Reviews with content warning for Blood - Timeline

This was really good! It took a little bit for it to pick up, but once it did it was fairly fast paced and interesting. I liked all the descriptions of the science as well as the history. My only complaint is that there were a lot of characters, and most of them were pretty flat. They weren’t very relatable or really very interesting. The plot was definitely what drove the story and kept my interest, not the characters. I will definitely be reading more of his work though!

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cj13's review

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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shieldbearer's review against another edition

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tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

There were some things I really liked and some things I really didn't. The premise is excellent. You can tell the book is very well researched. however, the weak point really is the characters, except for Lady Claire and Merrick. Kate.. man I really liked some things about her, but she didn't has a much of a presence as I'd have liked, though I do love the way her skills as a climber were so vital to so many sequences. I felt it dragged some with unecessary complications, and I really wish the character dynamics were better fleshed out between everyone. Fuck Chris though, like his development was rushed and hamfisted just so he could get to fuck Kate in the epilogue. I really don't see the point of making Lady Claire pretend to be a boy, though I do appreciate her

relationship with Merrick was NOT the main reason he stayed in the past.

I also wished the doctor and the cop from the start had a more significant role and didn't end up scapegoated.

Some of my dissatisfaction is from this not being the book I would have written, but I really, really disliked Chris.

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ticktock's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

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jdgr's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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meganpbennett's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Timeline is an interesting time travel science fiction novel. It starts with several tangentially connected parts - a man found in the desert, rambling about Quantum Foam, and an archeology dig at a Hundred Years War castle in France - that eventually come together to form the basis of time travel. We have an interesting cast of characters, who all have a specific skill set that helps them when the learn the truth. When they learn that time travel is possible.

Michael Crichton write a remarkably plausible story about time travel, where people have to travel back to the high middle ages to rescue someone who got accidentally stuck, and survive all of the issues of a castle in the middle of the Hundred Years War. Hey, at least there's no Plague, right?

I remember reading this book when I was in high school and ended reading all of the hard science sci-fi books by Crichton, and haven't read it since. I vaugely remembered a few sections, but not much of the bulk of the plot. It's still quite interesting, and the depictions of the high middle ages is one that take into account a more modern historical opinion of the time period, making allowances for the propaganda of the Renaissance.

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stefievee's review against another edition

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adventurous informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

The beginning of the book really piqued my interest, but once the characters get into time-travel they start to fall into super cliché, trope-y roles and I was frankly just rolling my eyes by the (very predictable) end

We have the self-sacrificing hero whose convenient lifelong obsession with Medieval fighting makes him a natural at jousting and fighting off all the knights that are after him and his companions. Hero guy ends up with the secondary recurring female character in the past timeline, whose main trait is seducing people into doing her bidding. Then there's the whiny guy who keeps getting the group in trouble but also keeps saving the main female character and finally, said main female character who continuously escapes things by climbing because she's a climber, and of course ends up married to now-mature whiny guy and pregnant with his child at the end.

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