Rating: 
Summary: Typical Crichton
Review: This is the sixth Crichton I've read and I can usually write the same review for every one. His storyline ideas are incredible. Very believable science fiction ideas which translate over to movies well. His character development however is his weak point. I found this to be true in Timeline as well. This story was not his best either, leaving you wondering what the purpose of all this was by the time you are finished. A fairly quick reading book and not all bad, but I can't give it a rousing endorsement either.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent summer reading
Review: Timeline is in my opinion one of Crichton's better books. Its a great blend of the usual Crichton formula but I found it highly original and clever. This time, the thrust is on Quantum theory applied to the middle ages, but I was struck by how well Crichton was able to make the science fiction believeable (and understandable even to the layman). I was particulary impressed that many of the beliefs and suppositions the historians had about the middle ages turned out to be simply wrong--makes you really wonder if what we learned in school on any subject will withstand the test of time...Anyway, what's especially good about this book is that the characters are much better developed and more believeable than some of his other ones. Aside from "Chris", who really didn't draw a lot of my sympathy, I thought the other characters were not only realistic, but quite likeable in many respects. I thought some of Crichton's other characters in Lost World and Jurassic Park were rather weak. The book had a great pace and with all the usual twists and turns, I found myself squirming with amazement, completely caught up in the world that Crichton had created. Lastly, this book has a pretty decent and satisfying ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Good idea...bad execution
Review: I really liked this book...I did, but I found myself reading The Naked God by Peter Hamilton more often than picking up Timeline. (I was reading both at the same time, time constraints) Michael Chriton's most recent books have incorporated a futuristic, but eerily easily acheiveable technology with a dangerous "All heck breaks loose" pessimistic situation. I really like his straight to the point, non-fluff writing style, but this book took it way too far. I mean, yes a quick read is nice...but this book even had grammar errors...how is that? Nice story, I'd rate this as a 50/50 buy. Like my title, Good idea...Bad Execution
Rating: 
Summary: NEVER BUY AN ABRIDGED AUDIO BOOK!
Review: The story was great but I listened to the abridged 4 cassette version. Over half of the book was cut out! While listening it became appareant huge holes were in the story. As a reader it was just obviously incomplete. Poor character development; suddenly the story line would change and I would be wondering "what happend? " The story was a facinating concept though and made me want to go buy the book now to get the missing pieces. Good book , avoid the abridged version.
Rating:
Summary: Sloppy
Review: This book is very absorbing, and Crichton usually makes his science seem plausible. I was very intrigued by "Sphere," and the novel "Jurassic Park" made my blood run cold--it scared me a lot more than the movie did. But "Timeline" is sloppy. An architect refers to a diagram of a monastery and says that it shows apsidal chapels, when in fact, it does not (the diagram is reproduced in the book). The architect and a historian are talking about the putative location of the monastery's refectory--and a few pages later are referring to the same room as the "rectory" (which of course makes no sense to begin with, in that context). Archaelogists come across a mass burial on the site of a monastery, and the author says, "But there were strange things about this--they were all men" (well, duh, the population of a monastery usually is) and "they had died of arrow wounds, but no battle had been fought at the monastery." So? The battle didn't have to be fought right there; the monastery was simply where they were brought for burial. Irritating little lapses like this occur rather frequently throughout the book. Other faults are more serious. One medieval widow is such a consummate plotter that she makes Michael Corleone look like a boy scout; yet one of the main characters, having known her for less than 24 hours and having seen little of her but her cunning, inexplicably falls in love with her, and we are to believe that they live happily ever after. Perhaps it really does work out that way, but it is obvious that the author expects the reader to endorse this decision, and that really doesn't make a great deal of sense. A scientist attempts to explain quantum physics to a group of historians. He shows that experiments in optics show that there must be multiple universes which may randomly affect ours. Perhaps this is a logical surmise, and my knowledge of science is weak, but for me, his explanations raised more questions than they answered. If photons from an alternate universe can bump light "out of the way" in ours, does that mean that an oil slick from an alternate universe can suddenly and randomly make my street slippery, so that I have a wreck? The scientists go on to explain that teleportation is achieved by analogy with faxing. But faxing is nothing but transmission of electronic signals; it's not the whole thing. There must be material at the other end to recreate the image--and even after recreation, the entire result is simply a copy. Crichton wants us