Rating: 
Summary: Total KRAP
Review: Too bad I can't give 0 stars. This is a total waste of time. I can't believe that a manuscript like this could even get published. It reads like a creative writing 101 experiment.There are so many problems with this book I don't know where to start. First, the writing itself is abysmal. If you're used to reading writers such as Ursula LeGuin, Philip Pullman, George R.R. Martin and others who've apparently taken the time to study writing, you'll be appalled at this amateurish drivel. But you could put up with this if the story was even marginally interesting. But it isn't. As another reviewer has already said, the characters are little more than cardboard cutouts used as mouthpieces for completely inane dialogue whose only purpose is to move the ill conceived story forward but never lets you know anything about the characters themselves. And frankly, you don't care. Kill them, don't kill them - it's all the same - just get me through this painfully idiotic story. The funny thing is, I actually finished the book. As a budding writer I was curious as to why such a poorly written, ill-conceived story could actually get published. I still haven't figured it out, other than to conclude that Michael Crichton has enough of a fan base to sell just about anything he puts out. Mostly I finished it out of some morbid fascination, the same thing that makes you slow down to watch the car wreck on the side of the road. Every creative writing student should read this as an example of what not to do. In short, this is great recycling material.
Rating: 
Summary: Love the story, Hate the subject matter
Review: I love Michael Cricthon, and all his novels. TIMELINE is a rip-roaring adventure, however the period of the Knights and the round table wasn't my favorite period, I did enjoy the jumping, fighting, explosions and the technical aspect but the history and language of the times made no never mind to me. But this is not to say that it was bad. I did like it. So SUE me.
Rating: 
Summary: A Waste of Time
Review: Now a major motion picture, as they say, Timeline is about time travel, archaeology and the Hundred Years War. It is also about an evil corporation (again!) trying to profit from off-the-wall science a la Jurassic Park. Being interested in the Middle Ages, I decided to suspend disbelief about the time travel gimmick and see what happened: I put myself in the author's hands. Sure enough, the first chapters involving the archaeology dig in France and the strange accidents and the first time travel scenes were pretty fun. But then the novel went downhill. Having arrived in 1357, I soon wanted to go back to the present and read Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror instead of Michael Crichton's cartoonish world peopled with cardboard stereotypes. Mr Crichton doesn't really have the bent for an historical novelist but he tries to be one for much of the book. If you like medieval history you may find this book only worth checking out of the library; the many historical references in the back of Timeline will send you in the right direction. Otherwise, don't waste your time on this disappointing novel. Two time capsules out of five.
Rating: 
Summary: This was a great book!
Review: Michael Crighton did it again. Another fantastic book! The warriors, the knights. I really felt like I could explain the past. He really fooled me with this one, Jurassic Park, i knew they would get out alive. But Timeline, I wasn't sure. That's all you need in a book. Suspense, good plot, and of course, imagination. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Sci-Fi, or history. One ore thing, I didnt know squat about Quantum Physics, and I still read and understood the book!!
Rating: 
Summary: Imaginative
Review: The book Timeline by Michael Crichton is one of the most imaginative books I have ever read. The way the author incorporates all of the tangent stories that he tells is especially invigorating. I love how he leaves character traits to implication so he doesn't describe every habit: "Edward Johnston, Regius Professor of History at Yale, squinted as the helicopter thumped by overhead" (p 48). This book is very suspenseful and I highly recommend it to those with a child's heart and an active imagination.
Rating:
Summary: 14th century France through the eyes of historians
Review: I listened to the unabridged audio version of Timeline and I don't know whether that is why I enjoyed it more than many other reviewers. The audio version is wonderful. Fortunately, the cast is fairly small, but Stephen Lang's reading never left me in doubt as to which character was speaking. The complaints in some reviews about the science in the book are puzzling. David Deutsch's "many worlds" theory is real science, not fiction. All Crichton had to do was give a brief, simplified explanation of "multiverses" and imply that his fictional company had found some variation on this. Nobody's intelligence is being insulted here and Amazon has several books for sale on the subject for anybody who's interested in learning more. Most importantly, Timeline is a book about history, not science fiction. A group of university archaelogists investigating an old monastery are "teleported" back to the real thing: fourteenth century France. We then get a guided tour of life in those days through the eyes of historians -- alternately thrilled at seeing what they had only imagined and stunned by what they'd got wrong. Crichton has a tendency to be didactic, but he really is a wonderful teacher. The history lesson rides along on the back on a fast-moving adventure story - of course our heroes run into trouble - and comes to a satisfying conclusion.
Rating:
Summary: Review from Author, Joy Lee Rutter
Review: If the characters expressed more feeling, and normal human reaction to what they experience, it would have easily earned 5 stars. That aside, I have to admit, I read it from cover to cover, and loved the concept. The explanation of "faxing" a person to another of the many universes actually sounded do-able and yes, I recommend the book, and sorry I missed the movie. Now I have to patiently await its arrival on DVD. Now...if only I could get my hands on that machine to "fax" a couple of my peers to another universe...another time...
Rating:
Summary: Great ideas, great action, but robotic charachters.
Review: Crichton's books are chock full of interesting facts and carefully crafted plausibility, but the characters are shallow. They are like little sims playing out the personality traits they are given when they are introduced. Still - time travel is fun to think think about and that's what the book's really about. It starts slow, but it's a real page turner by the end.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to put down
Review: Novels and films require its fans to suspend their disbelief, but if they have to suspend too far, the medium becomes laughable. Crichton has a unique ability to create situations that, although currently impossible, seem absolutely probable to his readers. This ability shines in Timeline. He has scientific theory to support time travel and also gives us an accurate and compelling glimpse into life in the 14th century. This is a difficult novel to put down and does not disappoint. Whereas many novels fizzle toward the end, this one never lets go.
Rating:
Summary: pretty good
Review: Timeline is a fascinating book that involves quantum physics. The idea of time travel is fascinating but Michael Crichton makes it slightly boring with his explanations of quantum physics. This allows the author to bury the reader with extraneous details that are not really necessary to the story. Other than that it was really good. I have read his other books and this one follows the same pattern as Jurassic park. It jumps around from character to character making it slightly difficult to follow. Chrichton goes into more detail than necessary in explaining how things work. This conflicts with the lightning fast pace of action that makes you wish he told you that something works and not how it works. This book reads considerably faster than his other novels and is also shorter.
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