Rating: 
Summary: Starts with a bang....settles for cliche.
Review: Ok I admit it. I am a geeky tech nerd who actually enjoyed taking physics in college, and Excalibur is one of my favorite movies, therefore, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. A great idea. pretty darn adventurous and even a bit stimulating - kind of like looking a family picture from long long ago and seeing a resemblence of yourself. Anyway, my only criticims are that the book seems to retreat into cliches, and fairly predictable outcomes late in the book. "My Hero" ? Where did that come from ? MC could have taken it 100 different directions but he settles for plain ole adventure story. That's fine. I would have like less adventure and more medieval insight, but maybe that's not MC; its me.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting SF adventure; too many loose plot threads
Review: An intriguing combination of science fiction and a medeival adventure, TIMELINE reads like the fusion of a screen play and a novel. Many novels lose a bit in translation to the screen. Crichton appears to finesse that problem by merging screenplay and novel. A potentially great story gets watered down in the process. While the 20th century megalomaniac CEO is a bit shallow, the quantum physics discussions make enough sense to allow suspension of disbelief. Later revelations that characters do not "time travel," but instead regenerate in alternate universes, conflict with a critical plot element placing 20th century artifacts at the "dig" in France. This paradox is never addressed. The action is descriptive enough, and only one of the many combat scenes depicts a 20th century medeivalist in a Holywoodesque fight against multiple opponents. Tough to suspend disbelief on that one. A sincere effort is made to overcome the 14th century vs 20th century language problem by providing quantum computer driven translators to medeival scholars specializing in a particular region of 14th century France. Regrettably, the language barrier isn't sustained throughout the 37 hours that the mission is alloted, though the early confusion experienced by some characters is well described. Picking up and conversing in a language you have studied in books and on tapes takes more than a few hours. Try studying Italian; then converse with a man who only speaks Neapolitan dialect. It is confusing. On the bright side, Crichton provides some intriguing alternatives to commonly accepted medeival anachronisms, gives a great description of old growth forests, and has an eye for action. Unlike some reviewers, I did not find the beheading of a character to be gratuitous violence, and found the joust scene to be credible enough to fit. He does a shallow exposition of medeival intrigue, and gives Chivalry a nudge or two in the ribs. Overall, the story could eliminate some plot digressions: for example, what story value did the crazy green knight add? Or Chris falling out of the boat? Why not develop Kate and Chris' realtionship more fully throughout the story? TIMELINE is good for reading on an airplane flight, but below the standard Crichton set with ANDRIMEDA STRAIN. Hope the film deal works out, it could be a lot of fun.
Rating: 
Summary: Timeline - One audio book that I couldn't finish.
Review: I tried for 4 tapes to get interested in this book and could not do it. I put it up and tried again later and still thought it was one of the books that I would throw away. Wasted money. I never did finish it. My daughter read the book and she didn't finish it either.
Rating: 
Summary: Liked it more than I thought I would
Review: This is one of those novels that changes directions several times just to throw you off a little. I enjoyed the physics element in the beginning and the adventure of the rest of the book. It was quite fast paced. I could see it as a movie but the book was quite descriptive of the characters and battles. Good fun!
Rating: 
Summary: it was great
Review: Michael Crichton's Timeline is well written. In my opiniion Timeline is one of the best Science fiction book's that has been written. It had suspense, and drama which made Timeline a well written book. The plot about time travel kept Timeline from being anything but boring. The character interaction seemed real. All the details added suspense and made Timeline an even better story. The characters Gomez, Chris, the doctor, the professor, and the others all fit into the story perfectly. I have also read Michael Crichton's Airframe, The Lost World, Sphere, Eaters of the Dead, Jurassic Park, Congo, The Andromeda strain. These books also have a great plot and character interaction. I would recommend these book to those who like fiction books and great literature.
Rating:
Summary: What happened here?
Review: Being an enormous fan of Crichton's work, I could not possibly help but buy this book the month it came out. Jurassic Park is still my favorite novel to this day, and I own a copy of all Crichton's fiction except Eaters of the Dead (which was good, but too dry for my taste). The thing I like most about his books is that he teaches us things. Incidentally, everything he writes about is stuff I really enjoy: pathology, genetics, xenobiology, quantum mechanics, role-reversal on controversial aspects of law and ethics. In addition, his characters are always diverse and colorful. They might be shady or bright in nature, but they're always colorful. The fact that I've never had any interest in medieval France didn't help any, but there was something else missing. Perhaps it was the lack of dynamic personalities like those he created in Disclosure and Airframe, the way he put the story into the hands of his characters instead of the narrator. Or maybe it was the fact that two cool people were killed right off the bat. Whatever it was, Timeline is a book I probably won't be reading again, not for a long time. I recommend it to anyone who has a taste for your basic drama/action/adventure. But for a true Crichton fan like myself, maybe you should wait until his next one.
Rating:
Summary: Just okay.
Review: Our neighborhood book club chose this as its March selection and rated it at 3 to 3.5. We too observed that it appeared to have been written as the precurser to a screenplay. Members of the group commented that the chase episodes became old after about the first two -- a plot device perhaps overused. Others likened the plot to "Time and Again" by Jack Finney; the project leader's name in that book was Danziger ... and a character made a choice similar to one in Crichton's book. We found the science interesting to contemplate, but not being physicists cannot comment on its accuracy. Definitely was an interesting look into the Middle Ages.
Rating:
Summary: I like it.
Review: "~The best novel I've read since The Triumph & the Glory. In terms of chilling excitement, on-the-edge-of-your-seat suspense, and scene after scene of powerful confrontation, Timeline has few rivals. I thought the concept was fascinating but had my doubts that Crichton could pull it off, but he did. The story was credible enough for the mass fiction market. It wasn't perfect, but what is ? OK, the J.K. Rowling books are if you ask a twelve-year-old, but other than them ? Crichton has a good one here.
Rating: 
Summary: Wait for the movie
Review: I have been a longtime fan of Michael Crichton. I count Jurassic Park, Congo, Airframe, Sphere, and The Andromeda Strain, are among my favorites. I have found that this book, like The Lost World, seem to be written as if they were rough screenplays rather than novels. Both books contain classic Crichton-esque close-to-reality science fiction, but both lack in what made his earlier books so wonderful. Crichton expends only one page per major character in character development! Once the story begins, all derscriptions of characters and settings disappear. It is so bad that Crichton has to resort to using PICTURES to describe what in other novels he would have written about in great detail. What the reader is left with is a wonderful and somewhat believable scientific premise and a pretty good story with utterly one-dimensional and boring characters and a complete lack of scene development. This is one of those few cases where the movie is most certainly going to be better than the book.
Rating:
Summary: Uggghhhhh!
Review: When I first heard about this book, I thought it would be a very good Science Fiction book with plenty of adventure. But as I got into it, I thought it was very boring and didn't have enough science in it. Also, I think this book would have been better without all the swearing. Now, this is the first Crichton book I've tried to read, and I recently learned that his books generally have swearing in them, but in my point of view, they'd be better off without it. I didn't even finish this book, and I don't plan to, either.
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