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Timeline: A Novel
 
 
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Timeline: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

by Michael Crichton (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,682 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 5.32
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Product Description

From Amazon.com

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.
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Customer Reviews

1,682 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (1,682 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Stolen Ideas and Written for Hollywood, Mar 20 2005
By NorthVan Dave (North Vancouver, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Timeline (Mass Market Paperback)
I don't quite know when Michael Crichton's writing style started to do downhill. Perhaps he's spending too much time working on ER, or maybe he is too busy living off the proceeds of the many Jurassic Park movies. But whatever the case is, Timeline is not one of his better efforts.

My main beef with the story is that it is a complete rip off of Connie Willis's Doomsday Book and her second novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Why do I say this? Because both novels deal with students, both novels deal with time travel, both novels deal with time travel for educational purposes, and both novels del with some sort of crisis taking place to the student while they are in the past. The only different between the two books is that that Willis writes a much more believable and compelling story.

The characters of this books felt completely fake and unbelievable. I had a hard time feeling sympathy for any of them, and the whole time I was reading the story I kept getting the feeling that Crichton had written the characters specifically for Hollywood casting. It was almost as if Crichton sacrified character development in favour of letting Hollywood cast Tom Hanks (or whomever) as the lead and let Hanks' own persona define the character.

Overall, my advice is to avoid this book. The time description of the time travel feels weak, the character development is weak, and the whole premise on why the students need to travel back in time is weak. My advice? If you want to read a good time travel book give Connie Willis's novels a go. She's the original in this field and her novels are MUCH better.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Great literature? No. Highly entertaining? Yes., Jul 12 2004
By Robert Adler "science writer & author" (Santa Rosa, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Unique, interesting concept and story, Oct 30 2007
By T. Lee - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Timeline (Mass Market Paperback)
I was watching a lousy B movie on cable for about half an hour, and realized that is was a movie of a great Michael Crichton book I had read years ago. I promptly turned around and re-read it in one sitting. Like all his books, it combines gripping action while covering heavy scientific content. In this case, it involves quantum physics (a complex, bizarre yet real science), and time travel.

A quick synopsis: a few archeologists are digging a buried medieval castle and monastery in France. For reasons unknown, they're financed by a deep pockets, supersecret tech company in the desert called ITC. One day the head archeologist dissapears and rumors are floated at the excavation site the cause may be from the home base headquarters. The company yanks in the other head archaeologists to their headquarters in New Mexico. They're informed their professor from the site is stuck back in the medival times, and in deep trouble. They go back in time and all hell breaks loose.

This is a brilliant story that is based loosely on possible scenarios in our future. Keep it around in the closet shelf. You'll end up reading it again and again like I have.
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Overall a fun read
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. Read more
Published on Jul 18 2004 by Sloppy-Joe

4.0 out of 5 stars Way Better than the Movie
Don't see the movie, but read the book- not a big crichton fan either, but liked this one.
Published on Jul 14 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast Paced and Highly Entertaining
Time travel is one of the most compelling sci-fi topics in Hollywood. Michael Crichton, a highly successful writer, took a more modern look at time travel. Read more
Published on Jul 7 2004 by Frank T. Klus

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW! Truly a classic
In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within 24 hours he is dead, his body quickly cremated by his only known associates. Read more
Published on Jul 2 2004 by radioactive_foxhound

5.0 out of 5 stars Time Travel
I've read all of Michael Crichton's fiction, and this is my very favorite. I appreciate the historical research that must have been involved. Read more
Published on Jun 26 2004 by darkdove62

4.0 out of 5 stars The Book is Better
I think the book is 100 times better than the movie. I think the vision and suspense in the book could not be carried onto the movie. Mr. Read more
Published on Jun 21 2004 by Ahmad A. Mumtaz

4.0 out of 5 stars If you like Michael Crichton you'll like this book.
The title of this review pretty much sums it up. It doesn't matter if you're a history buff. It's fiction!!! Read more
Published on Jun 21 2004 by James Cohn

4.0 out of 5 stars "Timeline"
A great novel/history lesson, Crichton makes another edge-of-your-seat adventure.
Three young arcaeologists travel back in time to Medieval France to save their history... Read more
Published on Jun 21 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
This book was awsome, exspecially if you are a history buff like myself!
Published on Jun 14 2004 by Sarah

4.0 out of 5 stars An engrossing, fast-paced, action-packed adventure.
Professor Johnston is working in France as the chief archaeologist on a dig of a historical medieval town when the multi-millionaire Robert Doniger, owner of ITC, the company... Read more
Published on Jun 11 2004 by M. E. Volmar

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