Michael Crichton's Timeline
Have you ever wanted to travel through time? Perhaps you've had the urge to joust a medieval knight? Have you ever wanted to read a solid, yet derivative adventure novel? Well now you can!
Michael Crichton's bestseller, Timeline, is about the adventures of a group of graduate students in fourteenth century France, who are on a quest to rescue their lost history professor from the medieval time period. The characters' excursion into the fourteenth century is spent trying to fit into a vastly different culture, one much more dangerous than our own. All of this temporal mayhem is made possible by a mysterious corporation, and their time machine.
Timeline did have its low points. Character development was kind of cheesy, and made up mostly of a useless romance between two characters that really only served to make the book longer. Several of the plot twists could be seen coming a mile away, and seemed rather trite. The description given of the theory behind time travel is a bit complex (it involves some quantum physics), and may turn some readers off. Fortunately, comprehension is not required to understand the rest of the book. For some reason, Timeline wasn't quite as compelling as Crichton's previous books.
Timeline is essentially a rehash of Jurassic Park. The heroes are trapped in fourteenth century France inhabited by bloodthirsty knights, rather than an island inhabited by dinosaurs. The mysterious corporation wants to make a theme park out of sending people back in time, rather than showing them dinosaurs. The characters get a canned speech about quantum physics, rather than one about DNA. The similarities go on.
Despite it's shortcomings, Timeline is an adventure that's bound to appeal to you in some way or another. There is excitement, battle, intrigue, humor, and most importantly, quantum physics. It might not be your favorite book ever, but it's worth a read. Don't go out and buy the hard cover though, wait for the paperback, or check it out from the local library.