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Summary: Timeline
Review: I have to say that Timeline is by far the best science fiction book I have ever read. It ties together history and science in such a fasinatiing way that you stay interested through out the entire book. The first few chapters are hard to grasp because most of the text is setting the scene for later chapters but as the book continues you are gradually pulled into the pages and it is almost imposible to set down. After the "boring part" is over the book moves on the the fasinating parts of the "secret lab", ITC.
Allthough alot of things in the book confused me and at times i found my self pausing to think about everything that had gone on in previouse chapters, it was over all a very well writen book. The twist and turns in the book keep you at the edge of your seat waiting for what will happen next, but the true scientific posibilities keep a great balance and the book stays realistic with an imaginational blend.
The book takes alot of turns but starts out with a very simple but important scene. A couple finds a man in the dessert and there are very strange things about this guy. Well the couple picks him up and learn that he work at this "secret lab". The lab has kept things "under raps" and no one really knew what went on in the lab until just reciently. Things are getting out because things are going wrong.
This novel is full of adventure, history, and science. I think everyone should read this book wether your interested in science or not. It has so much interseting things weaven into the pages that no matter what your interested in, you will enjoy it. I think if you can get past the first few chapters, any one can learn from this book. It is very intersting and fun-filled. Timeline is definitly a great book to read and I recomend it to everyone.
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Summary: Timeline Review
Review: Timeline has got to be one of the best books that I have ever read. I have to admit, at first, I wasn't too interested in ready a science fiction book or a book that was centered around the Middle Ages, but as I started getting into the book...I couldn't put it down. I would find myself reading late into the night, but still not wanting to go to bed because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. This had so many twists and turns that I don't even know how I kept up with it all. But, sometimes I would find myself skimming back through the book to recheck things to make sure I was following right along with what was going on.I love the way the book started off with the mystery of the man in the desert. That whole thing, I think is what kept me reading. I wanted to find out just who the man was, why he was there, why he died, and what he had to do with quantum technology. The one thing that puzzles me about the whole book is quantum technology. I know they explain the way it works throughout the book, but what I really done understand is HOW!!! I mean, it's easy to understand what they are trying to do with the "time machine" (which people have tried explaining to me as not necessarily being a time machine)...but I really don't see how all this technology works. I guess that it's easy for someone who enjoys science and understands it easily, but that's certainly not me. People always say that the book is ALWAYS better than the movie. And I'm sure for this book...that will be the same case. I don't think there is any way for the movie to be any better than the way Michael Crichton has portrayed the characters and the plot of timeline. I, for one, can not wait to see the movie. After reading Timeline, I think I'm going to begin reading some other books by Michael Crichton. If he can do this great with writing a book about the Middle Ages and science, then the rest of his books have to be just a good...if not better! Even though that it was complex at times and I wasn't exactly positive as to what was going on, I enjoyed this book far more than any other book that I have read lately. I would definitely have to recommend this book to everyone. You may be like me and not have any interest whatsoever in science fiction, historical fiction, and so on, but this book is worth it. I never thought I'd hear myself saying that I ever enjoyed a book like this...but boy was I wrong. However, I suggest this book for teenagers and adults. There is some language used that some younger people should not be necessarily reading. So after taking the time to read all these reviews and you still don't want to take the time and actually read Timeline...you seriously don't know what you are missing out on.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet
Review: I don't know if it's the Oreos I'm eating, or if it's Michael Crichton's gift for writing, but this book is sweet! From the intriguing beginning to the stirring end, Timeline is a sugary sweet success for literature. Okay, but Oreos aside, this book is a great read. Ye who be lovers of action, come forth! Ye who relish historical fiction, step forward! Those of you who just like reading about knights in full armor swinging broadswords at each other, come on down, too! This book appeals to all of you, and maybe even to those who are forced to read it for class. Yeah, that last one was me, but after I finished complaining about it I found out what a good book it was. It comes as a complete package, with action, suspense, mystery, and a wee bit of romance.
