Michael Crichton, the man that made ‘dinosaur’ a household word with his best-selling Jurassic Park, has once again dipped into the well of cutting-edge technology for his newest novel, Timeline. Basing his story on the quantum theory of multiple universes which can be reached through sub-atomic wormholes, Crichton’s time travel escapade takes a team consisting of three historians and two ex-military guides back to France in 1357 about twenty years into the War of the Roses. The team is sent to rescue the historians’ colleague who has sent them a message from the past where he has been accidentally trapped. The mission is to be a straightforward search and rescue with an outside time limit of thirty-seven hours since that is the transit machine’s power limit. Sound easy enough? Well, let’s throw in a political power struggle, a besieged castle, rampaging knights, marauding bandits, a renegade time traveler and a secret tunnel of which the political leaders of the time are convinced the three historian’s friend knows the location and will do anything to obtain up to and including torture. Take all that together and you’ll get the idea of what the three unwitting historians are up against. Even if you couldn’t say anything else good about it, Crichton’s Timeline it does have all the elements of a good swashbuckling tale.

Unfortunately, that is one of the only good things to say about Timeline. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t dislike the book. But, I expected better from a writer of Crichton’s stature. The book’s major problem is that Crichton spends 150 of the novel’s 444 pages leading up to the actual time travel events. (Except, it really isn’t time travel, as is explained in the book, but we will refer to it as such for simplicity’s sake.) The first part of the book is slow and has a few false starts that mislead you into thinking certain events are really important to the plot when they’re not. The first several chapters also include extremely detailed character introductions to people who aren’t even a necessary part of the plot. You could probably pick up the book and start reading on page 148 and not miss anything vital to the story other than the admittedly intriguing explanations behind the science of the book. Crichton does know his stuff in that respect and he lays it out in such a way that most people will have no trouble following the explanations even if they know nothing about physics, quantum mechanics, quantum computers, Wheeler foam, multi-verse theory or the very real and successful quantum teleportation experiments duplicated in Innsbruck, Rome and Cal Tech (if anyone is interested, there are several articles about quantum teleportation on the Web). But, despite the interesting and educational facts he provides, the pertinent scientific explanations could have been relayed in a much shorter opening segment.

Once you trudge through the book’s beginning and the three main characters finally arrive in 1357, however, the action really picks up and there are sword fights and skin-of-the-teeth escapes galore. In fact, at a few points I was actually mentally fatigued trying to keep up with Timeline’s breakneck speed. That probably sounds strange, but the action is so continuous in some sections that you don’t get a chance to get your bearings as to where everyone is in relation to each other, their surroundings and the overall plot. But, don’t worry, if you missed something the first time, you’ll probably get to see it again as for some reason Crichton repeats some themes. One oft repeated theme involves the female main character, Kate Erickson, who is not only a specialist in historical architecture, but an avid climber as well. So, of course, Crichton has her climbing around the castle walls and ceilings ad nauseum. While it may be true that in a desperate situation you fall back on your strongest skills, I don’t think even diehard climbers would try to escape every situation by going up the walls. Even Spiderman occasionally used a different mode of transportation.

Crichton provides his readers the pertinent data to understand the political arena along with some interesting tidbits about the time period such as how tennis began. But, for all of the reviews and praises Timeline has garnered about its authenticity, it doesn’t really give that great a picture of what life was truly like in the thirteenth century. Granted, since this is not a historical piece, but is written from the viewpoints of the historians who are definitely outsiders to the time and place, it would no doubt be difficult to convey a true feeling of the time. Difficult is not impossible, however, and it could have been done and Timeline falls far short of evoking the overall feeling of a different time period. It’s obvious that Crichton was more interested in the movie that would undoubtedly be made from his novel than in truly providing a sense of reality to his setting or some of the situations.

Overall, Timeline is an entertaining and somewhat educational novel I’m sure we’ll be seeing made into a movie in the near future. But, since it doesn’t hold nearly the appeal or novelty of Crichton’s Jurassic Park, Crichton better hope Spielberg is willing to take on this project as it will probably fall deader than a tyrannosaurus rex in the hands of anyone less skilled.