Introduction
Michael Crichton was introduced into my radar when I first saw Jurassic Park and was enthralled by it. I immediately decided to check out the book. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to check that book, but instead got a chance to go through some of his other books like Eaters of the Dead and State of Fear. Both were intriguing and though not the best in terms of story telling had an element of innovation in them. So I decided to go along and get some other books of Crichton and landed up with Timeline

The Plot
ITC is a startup technology company being headed by a whizkid millionaire Robert Doniger. Although a person with technology foremost in his mind, he takes time out to fund a research in excavations headed by Professor Johnston. This oddity comes into the mind of a roving journalist, who starts asking some questions.

She finally meets up with Professor Johnston and he decides that he needs to talk upfront with Doniger on the issues raised by her. As Johnston leaves to meet Doniger, others at the site are a bit anxious about these activities. Imagine their surprise when while exploring the excavations, they find a manuscript in Professor’s handwriting with "Help Me" written on it. Strangely enough the ink used and the time period of the manuscript all match with the date of the excavation i.e the 14th Century.

Then they get summons from the great Robert Doniger himself to urgently come and meet him to discuss some urgent and secret issue. So a team of 5 from the professor’s team headed by his second in command Andre Marek go to meet Doniger. There Doniger unveils ITC’s new invention a time travelling machine, only thing being that technically they don’t refer to it as time travel.

The team is briefed that the professor wanted to check out the machine and went back to the 14th century, but due to some circumstances got stranded. So the team of 5 need to go back and retrieve the professor. One of the team, Stern, backs out as he is suspicious of the technology and the rest 4 of them go out to search the professor along with two security personnel provided by ITC. With minutes of landing in the 14th century, both the security personnel are brutally murdered. So the team is on its own in its mission to rescue the professor and return back to their own century.

Can the team do it? Where exactly is the professor? Does time travel really work? Check out this innovative novel by Michael Crichton for the details.

Critic’s Viewpoint
Michael Crichton’s stories are always innovative and have some novelty attached to them. But, after reading a few of his novels and seeing a few of his pictures, I see that he is enamoured by the history of earth and being stranded in some other land and time. Be it recreating the Dinosaur age in Jurassic Park and Lost World, be it reciting the Viking story in the Eaters of the Dead or even in Congo where the people are in another world so to speak. Here again, in Timeline he falls back on this plot line trying to trace the adventures of a group of people in a different time and era.

If innovation is Crichton’s strength one of his weaknesses is the knack of telling a gripping story. In most of his stories, the central characters are superhumans and there is also a naiveity in presenting the critical junctures in a story that leaves you with a hollow feeling. It was not much evident in the other novels that I read from Crichton, because the stories seemed to be unique each time, but in Timeline I got that feeling from the very beginning and it did not get any better as I moved on.

I liked the theory of a multiverse which is an innovative way to look at time travel, but then the explanation of why time travel cannot alter the history etc. was too lame and frankly I could not buy into it. But, having said all this I did go through all the 500 odd pages of the novel primarily owing to two things - the intrigue of medieval history and the pace at which the story was developing.

Looking at the ideas that Crichton comes up with and the way he presents it, I would like to request him to join hands with a John Grisham or a Dan Brown wherein the story idea would be Crichton’s whereas the presentation would be Grisham’s or Brown’s. That might just turn out to be a lipsmacking combo.

Summary
In the end if I look at Timeline, I feel that it is another interesting idea, presented in a lame way. I would give this Crichton offering an average 3 star rating.

About the Author
Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, in 1942. His novels include such popular offerings like The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Congo and Jurassic Park. He is also the creator of the popular TV series ER. His latest offering in the world of novel is State of Fear

Plot Revealed In The Review:	Somewhat revealed
Purchase Price (INR):	400
Purchased From:	Book Store