You would think that a book about the plague - any plague - would be interesting and would leave you wanting to know what happens next. I think that this book could have done that because the main story behind it, the description of and interaction with the characters, and the ending were all good. However, the overload of description of insignificant things as well as the repetitiveness take away from all of those good aspects. .
I think that this story could have been shortened quite a bit. The story seemed to be stretched out only to make the book longer rather than make it more interesting. It gave the same description of the plague-striken town over and over again - nothing in the description really changed significantly once the plague hit. The people felt as if their world was ending and they wanted their loved ones. That's the basic feeling that was going through the town throughout the entire story. A good example of dragging out the story is when Rambert is trying to get out of the town. He meets with his "connections" and least five times. Was that really necessary? He didn't even end up leaving. Also, I think that too much detail was given to things that were of no real importance. Small things like what the sun looked like bouncing off of the street and how empty the streets were when the disease settled in. The streets were empty - enough said. Granted, a story is nothing without a little detail and description, but there is a limit. When too much emphasis is placed on things that aren't important, something is definatley taken away from the story itself.
The description of the characters was very well done (there should have been more of that rather than repeating the same boring details about the town). I think that in order to make the characters more memorable and to let the reader connect a little more with them, they must be very well understood. Maybe not so much in the physical sense, but one must have a good idea of the personality of the characters.