Rating: 
Summary: One of his best
Review: As an avid Michael Crichton fan I must say that this book is problably his best work since Jurassic Park. In classic Michael Crichton fashion the beginning of the book grabs the reader while the rest of the book takes them on a wild ride. As to be expected the topic of the quantum therory as well as midevel France is well researched and thouroughly explained. He takes a difficult topic such as quantum theory and makes a great story using its vast possibilities and any holes in the theorey(which there are many) are filled in by Crichton's vivid imagination and immense genius to the point where you start believing it could be possible(remember when cloning seemed like a fairy tale and cloning dinosaurs even more far fetched). His description of life during midevel France is the work of shear brillance. What the charicters go through is a bit much and when you think they've had enough here it comes again, but hey its a story and it keeps you on the edge of your seat and makes you feel like your there with them. One critisim I have heard is that he develops charicters and then has them die off, or disappear altogether. This is not a completly correct crisisim however. While this may occur, Critchton has these charicters for a purpose and they serve there purpose as intended. Once they are no longer needed he decides to remove them to avoid cluttering the story, plus the plot line depends on these charicters. Crichton is known for is clever endings and this one does not disappoint. Forget the critisim, this book is excellent, the story is brilliant, and once you begin it you will not want to put it down until its finished.
Rating: 
Summary: Dreadful, amateurish
Review: This book is intended to be a bad made-for-TV movie, since anyone who enjoys reading will be appalled at the contrived plot. After about the 20th time one of our heroes is about to be killed, but instead is rescued at the last second by an incredibly-improbable event, I started rooting for the cartoonish bad guys.
Rating: 
Summary: I cant wait for the movie!
Review: The aspect I like about Michael Crichton is he thoroughly researches his material and gives the impression he is an expert in the topic he chooses to write about, as is the case in "Timeline". I wont deny it, this book was definitely a page turner and I looked forward to coming home everyday from work and staying up to the wee-hours of the night finishing the book. I especially liked the first half of Timeline, in which Crichton does an excellent job in building up the plot, piecing it together page by page. However, I must equally admit, though the remaining half of the book was fun and far from being boring, it somehow veered off into "fantasy-land" and was fairly predictable and unfortunately, "Hollywooded Out". There are a couple of loopholes in Crichton's character development...I feel he built up the roles of the Indian Cop and Doctor in the beginning and suddenly they disappear from the book altogether. This goes for the old, lucid engineer they find in the desert...By the end of the book, the reader still will not learn how he ended up in a New Mexican desert with no car to begin with...well, I dont want to ruin it for the new reader so I will leave it at that... All and all though, Crichton's book is enjoyable, and as always, you get the feeling you are living among the characters in the book; Dodging arrows, raiding a castle, jousting a knight...I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in Midievil history. Timeline will make for an excellent movie (Hopefully it wont turn out like "Sphere", where the book was awesome and the movie was so terrible it would make poor Gene Siskel role in his grave!), and I anticipate its release one day...
Rating: 
Summary: A raucous medieval adventure
Review: Timeline is a styrofoam story about a visionary sociopath who is secretly (well only a few hundred people who work for him really know what going on but for all intents and purposes its secret) developing historical theme parks based on time travel. But as with all sociopathic (not really a word but then this isn't really a novel) visionaries the big plan starts to unravel. To save his mad dream he uses, who else? but his ingenuous intellectuals who are working on a pivotal archeological dig. A little heel clicking, sputtering, plunging, and spurring (horses that is) later and our trio have fixed the problem, two have fallen in love and a third stays behind in a world he feels more suited to. And the sociopathic, visionary who wants to entertain the world? He cleverly meets his fate in time, proving once and for all after being duped most innocents turn into demented, vengeful, sadomasochistic, maladjusted boneheads. Crichton and his elves have in Timeline retreaded Jurassic Park. Why? It's what machines do. And this is also what machines do. "Compulsive Reading...Brilliantly imagined" - Los Angeles Times. "Exciting...Classic Adventure..." - USA Today. "More screams per page...than Jurassic Park and the Lost World combined" - San Diego Union-Tribune. And my personal favourite - "One of his best..." Philadelphia Inquirer. Timeline... a raucous adventure... a timeless tale of deception and love... none better... Really, who can resist?
Rating:
Summary: In a land far, far away...
