if she’ll be able to find the “drop” (rendezvous point) to return home, while her friends in the 21st-century scramble to figure out just what happened and deal with a major problem of their own.

It’s hard to write much about this novel without giving away the plot, but ultimately it’s a story that uses time travel and a historical setting to struggle with deep questions of faith. Willis asks:

Why do bad things happen to good people?

If God exists and cares about human beings, then why do some prayers go unanswered? Or, does He choose only to work through people in whatever capacity they have?

What is the difference between someone who is religious and someone who lives out their faith?

Is there hope in the face of the terrible fact that we are all going to die someday? Why?

If we try and fail to help someone, does it matter that we tried? Why?

Do people matter, even if they are not remembered by history?

On the flip side, does it matter when we do make efforts to respect and honor the dead?

The way that Willis chooses to answer these questions plays out with two casts of characters separated by over 700 years in time. Not all of the questions are explicitly answered—ultimately, she leaves it to the reader to find their own meaning along the journey.

I will admit, it is a long journey, with a lot of characters who I had trouble following at first. I also got stuck in the middle for a while because I thought I had the plot figured out and got bored. Once I picked it back up, however, and realized that more twists were coming, I burned through the rest to find tears (and yes, many reasons to hope) at the end.

I'm still trying to figure out what all of the bells that pop up throughout the whole novel symbolize, though. Maybe they tie together those concepts of the importance of human lives, of mattering? The way they are used also seems to involve that idea of doing what we can even when it seems like it's not enough. Not sure. ( )

Loved this book. It combines historical biology, time travel, and hand bells--really! OK, the hand bell ringing isn't central to the point of the book, but I found it fascinating. If you like science fiction and/or historical fiction, put this on your list. You won't regret it. ( )

Excellent, amazing, engrossing, tense (oh god, it's the plague! oh wait, it's not the plague? no, it has to be the plague! wait..). I loved this book. ( )

This is a good book, it kept me reading and I didn't lose interest at any time. Although it was slightly meandering around its middle, I believe it was needed to build the characters and our emotional reactions (e.g. sympathy) toward them. This book was much more history than Sci Fi. The Sci Fi part was rather simple and bland, only used lightly. Also it is apparent that the book was written in the early 90s, because the author wasn't aware of the smartphone and the internet and the rapid growth in technology to come full blast later on. I recommend this book to anyone who likes history more than Sci Fi. ( )