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When you step into a time machine, fax yourself through a "quantum foam wormhole," and step out in feudal France circa 1357, be very, very afraid. If you aren't strapped back in precisely 37 hours after your visit begins, you'll miss the quantum bus back to 1999 and be stranded in a civil war, caught between crafty abbots, mad lords, and peasant bandits all eager to cut your throat. You'll also have to dodge catapults that hurl sizzling pitch over castle battlements. On the social front, you should avoid provoking "the butcher of Crecy" or Sir Oliver may lop your head off with a swoosh of his broadsword or cage and immerse you in "Milady's Bath," a brackish dungeon pit into which live rats are tossed now and then for prisoners to eat.
This is the plight of the heroes of Timeline, Michael Crichton's thriller. They're historians in 1999 employed by a tech billionaire-genius with more than a few of Bill Gates's most unlovable quirks. Like the entrepreneur in Crichton's Jurassic Park, Doniger plans a theme park featuring artifacts from a lost world revived via cutting-edge science. When the project's chief historian sends a distress call to 1999 from 1357, the boss man doesn't tell the younger historians the risks they'll face trying to save him. At first, the interplay between eras is clever, but Timeline swiftly becomes a swashbuckling old-fashioned adventure, with just a dash of science and time paradox in the mix. Most of the cool facts are about the Middle Ages, and Crichton marvelously brings the past to life without ever letting the pulse-pounding action slow down. At one point, a time-tripper tries to enter the Chapel of Green Death. Unfortunately, its custodian, a crazed giant with terrible teeth and a bad case of lice, soon has her head on a block. "She saw a shadow move across the grass as he raised his ax into the air." I dare you not to turn the page!
Through the narrative can be glimpsed the glowing bones of the movie that may be made from Timeline and the cutting-edge computer game that should hit the market in 2000. Expect many clashing swords and chase scenes through secret castle passages. But the book stands alone, tall and scary as a knight in armor shining with blood. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
"And the Oscar for Best Special Effects goes to: Timeline!" Figure maybe three years before those words are spoken, for Crichton's new novelAdespite media reports about trouble in selling film rights, which finally went to ParamountAis as cinematic as they come, a shiny science-fantasy adventure powered by a superior high concept: a group of young scientists travel back from our time to medieval southern France to rescue their mentor, who's trapped there. The novel, in fact, may improve as a movie; its complex action, as the scientists are swept into the intrigue of the Hundred Years War, can be confusing on the page (though a supplied map, one of several graphics, helps), and most of its characters wear hats (or armor) of pure white or black. Crichton remains a master of narrative drive and cleverness. From the startling opening, where an old man with garbled speech and body parts materializes in the Arizona desert, through the revelation that a venal industrialist has developed a risky method of time-travel (based on movement between parallel universes; as in Crichton's other work, good, hard science abounds), there's not a dull moment. When elderly Yale history prof Edward Johnston travels back to his beloved 15th century and gets stuck, and his assistants follow to the rescue, excitement runs high, and higher still as Crichton invests his story with terrific period detail and as castles, sword-play, jousts, sudden death and enough bold knights-in-armor and seductive ladies-in-waiting to fill any toystore's action-figure shelves appear. There's strong suspense, too, as Crichton cuts between past and present, where the time-travel machinery has broken: Will the heroes survive and make it back? The novel has a calculated feel but, even so, it engages as no Crichton tale has done since Jurassic Park, as it brings the past back to vigorous, entertaining life. Agent, Lynn Nesbit. 1,500,000 first printing; Literary Guild nain selection; simultaneous large-print edition and audiobook. (Nov. 16)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great literature? No. Highly entertaining? Yes.,
By
This review is from: Timeline (Mass Market Paperback)
I was especially eager to read Timeline because I had just returned from the Perigord, the region in France where most of the action in Crichton's time-travel book takes place. I had toured the grim castles and fortified towns he describes, and canoed down the exact stretch of the Dordogne that's at the heart of the book. I found that Chrichton was able to bring the medieval period vividly to life, far better than I'd been able to do as I toured the area. As usual, Crichton provides enough of a believable scientific basis for his story to allow an easy suspension of disbelief. I was even more impressed by the amount of research he did to be able to paint such a clear and convincing picture of the area in the mid 14th century. OK, his characters do get into one scrape after another, and help manages to arrive just in the nick of time. But the book still kept me turning the pages late into the night. Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation; and Medical Firsts: From Hippocrates to the Human Genome.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timeline,
By
This review is from: Timeline (Mass Market Paperback)
This book was an enjoyable read for me. The story follows a group of archaeologist trying to bring back back their boss from the pass. They find themselves in the middle of the 100 year war between France and England. The book is a light read perfect for times you want to read something but are able to put it down and pick up where you left off.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overall a fun read,
By Sloppy-Joe (Pahrump NV) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Timeline (Hardcover)
This was a very easy read for me, after reading Great Expectations and Les Miserbles I needed something easy and extremely entertaining, this fit the bill perfectly. There is no thinking involved in this novel and like other reviewers have said it seems there was never any suspence you always felt like the charecters were always going to get out in the nick of time, Overall a fun read
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