Timeline is another wonderwork by that best selling juggernaut Michael Crichton. It’s not like his books, or films, are really all that good or anything. And although everyone knows that, they still go for it; every time. At least I do. I feel like Crichton has put a weird spell over his readers; the writing isn’t intelligent, the characters are often two dimensional, and the action is contrived or clichéd. But man, is it ever clever. In fact I would hazard to say that Crichton is one of the cleverest populist writers working today. Timeline is a good example of this unstoppable wit.
The story in itself, is rather mundane. A company in Nevada, ITC, has developed a way of travelling through time, well sort of. Anyhow, a clever time travel story might be really quite entertaining; unfortunately the title to this book is quite misleading. This is not a story about time travel. It is a story of romping through Medieval France. Five graduate students and their professor manage to get themselves trapped back in time, and hilarity ensues. No just kidding, this story isn’t very funny. What this story actually is, is predictable. Oh I’m not talking about the specifics of plot, I think what I’m really talking about is Michael Crichton’s style. This book isn’t bad and it definitely isn’t good, it’s just Crichton. We don’t read him to learn, we don’t read him to grow. Most of the time, he really isn’t very exciting even. We just read him because he is Michael Crichton. Don’t bother with this book unless you absolutely are compelled to do so. However I really don’t blame anyone for feeling that compulsion.
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