Review: For fellow faire geeks, this is one for you. When you miss the enchantment of long ago, this book will take you back. Michael Crichton's language is vivid and draws you in. Potential movie? Maybe. I can't wait for the game. Is there a more wonderful way to fall asleep than with visions of France and knights and damsels floating before your eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: So-so
Review: In a nutshell: even though this novel is entertaining and will help you survive a boring trans-atlantic flight, it will not keep you awake until the early hours of dawn, which is my most important criterion for an excellent book. Let's start with the positive side. The author has obviously done his homework; especially the descriptions of life in medieval times appear very accurate (even though I am not an expert in this area). For the time-travel part, it is based on concepts of quantum mechanics, and they are not entirely misrepresented - more than can be expected in this complicated topic. Furthermore, Crichton has not wasted too many words on boring fill-paragraphs, so that the story stays moderately interesting throughout. In contrast, Timeline suffers from a big limitation of time-travel stories: there simply is not way to explain away the paradoxa and impossibilities of the concept. Whenever details of the time-travel technology were explained in any detail, I stopped and said to myself: 'Nah, that just can't be!' These are also the places where the concepts of quantum mechanics are often misapplied, and used to make up for inconsistencies with technical punch terms. So, if you are picky about details like I am, this may not be for you. The characters of the story are somewhat shallow. You know those kind of novels where one of the main characters is carefully developed, becomes almost dear to the reader, and then is suddenly killed, leaving you stunned and thinking: 'No, wait a minute, that just can't happen!' - well, this is not that kind of story. I didn't really care about any of the people in the book, and their skills matched all the requirements of what happened too 'magically', making the story less believable. As did the 'action': The heroes too often got themselves in dangerous situations, out of which they always escaped through events that were just a little too convenient. Enough rambling, if you like Crichton, read it, but don't expect wonders.
Rating:
Summary: Formulaic Crichton Doesn't Deliver
Review: It appears that Michael Crichton has figured out that every book he pens is destined to become a movie. It's a shame, really; because what started out as a promising novel ended up leaving me extremely disappointed. For the first couple of hundred pages, Timeline is a page-turner that takes you through a somewhat believable story that has Crichton's usual assortment of facts and plot twists. (I do give him credit for being able to make a story 'realistic' without turning it into a science or history lesson.) And-- like other Crichton books-- everything moves in a predictable way with no real surprises. But that doesn't bother you since it is, after all, interesting reading. But unlike his previous work from what seems like now the distant past, Crichton writes the final half of the book more like a screenplay than a novel-- complete with corny heroes, oversimplified situations and overdone theatrics. I could see him saying as he wrote the book: "what would a typical Mel Gibson character do in this situation?" As an avid reader, I find this offensive and not too short of insulting. Please... don't cast the movie until the book's finished! Think, if you will, of a painter... creating a beautiful background with his brushes, only to glue pictures of people out of a magazine in the forefront.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointment...
Review: I anxiously await each Michael Crichton book. With the exception of Congo, I have enjoyed his books tremendously and was expecting a great read in Timeline. Rather, I found a story line that never approached even the remotest possibility of being plausible. Then when the unfortunate four characters are transported into the past, they encounter an incredible number of life threatening skirmishes. The first battle was interesting enough I suppose. Same with the third and maybe even the fifth or sixth. But when you got to the twelfth or fifteen life threatening skirmish, you begin to think that maybe this was more a script for a computer game than a novel. In a little over 37 hours, they are stabbed, shot with arrows, sliced with swords and encounter every imagine obstacle. These people are either supper human or incredibly lucky.
Rating:
Summary: Read it as an e-book, and I just couldn't put it away
Review: Timeline is one of my favority Chrichton books. He really captures the mind of his reader with this book. I read it through my PDA - actually as the very first e-book I have ever come across. Timeline has been released free of charge in e-book format by the way :-) Before commencing to read the book in the relatively small format the screen of a PDA provides, I was indeen sceptical, and really just wanted to try out this new book media form. I found the book so fascinating that I didn't even notice the small book format, and that I eventually read through more than 2000 "Microsoft Reader" screen pages. I would most definitly recommend that you read this book in any form available to you :-) Best regards Michael
Rating:
Summary: Timeline
Review: Michael Crichton scores again with Timeline! Just a couple technicalities glazed over that were covered more thoroughly in Jurassaic Park. Strict entertainment, of course. But Michael, "Jesus Christ" is not the only profanity in the world. And as much as I like reading your novels, it really does insult my personal saviour. Please search for another one for your next novel. I will probably buy it - Sooth! (For sooth, and notwithstanding.)
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