No questions asked, this book has plenty of action. You are made to wait a while for the good stuff, but once you're in the thick of it, you'll feel like the book is going to start bleeding any second. That's right, the squeamish should steer clear of this book. Michael takes the initiative of explaining several gruesome executions in detail, so be warned. It's not too bad, though, and doesn't stop you from enjoying the rest of the book.
Suspense is included, the kind that makes you want to get through all five hundred pages in one stretch (which I do not recommend attempting). He usually has two or three different story lines going on at once, but they are easy to follow. I liked the way he sets up the second half of the book in a counting down layout, because it gives the book its own mojo, and adds to the building suspense.
The mystery is laced into this book, from the whereabouts of the secret passage to the identity of the missing ITC employee. Michael usually lets you make your own predictions way before he reveals the answer and often leaves you with a feeling of "duh!" It allows you to feel involved in the story line, though, and is a complementing aspect of the novel.
No, this isn't a romance novel, and no, it's not filled with intimate love scenes. It does have romance; the writer just doesn't stress it. Seeing as most of the main characters are in their twenties, it would be hard not to include some chemistry between them. I personally think that all good novels (especially those over four hundred pages) need a little romance, because it is a part of life. A good character that readers can relate to has to have feelings towards the opposite sex, or feel some need for companionship. This can be expressed either through a close friendship, or an intimate relationship. This book does it through a little of both.
Well, there you have it. I officially deem this book a good read for those who love to read good reads. What that means is that you should stop reading this review and go buy this book. You're welcome, Michael Crichton.
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Summary: Timeline Review
Review: Timeline is the most realistic science fiction novel I have ever read. You get so caught up in the novel you forget what your reading isn't factual. The descriptions of quantum physics and multiuniverse theory seem as if they are taken right out of a textbook. This book draws you in and keeps you wondering what will happen next and how will the characters react to the situations thrown at them. The book starts off with a couple who finds a man that is very sick. The doctors find he is one of the ITC workers and they start to wonder what this company is really doing. The company has managed to keep a tight seal on their operations until lately when it seems plenty of things start to go wrong. First with the old man, then the professor questioning their motives for funding the archeological digs, then several workers being injured in a blast, and then several people stuck in the past with no way home. The professor goes to ITC headquarters looking for answers and ends up in 14th century Castlegard. He is stuck there with no way home. Meanwhile in France his associates find a shocking letter from him but it was written in 1357. The next day the leaders of the dig are rushed back to ITC headquarters and are notified of the professor's situation and how they must be the ones to save him. They can hardly believe what these scientists are telling them. The head of ITC Robert, Doniger explains to them that he has built the first quantum computer capable of sending people back in time through different universes. He says it is just like sending a fax back in time. They don't believe that it is actually possible for them to travel back to the site that they have been studying for years. They soon find out that it is possible and are back in Castlegard searching for the professor. Although it isn't as easy as they thought it would be. They find themselves constantly fighting for their lives and being separated from each other never knowing whether their friends were alive or not. They frantically fight for their lives and try to get everyone in the same place within 37 hours so they can return. While they are dealing with problems of war and injury they have no idea that back at home there is a problem with the machines and they may never be able to return. This novel is full of adventure, science, and history. It's the perfect blend of so many things and can be enjoyed by people of many interests. This book just keeps getting better as you read it and you will never guess the ending. Even though some of the scientific parts can be a little hard to understand the book pieces everything together and is easy to read. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves history and science and I think the author has done a wonderful job of blending topics to make this book enjoyable to everyone.