to believe, in this story, that "faxing" people actually reconstitutes real humans "at the other end." For me, the analogy broke down. Weakest of all, for me, is the way Crichton faces--or rather, fails to face--the peculiar dilemmma of time travel: if we could visit the past, how could we know that whatever we did was not in fact altering the past for the worse? The movie "Frequency" at least faces this issue squarely: a man saves his father's life, in the past, but in so doing, alters his mother's life so that she comes to the notice of a serial killer who would otherwise never have encountered her. Crichton simply denies that the issue is real at all. When one of the characters is asked, "But if I went back in time and killed my grandfather, so that I was never born, wouldn't that be paradoxical," he simply replies that you probably couldn't kill your grandfather, because you might not find him, or your gun would misfire, or you might be arrested, etc. Pretty lame, in my opinion. In the end, as one of the reviewers has already said, you realize that what you are reading, all in all, is a rather brutal description of medieval mayhem. And again, there are a couple of howlers thrown in, such as a smart young female historian with a fine education seriously saying "My hero" to a fellow she is interested in. Other touches, such as the decapitation-prone mad knight guarding the Green Chapel, seem to be an obvious borrowing from "Sir Gawain"--and it is impossible to tell if Crichton is even aware of this. Crichton certainly did do some homework for this book, and he makes some bold and interesting claims--for instance, that broadsword combat was not slow and cumbrersome, as we might imagine, but quick as fencing, or that medieval knights were not as small as we think they were. (Then why are doorways to private rooms in medieval buildings so short?) In any case, there are interesting points about the book, but it needed a better editor, perhaps one who was not overawed by the author's name and reputation.
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Summary: History with a Quantum flavor
Review: I really loved Michael Chrichton's other books, so I was excited to see a new title on the shelves. I was expecting Quantum Science with a history flavor, but this book focuses on a small fragment of history with very little time spent on quantum mechanics. The novel describes how the characters are "quantum disassembled" and reassembled in the past (or some other universes' past) by some mysterious extra-universe force. I have recently read some material about quantum teleportation and I thought this would be an extension of that. I was confused and a little disappointed with how the science was handled. The writing, however, is, as always, superb and most of the characters are believable. I had a hard time putting the book down and the characters' troubles had me hooked. I found the mad scientist/evil capitalist bad guy, however, wasn't consistanly nasty enough. He is portrayed as a genius (and a bit of a Bill Gates clone), but is easily thwarted in the end. The "Brave Hero" character seems a bit hard to believe too. The historical setting was very well crafted. You could picture the characters in this mideval setting, struggling to understand how things worked. Even well trained archeologists didn't have a clue how this society really worked. If you are a Michael Crichton fan, you probably have this book already. If not, you still might enjoy this history-text-come-to-life story. But if you are a SciFi fan, you are may be dissapointed by Timeline.
Rating:
Summary: THIS WAS AN AWSOME BOOK!
Review: He's done it again! Every book of Crichton's is great, but Timeline by far is the best. The action and plot development kept me up far into the night, unable to put it down. He excellently mixed science with story line to keep anyone who reads this book guessing. If you are a Crichton fan you have got to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Come on-it is supposed to be fun, not a literary leap
Review: This is a fun sci fi adventure in his usual style. I stayed up late to finish it and was not disappointed. I like to read "more substantial" fiction and plow thru alot of serious non-fiction and this was a fun break. Don't expect physics 201 or deep thoughts on time travel or sophisticated character development. Just read it and take it for what it is--a fun lark.
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Summary: The Crichton machine
Review: Timeline is an excellent Crichton book. It has all the ingredients to be one. A good mixture of fantasy, science and adventure. However I did miss something extra from the book, something that could have made it different from the previous Crichton books. The machine of the writer was working and put all the well-known Crichton ingredients into the book, but I think this book, unlike the previous ones, would have required something special too.
Rating:
Summary: Great reading, but too short.
Review: Michael Crichton has done it again... He has succeeded in telling a story that is factually accurate and very believable although the story takes pace in a fictional setting. I learned quite a bit about history and also a bit about human nature and what is really the most important thing in life. What does existence all boil down to? What is the purpose of life? In the Middle Ages as well as today, there is just ONE answer to this question. Read the book and you'll find out. Great Job, Michael... I will continue to read your books.
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