REVIEW: Timeline by Michael Crichton

Timeline

by Michael Crichton

A team of archaeologists are digging up a medieval castle when their funders, the mysterious ITC, accidentally drop a hint that they know more about the site than they let on. The lead archaeologist, Professor Johnson, flies to New Mexico to find out what is going on and he doesn't return. Meanwhile, his team unearths an ancient parchment in the ruins, a document dating 600 years old, with the words "Help me!" in the Professor's handwriting. With the questionable aid of ITC, they must travel back in time and save the Professor. Will their expertise help them survive the dangerous middle ages, or will they be crushed underfoot by the march of history?

This is my first Michael Crichton book and I can't say I am a fan. I loved the movie of Timeline (warning, this review is tainted by that), and I hoped the book would be even better. I was surprised at how different the two were, and how the movie streamlined and improved upon the story Crichton told.

For example, time travel is not even mentioned until page 109. The first quarter of the book is taken up with wandering through ITC and the dig site. I honestly would have stopped if I hadn't known that time travel would happen, and the knowing made it even more excruciating.

Crichton loves to bathe in science. The book is saturated with it and it verges on fetishism. And yet the science is questionable. I know little about scientific theory, and even I could see that the logic was flawed. The theory of time travel is based on the idea of the multiverse. That (in an uber simplified version) because you shoot light particles through holes and some hit their target and some disappear, that something blocks them. Obviously, it is another universe getting in the way. It seems like that is the most complicated answer possible for such a phenomenon. The science behind the time travel that ITC uses is really moving a person from one universe to another. But also back in time in that universe. It is an unnecessarily complex method of time travel.

Crichton treats history almost the same way as science, reveling in explaining to the reader why everything we think about the middle ages is untrue. I quite enjoyed his fact dropping as history is more my scene, but at times it did verge historical masturbation. It is full of long anecdotes and facts that have little to do with the plot and more to do with how knowledgeable Crichton was about the subject matter.

The movie simplified a lot of convoluted plot points (ex. the Professor makes greek fire, rather than almost greek fire). Some of the adventures the heroes encounter feel like filler and provide a momentary inconvenience before setting them back on their path again.

The book did maintain an element of the movie I loved: the reality of the middle ages and how the modern archaeologists are completely out of their element. Kate, Andre and Chris each have their own baggage and their own area of expertise that ends up being indispensable to the mission.  Kate is an expert climber and architect. Andre is an expert on medieval life, culture, language and martial arts. Chris is an expert in the history of technology, and the workings of a particular mill that plays a pivotal role. Chris' journey was the most meaty as he goes through the crucible of medieval peril, transforming from a whiny serial dater to a solid, stouthearted friend.

There were some elements to the book that seemed entirely out of place. One adventure leads them to a green chapel where a knight waits with an ax to chop of their head.  Did you just read Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, Michael? And the Lady Claire, a sweet, smart, and determined character with a clear goal and a clear purpose in the movie becomes an absolute baffling mystery in the book: a randomly sexualized scheming deus ex machina and reward for sacrifice.

In the end, this book had an interesting premise which crawled, stumbled, danced a jig, and then awkwardly sat down again. All in all, the story and the history ended up being entertaining, but I thought, with Crichton's reputation, we would get a better book.

Books like this (but better!)
The Domesday Book by Connie Willis

REVIEW: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

by Robin Sloan

“Walking the stacks in a library, running your finger down the spines — it’s hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.” 

Clay Jannon is desperate for a job after being laid off when the snazzy bagel company he was marketing for went belly up. When he notices a help wanted sign on the door of an independent bookstore, he is ready to try anything. As soon as Mr. Penumbra asks "What do you seek in these shelves?" Clay is hooked. It turns out this book store has secrets. Sure, it carries the the requisite number of unappreciated works of genius Penumbra loves, but in the dark corners of the store, towards the top of the tall shelves, there are books for a special clientele. They come in, return a book, and borrow a new one, all eager to continue with solving the mysteries within those pages. The curious Clay and his friends (a programmer, a CEO, a maker, an anthropologist, and more gathered along the way) follow the trail of breadcrumbs that may lead to the secret of this secret society: the formula for immortality.


I quite enjoyed this book! The structure of Mr. Penumbra comes across as a gentler Murakami or a less overwhelming Stephenson (he actually references both authors). I put it as a more modern G.K. Chesterton, lightly examining complex ideas in a reflective, fun adventure that reveals a comprehensive, heart-warming, humanistic truth. What really is immortality? How important is it?

Sadly, the stakes are rather low. Clay does not have much investment in whether the books of the secret society are decoded or not. He does not believe they hold the secrets to eternal life, but he is doing it for his friend. And the stakes tend to stay at about medium throughout the entire book. However, what it lacks in stakes it makes up for in pure librarian nerdery.


This is the perfect book for library nerds! It mixes everything that is important to us, the old and the new, ancient typography with computer fonts, secret codes with computer codes, ebooks and regular books, CGI with clay models, artifact warehouses with high tech systems, smelly bookstores and shiny Google. Sloan appears to have a great working knowledge of both sides of the information coin, and it is delightful to read.