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Summary: Timeline Review
Review: Michael Crichton's Timeline is a superbly written fantasy adventure that seemlessly ties together history and science. With the strategic placement of cliff-hangers and heart pounding action, Timeline can be nearly impossible to put down. The story unfortunately takes quite a bit of time to pick up speed, spending the first hundred plus pages developing an archeaological setting that is only semi-interesting. Although this initial setting is quite boring, it is essetial to the story's later events. Once away from the archaeological setting, the story moves to a far more interesting location: the secret labs of a growing company called ITC. Here, Crichton does an excellent job of explaining, in detail, how the new "universe-hopping" technology works through Miss Kramer, Mr.Gordon, and Mr. Doniger who are all affiliated with the ITC company. Crichton is obviously versed quite thoroughly and impressively with this theoretical technology that is currently being developed. The story creates a team of admirable and lovable characters who's assignment is to retrieve their professor who has been lost in one of the parallel universes that he has been
sent to. The story again picks up in entertainmen value and ,until the end of the story, continues to grow more and more exciting.The team goes to the twelfth century to save their professor and are led by two military guides, who both quickly meet their end once in the past. Now, without assistance from experienced military guides, they must try to find the professor and return home. Timeline takes the characters from believing that they have promising chances of getting home, to feeling hopeless, and back to optimism. Crichton takes the characters up and down in this manne throughout the novel. Meanwhile, back at the ITC labs, technical difficulties makes the chances of the teamgetting back home look even more hopeless than it did before. The story develops its antagonists just as well as it develops its heroes. Robert De Kere (one of the novels primary antagonists) for example, is a very easily despiseable character, which is essential to antagonist development. Andre Marek, one of the novel's primary antagonists on the other hand, is a heroic, adventurous character who, at times, is able to single-handedly make the reader wish to continue reading. Michael Crichton also did a wonderful job with character interactions. The relationships built between the main characters is interesting to observe as the story goes on because it changes so dramatically. In the beginning of the story, the characters interactions seem very disconnected, as if they have no connection to one another. They have no bond before they enter the past but as time progresses on their adventure, they grow very close to one another for two reasons: first, each of them show each other some very heroic characteristics and secondly because they had no one else (they were not fluent in the language that was spoken at their location). Michael Crichton has an astonishing ability to make you laugh, cry, scream, and smile with the lovable characters he creates. Timeline is undoubtedly a must read.
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Summary: Timeline, Blending All Genres
Review: This book, Timeline, is one of great character and is very intriguing. Whether you like science or can understand it, this book always keeps you on your toes. You could be a scientist, historian, adventure lover, or just a lover of Michael Crichton and love this book for its sense of detail and twisted looks. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes, for this appeals to all tastes there are. It makes you wonder what can really be out there that we don't know about and what is still to be discovered. Starting off with a mysterious tint as a man just appears out in the desert and later dies, it brings in the sense of curiosity as the book goes on and only seems to make up more questions in your mind. Timeline opens your eyes a violent time in history that many people don't know about.
This book provides a great insight into the medieval period in Europe, describing many different aspects of life at that time and how certain things were going. There always seems more to be learned and faster ways of doing things, which is exactly what Michael Crichton is making you think about. The way things go today, you never know what the world really knows and how live things that seem so dead can be. Once you start to get into the book, you notice how the company that is enclosed from the public, has something to hide. Only when you find out what it is can you make your opinion as to whether it is good or bad. Myself being a mystery lover, it did not take much past the first ten pages to keep me engaged in the story. Michael Crichton easily portrays how businesses really work and how our own press once to get into every detail there is. At different parts of the book, multiple cases, problems, and expectancies occur to keep one's head always turning and mind always whizzing.
Fiction or not, our world is not looking enough to the past to make the future as it is stated in the book. That is the basis and reason why "ITC," the company involved in the book, created what it did.For any person of any age, Michael Crichton's Timeline shows a different view on history, science, and the regular world as we know it. We think that the world is very dangerous today, only to find out how more gruesome it was back in the Middle Ages in France. Timeline can make a science fiction lover out of anyone with curiosity of knowledge and/or technology. It should get high remarks for the way different genres of books are incorporated to make it as successful as it is. The description of the characters is rather eccentric, by judging what they went through, yet it showed what struggles people faced in times where their life was very valuable and easily taken away.
