Kim M. (Eucalia) reviewed on 6/27/2009 + 52 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 6

The is two interconnected stories about outbreaks of the bubonic plague in England--one set in the near future and one set in 1348. The stories were somewhat interesting with characters you might care about, but somehow I just couldn't suspend belief enough to get into this. And things just got more outrageous as the story progressed--especially the near future story. For starters, characters fell in love and changed long-held beliefs at the drop of a hat. Then they did totally unbelievable things--I'm sorry, but I don't care who you are, when you find you lover-of-the-week's boss's corpse decomposing in your missing research assistant's hotel room, are you really going to cut off his rotting hand and put it in your briefcase for a ride on the subway instead of notifying some sort of authorities? And why do none of the doctors or microbiologists who specialize in infectious disease have any inkling of what Yersinia pestis is without looking it up? Did nobody with any medical background proofread this book before it went to print? A couple of doctors talk about intubating a patient but instead insert an orogastric tube. And that's just a few of the myriad examples of the ridiculousness found in this book. Perhaps if you have as little medical background as this author does, this won't bother you as much as it did me. A little more research on the part of the author and a lot more care taken with what a real person might do would've gone a long way with this story. Overall this book was ok, but the high points weren't that high and I found lots of it to be quite aggravating.

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