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Timeline- Unabridged

Timeline- Unabridged

List Price: $39.95
Your Price: $26.37
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A book about time travel that ignores conundrums?
Review: When a group of archaeologists is forced to travel back in time to the middle ages, will they change history? Change their own lives? How does time travel interact with history? This book ignores these questions entirely, in favor of having the main characters jump around like a bunch of jack rabbits.

So, if the classic problems of time travel fiction are ignored, how is the story told? Are there relationships worthy of note? No. Two potential love stories are barely sketched in.

O.K., how about some educational conflicts between twentieth century characters and medieval realities? There is some of this -- characters are surprised at how strong men and women who work with physical labor were, there are some interesting medieval technologies presented... but the setting is barely utilized.

So what is here? A movie script. Some babes, some brawny guys, a lot of sword fighting, and that is about it. Instead of a potential classic, we have popcorn fare. Each character is presented with just enough detail to guide a casting director. Crichton is basically publishing a rough draft of his movie outline here. I suggest that you wait for the movie, and if gets a decent re-write, it might be worth seeing. Ignore the book unless you really really love this sort of stuff.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A great read!
Review: This is one of those books that you will have trouble putting down - a creative and unusual story. Say what you might about the book written with a movie script in mind (so what - I will see the movie too) or some of the predictable and cardboard characters, this is a wonderful read. Crichton can sure tell a story and keep it moving cutting back and forth with three or more threads to keep you from putting the book down. Most of the people I know who read this zipped through it in a couple of days. I did not want it to end. That's another thing - a great ending...you'll want to think about it.

A lot of fun and you will learn something about life in 14th cc France as Crichton seems to have done his homework (with a bibliography, no less). As a result, I am going to read more about the "High Middle Ages". Perfect book for a technology/sci-fi and history buff.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Timeline- another winner for Crichton!
Review: I am a huge Crichton fan, but I do have to admit that when I initially read Timeline that I was not all that impressed. Throughout the book the nagging thought that this book would make a great film crowded my mind. So I took on the thought that Crichton had fallen into the trap of writing for Hollywood. When re-reading the book, I found story compelling. I read it in hours, meaning that it was a true page turner. Despite whether or not Crichton has created a book to be made a a movie, I have to admit that the story of Timeline is amazing and intriging.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very Good Novel
Review: I just completed this book and I must say that I'm impressed. I've read several other of Michael Crichton's books including Sphere, The Andromeda Strain, Lost World, and Congo. This book surpasses all of them. The characters are well thought out and are dynamic throughout the book. The basic plot of the story was consistent and moderately easy to follow. With only a few exceptions, this book was an easy reading, page turner of a book. Michael Crichton's theory's on Quantum Physics and Multiverses will really get you to thinking. 4 Stars

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: exciting combination
Review: Really two stories in one: the mad scientist with a plausible time machine, and archeologists fulfilling their dream by actually visiting the past they've been studying. The long initial discussion of "Quantum Teleportation" is a good fictionalization of new theories. It is respectable and timely, too, for an article with the same title appeared in the April 2000 Scientific American magazine.

Most of the rest of the novel takes place in the well-described Middle Ages (already visited in Crichton's Eaters of the Dead). In this unfamiliar setting the action heats up, and turns gritty and abruptly brutal. The archeological findings and procedures are realistic enough. Here the characters become not particularly lovable under the ferocious stress of their "new" world. The emphasis is on derring-do along with some ratiocination, but logic is subordinated to the demands of a good story.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Kept me reading, but a weak book anyway
Review: Like all of Crichton's work, it's a page-turner. The fighting scenes were exciting, and there was a decent amount of humor. But, the descriptions of the time period (and its nice, non-smelly toilets) was a bit too fairy tale. In general, I liked the characters, but I thought the characters needed to be developed more. One of the characters undergoes a metamorphosis halfway through the book, but there was no indication of how it happened. He just suddenly underwent a personality overhaul.

The day after I finished this book, I read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Same premise: Technology enables a historian to go back to the 1300s, and a crisis in the present day threatens to strand the time-traveller. Willis' book was much better.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Slow Start, Fine Details
Review: Attention to detail makes this a good read. Crichton's research into the Medieval period is extremely impressive, and his imagery is vivid. The only trouble is, the book takes forever to get started. If you can make it through the wordy beginning, you'll have a rollicking good time. I wonder why Crichton and Robin Cook both take forever to set you up for the story. We don't need all that information!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent mind candy!
Review: Crichton's science fiction generally has the plot: (1.)Somebody does something daring with dangerous high tech. (2.)Something goes terribly wrong. (3.) Protagonists, who are usually not responsible for the mess, find themselves running like hell. This pattern holds here. I thought it dragged a bit in the middle, but reved up again by the end. Overall, well worth the price in paperback. Crichton did good research on the historical period and it shows. One feature that was interesting was his attention to the practical problems his female characters faced in an era where, if you were a woman and very, very lucky, you were a well-treated item of personal property. But this book is really about the remarkable people who labor to reclaim the human past. I once considered becoming an archaeologist and was appalled to learn that I might spend years on a graduate degree, master several languages (most of them dead), do dirty, disgusting, student slave labor on various digs, and then find myself perpetually unemployed. I chickened out. I admire greatly the people with enough passion to know the odds and push ahead anyway. Such people would have the courage to cope with the situations Crichton throws at his characters.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Cannot put this one down!
Review: Crichton has done it again with this suspensful book about a group of historians who get more than they bargained for when they actually travel back to the 1300's to rescue their lost professor. The writing is fast paced and on the edge of your seat. If you buy this book (which you should)be sure you have a good amount of time to read because once you start you won't want to put it down. I eagerly await his next work.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not Wholly Plausible
Review: As someone with essentially no academic knowledge about quantum physics or themedieval era, I was still struck by several glaring logical inconsistencies in the plot.

For example, the book's "time travel" is supposedly based on the idea of multiple universes, with numerous parellel universes (some *very* similar to or own, differing in only miniscule ways) existing and newly emerging; the characters supposedly aren't really going back in time in our universe, but are traveling through a wormhole to a parellel universe which is the same as ours in the 14th century. However, if I'm really visiting a parellel universe, how do I know that I'm seeing the 14th century as it "really was" (or very close to this) in "my universe"?; I could be visiting a parellel universe which presents the past in a waay which diverges more markedly from "how it really was" in my universe.

The chief scientists liken he process of transferring a person to "the past" to "making a facsimile"; the computer gathers up lots of information, then recreates the person at the other end. However, if I send a fax or make a photocopy, the *original* doesn't go anywhere; it stays here, while the fax arrives at the other end. So, if this analogy is truly explanatory, why do the actual people have to be sent through the wormhole? One could instead create a copy of the person at the other end (the 1st fax), then have a 2nd copy (complete woth knowledge of all the experiences) come back.

And, if there's a translating device "here" which translates medieval languages into modern English for the people who are visiting the past, why can't the lab guys "here" give advice to, or exchange information about what's happening with, the people visiting the past?

Also, some of the medieval scenes seemed a bit overdone.


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