 I have to re-record this, and I don't feel like changing into regular clothes, and I'm about to go work out so, you know, you're gonna be seeing me dressed like this, but don't mistake my annoyance for me thinking Timeline was bad, because it's actually pretty good. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So Timeline is a Michael Crichton book, and his works usually fall into one of two categories. There's the books that are pretty much just all about science and all about people doing science and trying to figure out problems and solve puzzles. The Andromeda Strain and Spear are both pretty good examples of this. And then there's his books where the science is kind of just a setup for more of an action-adventure-type story, and Jurassic Park is the best example of this, but Timeline also falls into this. And don't mistake me saying that for me thinking that his science-based books are bad. They're not. They're actually still pretty good. I love Spear, and I think Andromeda Strain is pretty good. That said, Jurassic Park and Timeline and stuff like that are more cinematic, I think, and they blend themselves to being movies better, and they're just a little bit more accessible. So Timeline is just about time travel. You know, it's a pretty simple idea. Like, there's some archaeologists working on an old castle in France, and then they find some evidence there that people were time traveling. Of course they don't realize that's what it is at first. They're just confused, and then one of them goes off to this company, which has invented time travel, and he goes back, but he winds up getting stuck there, so they bring all his friends over, and they're like, hey, we need you guys to go back to 1357 in France and get your friend back, or he'll probably die. And then, obviously, once they go there, some stuff goes wrong, and then they're stuck for a while, so we have two parallel stories, one with the people trying to fix the time machine and trying to get them back, and then one with the people back in France that are in trouble and just trying to survive. Now, like, pretty much all Michael Crichton books, this one has a pretty great plot. There's always crazy stuff going on. There's a bunch of twists and turns, which are all pretty phenomenal, and then, you know, kind of like Jurassic Park, where it's, oh, shit, run away from dinosaurs, and this, it's, oh, shit, people trying to kill us. We gotta fight them off, or run away, or escape from prison, or whatever. And in that sense, yeah, it's great. The problem is with the characters. Now, in this, I will say most of the characters are fine. They're, you know, they're perfectly okay. There's two that stood out, which I'll talk about in a second, but that's still better than most Michael Crichton books, where kind of everyone is just an asshole. Like, I remember Dr. Grant from Jurassic Park being okay, and the main character from Sphere also being okay, but other than that, pretty much every character in every Crichton book I've read has been just a major dick, which, you know, that, that can work sometimes, but it just makes it impossible to care about them when they get in trouble or anything. Whereas in this, they're all fine, except for two dudes. Now, there's Merrick, who I actually really liked, because he is a historian who doesn't just learn about history, but he, quote, tries to live it. So he actually learns, like, horseback riding, and he learns how to fight the way knights did, and he actually learns to speak certain languages like Middle French and Occitan, which wind up being useful for them when they go back in time. And so, yeah, he's not a particularly deep or complex character, but I liked him, and he does go through some development as the story goes on. And then there's one character that I strongly disliked. His name is Donager, and he's just the guy that helped invent the time travel, and, well, he is a huge asshole, but the thing is, he's supposed to be an asshole. You know, he's supposed to be bossy. He's supposed to be... He's supposed to look down on other people. He's supposed to be someone who's smart, but really knows he's smart. He's supposed to be greedy. You know, you're supposed to not like him very much, so I can't fault the book for that, really. And he's... I don't really want to call him a villain, but, you know, he's... I don't know. He's a minor antagonist, we'll say. That's the best way of putting it. And as for the regular antagonists, they... They all have potential, but the problem is that there's like three or four characters that are all working to hinder the heroes, and none of them really get enough time to shine as a result of that. Like, there's one who has a pretty interesting backstory that I won't go into, because it's a major spoiler, and it's actually one of the best parts of the book when you find out what's going on, but he just doesn't get enough time to really be in the story and to really shine, so I kind of wish that he had been the main villain, or if they had just picked one of the others and focused on them, because splitting attention this much is kind of... It's not a good thing. Now, just like other Michael Crichton books, you can tell he really researched the hell out of the science in this. Like, with everything from Andromeda Strain to Sphere to Jurassic Park, you can tell that Michael Crichton really poured himself into researching, you know, biology or genetics or physics in this case, or whatever else that book happens to be focused on, and I would be lying if I didn't say that some of it went over my head, but it is still fascinating to hear his take on time travel, where it's like, oh, well, you see time doesn't actually move, time stands still and we move, and then they're talking about, like, quantum fluctuation and how things can be in two different distinct states at the same time, and, you know, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's also not supposed to make a lot of sense, I don't think, and, you know, he clearly did his research, so if you're into that sort of thing, then you'll probably be happy about that. But what made me happy was that he also very clearly did his research into medieval France and what that was like, because he knows a lot of things and some people are annoyed by his writing style where he occasionally, like, almost breaks the fourth wall and tells the audience, hey, here's explaining this concept or whatever, but, you know, I was happy with that. He very clearly understood medieval France, what life was like there. You know, they weren't speaking modern French at all. They spoke either middle French or Occitan in the area where they were, but even in the areas that spoke middle French or Occitan, it was a whole muddled mess of dialects where you go from one town to another, and it's basically a different language. They're almost impossible to understand each other, and that's very accurate. It's a real history. He understands how warfare worked. He understands how society was structured. He understands that people just had a different way of looking at the world and different belief system back then than they do today. So, yeah, I was really impressed with Michael Crichton there, and I'm happy that he spent some time in my wheelhouse. The only thing about this book that really, really got under my skin was that, okay, I just don't like time travel stories very much in general, because no matter what, there's almost always going to be some sort of plot hole in there, and this book is no exception, unfortunately. Basically, they say that you can't change the past somewhere near the beginning, and when you hear that, you think, okay, it's going to be something kind of like 12 Monkeys or the first Terminator movie where no matter what you do, that's just going to wind up helping the future to become what it is. But then we also get very clear evidence near the beginning that you can change the past, and then when they ask somebody about the grandfather paradox, we're like, what if you went back and killed your grandfather so that you could never be born and therefore you could never go kill your grandfather? How would that work out? And he basically just tells them, well, if you're an actual human being, then you're just going to not want to kill your grandpa, so you're not going to actually be able to pull the trigger, and they're trying to say, well, theoretically, how would it work? And he just kind of dismisses it. He's like, theory doesn't matter when we're talking about people. And yeah, he's kind of right, but considering how much time this book spends on just talking physics and talking how time travel works, you could try to give a little bit of a better explanation there. Like, hell, this talks about different parallel dimensions and stuff. You could have just done something like, well, we don't actually send you back in time. We just send you to a different dimension where it's this current point in time, and that dimension is pretty much exactly like ours. And if you change something, then that one will change, but then we'll just send you to a different dimension because there's an infinite number of them, and this other dimension is exactly the same as the last one. You know, something like that. That would be fine, but as it stands, it's just a major plot hole, which I really would not have expected from Michael Crichton. All in all, though, a solid action adventure book. You know, there's fight scenes. There's swashbuckling. There's horseback chases. There's people escaping from prison. There's all kinds of fun stuff, and you know the entire time that the timer is counting down, and if they don't get out of here in time, then something bad, they're going to be stuck here. So overall, yeah, timeline, if you're looking for something good, then check it out. I would like to get your name on here as well as access to some other stuff, then consider donating to my page, and if you can't do that, then just liking this video, commenting on it, sharing it around so it gets more popular, you know, that really helps me a lot too. And yeah, that's all. See you next time. Bye.