Timeline

---warning for those who have not yet finished or read Timeline----- Read on at your own risk.....

On the brither side I finished Timeline and, to say the least, it was exciting. However, even though it was very exciting, the characters were typically shallow, cardboards nobodies. The medieval period was portrayed at first as a very different palce than had been expected by the historians but that only lastyed a few seconds. After a bit it devolved into the same meldramatic nonsense that they were cranking out in the days of Erol Flynn.

The medieval period was very complicated and the personalities in it were equally complex. Knights were seldom the mindless killers that they are made out to be. Ceremony and ritual had deep routes and were not window dressing. The level of piety, by our standards, was extremely high, even by those nasty knights.

The author seemed to want it both ways. He wanted authenticity of culture but not the real emotion that brought that culture about. Again the religous aspect of the book was downplayed into near oblivion, where as in real medieval Europe, particularly in the 14th century, Religious issues dominated politics, social life, and warfare.

He did bring up some interesting points. The fact that nobody really knows what the inside of a 14th centruy castle looked like. Or the fact that people bathed more often than we want to admit they did. Yet all these things do is make me mad that the authior didn't follow through on his apparent desire to show the medieval period for what it was.

His knights were evil in the manner of Freddy from nightmere on elm street. Darth Vader, for all his cardboard nature, is a far deeper character than any of the villains of this story. The only character that was believable was the Lady Claire. All the rest, moderns included, were stock.
As far as the science involved, puke! It sucks. First of all the idea of quantum foam is cool. But the author trys, stupidly, to make quantum foam out to be this bubbly stuff on the floor of the lab, instead of what it really is, which is part of every atom in all directions. We are, right now, moving through quantum foam, we are made up of it. It may be the reason we have TIME. We may be, at this momment, transsioning through countless universes like a moive where each frame is multidemensional yet static. I guess I wish I didn't know as much about quantum foam so that I could be awed by the concept of traveling through it like the dudes in Fantastic Voyage. But since I have seen it done before, in that movie for a matter of fact, it was not very exciting or original.

Critten falls again and again, into the worst trap of science fiction; the trap of technology. The best sci-fi books I have ever read have little to do with technology. When you try and base your story on an emerging technology you better get it right or you are going to look like a dufus. The best advice is to keeps things as vague as you can get away with. A matter transporter is just that, it needs no explanation as to how it works. Therein lies the trap for no matter what you say your going to get it wrong and you will instantly date your story. Critten falls into this trap big time. But I am not going to let him off the hook. He attemtps to tell us how the machine works to get people back in time but fails to tell us anything aobut how they are able to accurately pinpoint the exact time the traveler is going to.

And, since you are dealing with quantum foam, the answer to that question is that you can't. Because on that level there is only uncertainty, nothing can be accurately predicted. Certainly not navigating a traveler to a specific universe and a specific time in that universe.
And the contrivences of convinience made me a little sick too. The big glass!? tanks to shield the transit booths from stray rays? Why glass? Oh yeah, so they can conviniently break when things explode. And the silly babble-fish ear-peice that can translate middle french and english on the fly. Nothing like a computer that can translate multiple dead languages that have no written dictionay so nobody knows exactly all the words used in them. Remember we base our knowledge of these languages on a pitifful few manuscripts compiled by a very narrow segment of the population.

Swords: Yes they were heavy but unlike the ones in the story, they were expertly balanced so that they could be wielded with only moderate effort.

War: Yes things sucked pretty bad in the year 1357. But most battles did not happen at castles. They were hardly ever attacked. As Critten accurately noted in the book, a siege took too much time. A free company wanted quick loot. But if a castle was attacked the attacker almost without acception, layed a long term seige that could last six weeks or six months. Look at Harflur, the king of England seiged that town for months before it fell. And the seige cost Henry V half his men to disease. The seigfe cost more lives than the battle of Agincourt! At that was a town! Big castles, built high on rocky outcrops didn't usually get attacked.

Court: Feudalism was almsot totally overlooked in the book. The relationship between Oliver and his knights would have played a much larger role in the book if the reality of feudalism had been incorporated.

Jousts: The typical medieval trournament took weeks and there was little excitment for the masses. There was, if anything, even more cerimony and ritual here. Knights fought with squared off swords and lances that, again were expertly balanced. Tournament armor was also different than combat armor. It was a money making endeavour for the lord who held it, He didn't really benifit from having a knight get killed. And most knights didn't want to get killed in a joust. It was a violent sport for sure, but not a leathal sport. High nobbles put a heavy penelty for knights who got out of hand and killed their opponent. That was a no no punishable by death? No just a steep fine.

That brings up another point that could have been made and that is that medieval justice on average was mainly delt out by way of stiff fines and confiscations, not torture and death.

Time paradoxes: If not totally glossed over it is almost tottally glossed over. The CEO's explanation that one man could change history sucks. But I guess in the book it is true. Yet look at the last scene at Eltham Castle...

Best part of the book: The very beginning and the very end. I was touched by the final scene at the castle of Eltham. That was how the whole book should have been.