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Summary: GREAT BOOK!!!
Review: Michael Crichton put every scientists and historians dream into the book Timeline. A book about traveling, not traveling in the present from place to place but to the past. This is not only a science fiction book but also an historical book, giving information about the past. It's about a past where danger lurks around every corner. Not knowing where to go or who to trust. People die of plague and war, every page you'll be on the edge of you seat thinking "WOW, what'll happen next?" You'd be biting you nails if you weren't holding the book. Some people die in the harshest of ways and others don't. Meanwhile in the present the people at ITC have their own problems. No one can come back without help. The man that "runs the show" thinks historians are stupid and cannot do anything. But one historian stays behind and proves him wrong. If it wasn't for the historian the company would have to explain to the entire world why six people are missing at the companies fault.
Timeline is the perfect book for the science wiz. For me it was hard to understand the whole time machine thing. Like understanding how it worked with the quantum foam, how it destructs you but you're not dead, how it's multiverses, and how when you go back to the past and you do something it doesn't change it in the present. These to me are very confusing but overall it's an excellent book. The best parts of the book, in my opinion, were the parts in the past were they fight for their lives using their brains. Thinking of ways to "cheat death" so they can return. They have thirty seven hours to grab the Professor and get out of the dangerous past where war is soon to erupt. But then they discover that there is someone else in the past that if from the present and didn't come through with them. So now they must try to get out of the world before he gets them and gets the marker from one of them to get back home. Now its life and death to get home. The book is not only about death but about the passion of history and science as one. The book is not only a love story between people but love for science and history. Michael Crichton used the views of many people in the book (the characters) to tell the story. This was a great technique for his book it got the point across and helped explain the story better. I would highly recommend this book to any science wiz, history wiz, young adult, or adult to read for it is entertaining to all. One thing that I strongly disliked about the book was how they used animals as the "guinea pigs" for the project. I'm strongly against animal cruelty so on that part and do not approve of, but that is quite limited in the book so I was good
This was a great book, not only because of the action, because it actually had a plot. The plot was.......... I'll let you find out so go read!!! I loved this book!!!
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Summary: Timeline Review for my Governor's School Class
Review: As I was reading the book Timeline, I found my self inevitably intrigued. Some of the concepts of the book, such as quantum physics, were very interesting and had great appeal. This book is a great adventure and will keep you on the edge of your seat.
It all starts with a strange man wandering in the desert rambling about strange things that no one quite understands. He is taken to the hospital and eventually dies of major cardiac arrest. The police and the hospital staff are left with unanswered questions after they receive a very disturbing and confusing autopsy.
Meanwhile, in France, young students from Yale are studying at a major archaeological dig on the Dordogne River. Their professor decide to go to New Mexico to talk to the head of ITC, which is a company that is funding the dig in France, because he had some suspicions as to what ITC's exact intentions were for funding the site. While he is away, the young students discover a new chamber in a building that they are excavating. They come across a strange document that contains the professor's handwriting.
A private jet arrives at the site and two of the students and one of the archaeological leaders are whisked away. There they meet the head of ITC, Robert Doniger, and he informs them that their professor has gone back in time and may be in danger and they must go back and rescue him. He tells them that he had invented the first quantum computer, capable of sending people through foam in atom particles to alternate universes.
The students and their leader must defend themselves among the corruption of the fourteenth century. They face many struggles on the way and often lose each other and at times think of each other as dead. As they are trying desperately to get everyone together and go back to their universe, as war in breaking out on the Dordogne River, and the professor finds himself in the middle of it. He knows the ways of gunpowder and fire and knows the ultimate weapon to defeat the coming troops. He is consulted by the king himself and the professor gives him advice that could potentially secure their win in the war. Meanwhile, the students must find the key to a secret passage to where their professor is located.
