YMMV / Doomsday Book

• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: As Dunworthy's guilt over sending Kivrin on a botched drop grows, he explicitly compares Kivrin to Christ on the cross.
• Genius Bonus: Willis has lots of historical and religious allusion in her story. Just one example: Roche believes Kivrin is St. Catherine, a saint whose symbol is a wheel. When Kivrin arrives in the past, she is sitting against the wheel of a broken cart.
• The Woobie: Holy shit, Kivrin Engle. Let's tally, shall we? She:
  • Nearly dies from influenza as soon as she makes it to the past.
  • Is put under intense scrutiny from Lady Imeyne due to her feigned Easy Amnesia.
  • Turns out to have been inadvertently transported not to 1320, but to 1348 - the start of the Black Death.
  • Is forced to watch as an entire village, filled with people she's grown to know, succumbs one-by-one to plague, despite her very best efforts.
  • Misses the rendezvous amidst all the chaos, leaving her to believe that she'll be stranded in the past.
  • Resolves to take Rosemund, who has become the Sole Survivor (along with Father Roche; more on that in a moment), to Scotland so that they might avoid the plague's further spread, only for Rosemund to die as Kivrin's speaking with her.
  • Discovers that Father Roche is dying of plague just as they prepare to leave, denying Kivrin even one chance to save somebody.
  • Gets her ribs kicked in by a delirious Father Roche, leaving her in enough agony that she can't ring the bell to announce his passing as a Due to the Dead, let alone walk to the drop.
  • And, as the final kick in the teeth, she just barely manages to make it home. Were it not due to an incredible effort from the individuals of the present timeline, and an exceptionally unlikely set of circumstances, Kivrin would have been left in the past, completely alone and unable to return to her friends and loved ones in the present.