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Eifelheim by Michael Flynn


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In 1348 aliens are stranded in an isolated medieval village, while in modern times a physicist and a historian investigate the mystery of that disappeared village.

Hrm. Just . . . not quite. A book all about clashing paradigms – alien science with religious natural philosophy, narrative history with theoretical physics, the short modern mystery novella with the slow medieval tale of aliens and the Plague. And it just never came together in that elusive way we call 'gelling.' Lots of neat cosmological metaphors, some pretty writing, but ultimately just bits and pieces instead of a working whole.

Still, the historical research is pretty cool, and I was both discomforted and interested in the bedrock literalness of medieval religiosity – the aliens want to go home to the stars, so of course the answer is to save them. But in terms of a book, if it's scifi does the Middle Ages, I prefer Connie Willis's Doomsday Book.

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