Follow Kate, Chris, and Marek as they go the longest journey of their lives for 37 hours to find their professor and hopefully bring him home to safety. The road will not be easy and they will often times have to struggle before succeeding.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in physics and has a sort of abstract way of thinking. The concept of quantum physics, while somewhat explained in the book and enables the trio to go back I time, is very abstract and a hard concept to grasp. Nevertheless, this book will hold your attention. It is definitely page turner. I never thought a book could give you that on the edge feeling, but I proved myself wrong with Timeline. My recommendation: read the book before you see the movie, as most of the time the book is better than the movie, and I think this is one of those times. Do yourself a favor and pickup Timeline today by Michael Crichton. You won't regret it.
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Summary: Historical fiction meets Science Fiction
Review: This book was a mixture of science fiction and historical fiction so well blended, you did not know where the science part began and the historical part stopped. As much as I enjoyed the book however, the constant switching back and forth between universes made me have to double check that I comprehended the right information for the right universe/time period.
I also enjoyed the constant struggle that André, Kate, and Chris had to overcome as they were in the other universe. It showed me aspects of the Middle Ages that I would have never have found out just reading textbooks and articles, or even in the classroom. It put the details into perspective and made them seem real and an immediate problem, not just a silly element that the author wanted to put in his book to make it longer.
Crichton did a fine job of making sure that all the details went together, with the exception of the Professor's letter. The letter was out of place in our universe and was supposed to be in the other universe, because the Professor never came back to put the letter here in the first place. It was one of the things that confused me most with the attention of whether they were time traveling or going to other universes.
The part of the book where the old physicist was found in the desert also seemed a little out of place. Maybe it did not even belong in the book; the author might have found another way to introduce the problem and setting. I personally did not see the relevance of the desert and the rest of the book.
As enlightening as this book was, I think that this book is for mature teenagers and above. Some of the language is not appropriate and some of the content is violent and overall too advanced for young readers. The quantum physics parts of the novel would also present a problem to young readers. I had a difficult time understanding those parts of the book, and I have a fairly high comprehension level. Some of the science parts of the book could even be taken out and the author would still get the science fiction part of the novel down in the reader's mind.
On the whole, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys an action filled novel with intellectual content included. It was an amazing literary work and I commend the author for his ability to put the content of the novel into words as he did. The topic would be a hard subject to write an essay on, much less a novel 484 pages long. Crichton is an excellent science fiction writer, I have enjoyed all of his books that I have read.
This novel is a good one for history teachers to teach their students about medieval life without having to get up in front of the classroom and talking. Just remember that the content is advanced and you may want to preview it before you hand the book out to a class.
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Summary: Great Book Ms. Carr
Review: Timeline was over all a pretty good book. The story was great and I loved the adventure portrayed. Chriton uses 3rd person omniscient to get inside each characters mind. Each chapter left me wanting to know what would happen next. I think he did a great job explaining the complex subject of quantum physics. This book seemed to take an ordinary subject like quantum physics that not many people who read the book are familiar with, and make them believe it could be used to travel into other worlds.
The story is of college students working on an archeological dig in France. The team stumbles on a message from their professor written in six hundred year old ink and on six hundred year old paper. The students go to ITC, (ITC is the company that sponsors their dig and is researching quantum physics) to have a chance to experience the past and save their professor (I didn't give anything away the back of the book says more than I've told you).
The book was also great at giving information without boring the reader. I have found in many books the author will try to fill the reader in but is actually making the mistake of boring the reader. The detailed way of life in the 1400's made the reader believe much of what was going on.
I would recommend this book to every one with a 9th grade reading level and a lot of time to kill. Not that the book is bad but it does take a long time to read. I have watched the movie before I read the book, which is always wrong, but I have found the book much more entertaining than the movie. The movie was missing much of the explanation of quantum physics and a few characters.
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