Rating: 
Summary: A real page turner!
Review: Timeline by Michael Crichton Ballantine Books - New York 1999A real page turner! The scientists excavating a medieval site in France are puzzled when a vice president from their sponsoring company, ITC, shows up with more information on the site than they have discovered. The founder and president of ITC is the brilliant physicist Robert Doniger whose secrecy is legendary and whose research into high speed computers and medical technology are only a cover for his time travel experiments. The team leader, Dr Edward Johnston returns to the US to try and discover what is going on and ends up lost in the past at the time when their excavation site is in the midst of the 100 year war. Chris, Kate and Andre, part of the archaeological team, go back in time to try and find Dr Johnston and bring him back. From this point on it is touch and go if they will be able to return. They find themselves embroiled in the war and are trusted by neither side. Time and time again they are captured, only to escape by the skin of their teeth only to be caught up again in the treacherous and murderous schemes of the combating knights. The story is fast paced, filled with exciting skirmishes and hundreds of minute details of a life and times of 600 years previous. I enjoyed the detail and the excitement and had difficulty putting the book down. It is one of Crichton's better books.
Rating: 
Summary: a historical masterpiece
Review: The thing to note when reading this book is that there are a lot of irrelavent charachters. you think the first half is good but wait until you get to the second....
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I've never been one to read science fiction but when my boyfriend (knowing my love for reading) reccomended it to me i decided to give it a try, for his sake. I read it in a day and then i reread it again the next day. this book has forever joined my list of favorites. with a crew of quite believable charcters and a time travel plot (not to mention knights, kings, castles and the likes) this book is put into the catgory of adventurous page turner. Take some time and read this truly AWESOME book!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Story Idea That Went Astray In The Execution
Review: What's happened to editorial discipline and writer restraint? Someone should have at least had the professional perspective to realize that some stories need to be heavily repaired before putting print ink to paper. Crichton and his editors obviously felt that this book would sell on name recognition alone. The problems: 1) stereotypical characters, 2) unbelievable motivations, 3) underdeveloped subplots that could have added a lot to the story but were dropped or badly handled, and, for me the biggest problem 4) the bad guy received a punishment NOT equal to the crimes committed. He didn't kill anybody and wasn't threatening to take over the world. He was just trying to make money by UNDERUTILIZING a remarkable scientific process. A more suitable judgement would have been for him to lose his company and be shamed in the eyes of his competitors. The good: Some of the scenes had good cinematic impact, but even these were overshadowed by the overall lack of cohesiveness.
Rating:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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: 
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.
| 