The surprising thing is, the sides are not pitted against each other, except by the villains of the book. The protagonists are all about integration and collaboration, using new technology to preserve and enhance the old, how "Old Knowledge" (information in books that have not yet been digitized) is the great untapped mystery to Google. And yet, new technology does not replace books. They live in harmony side by side and feed off of each other, just as Clay's team of experts all have special skills (programming, fabrication, graphic design, anthropology, hacking, museum curating, etc) that mix together to create intellectual alchemy. There is a section about "digital archaeology," which blew my mind. I had never thought of it before.

I found it extra delightful that the author/ and Clay, is a NERD nerd. When he was a kid, he and his friend Neal were obsessed with a series called The Dragon-Song Chronicles and played "Rockets and Warlocks" (a tabletop RPG). Questing language is infused throughout the book. It is not uber present, but occasionally you are stumble upon delightful sentences like this: "I explain it like the set up for a Rockets and Warlocks adventure: the backstory, the characters, the quest before us. The party is forming, I say: I have a rogue (that's me) and a wizard (that's Kat). Now I need a warrior. (Why does the typical adventuring group consist of a wizard, a warrior and a rogue anyway? It should really be a wizard, a warrior and a rich guy. Otherwise who's going to pay for all the swords and spells and hotel rooms?" And we find Clay listening to The Dragon-Song Chronicles over and over like an old song he knows very well, much like the way I reread the Chronicles of Narnia.

Two things sealed the deal with this book for me. First, my version glows in the dark. I did not know this until the last night I was reading it and I turned out the lights to go to bed, and BAM! It glowed.

Second was the final paragraph of the book which, as a library nerd, made me cry:

"A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at the right time."

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REVIEW: This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein by Kenneth Oppel

This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein

by Kenneth Oppel

Young Victor Frankenstein and his twin brother Konrad live in a large mansion in Bellerive with their mother, father, two young brothers, their cousin Elizabeth, and occasionally their best friend Henry Clerval. While their lives are relatively happy, there is tension between the twins: Konrad the bright shining one, and Victor, his darker, more ambitions shadow. When Konrad falls ill, Victor is consumed by the mission to save him, even if it means delving into mysterious and potentially dangerous science.

This book is a very quick read! It is an adventure story, through and through, with intense and gripping action sequences as Victor, Elizabeth and Henry make a deal with a shady former-alchemist and fight to get the ingredients for Konrad's cure (high treetops with vicious vultures, deep and treacherous caves, and a final very personal ordeal).

The most compelling element for me was how Oppel takes the older Victor, Elizabeth, and Henry of the classic story and works backwards to extrapolate how they came to be who they are in Frankenstein. Victor is the most successful of all. He is both protagonist and antagonist. He has good intentions, but his passion, selfishness, vanity, and blind ambition distort his thoughts. He is a villain who doesn't know he is a villain; my favorite kind. And in many ways, he is your typical teenage boy, full of jealousies and too many hormones for his rational mind to handle.  It is easy for me how this Victor became the Victor of Mary Shelley's horror story. His need for power and dominance, his obsession with science and of gaining mastery over life and death to save his brother, his disregard for the effect of his actions on others are all classic Victor. He will sacrifice anything, even himself, to get want he wants. 

Oppel also allows us some wonderful and gruesome moments of the sublime. The sublime, as defined to me in school when we studied Frankenstein, is something that instills a mix of awe and terror, which often occurs when you see the Monster. Like a gristly car crash from which you cannot look away. They are scattered sparingly through out the book, but when Victor is confronted with one of those gristly images, or participates in a horrific act, you can see the subtle fascination it holds for him. Skin separated from bone, cutting through innards to get to the contents of a stomach; it attracts him as it repulses him. 

While there is less existential discussion in this one as there is in Mary Shelly's book, it is perfect for middle school and early high school students wrestling with issues of their own, and a great entry point for the classic Frankenstein.

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ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Sherlockian (10/6/11)

The Sherlockian

by Graham Moore

"There had been a time when the world was full of blank spaces, and in which a man of imagination might be able to give free scope to his fancy. But... these spaces were rapidly being filled up; and the question was where the romance writer was to turn?" - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I picked up this book just before the cold snap, and believe me, that is the perfect time to read it. A cold night outside, while you are warm by the light of a fire. Or central heating.

Harold White has just been inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars, the elite Sherlockian scholarly society, and he is their youngest member to date. His dizzying first days as a member grind to a halt when it is discovered that the most prominent Sherlockian scholar was killed in his hotel room just as he was about to reveal his newest discovery: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's missing diary. Who killed Alex Cale? Why did they scrawl "Elementary" in blood on the wall? What in the diary was so great and terrible that they wanted to keep it from being revealed? Where is the diary now? Only Harold White can find out.

In the mean time, Arthur Conan Doyle is having trouble of his own. His story starts when he gleefully writes the death of Holmes over Reichenbach Falls. Alas, poor Conan Doyle was not expecting the societal backlash: old women accost him on the street, the newspaper writes an obituary of Holmes, the nation wears black arm bands as a sign of mourning. Then, someone sends a bomb to him in the mail with the word "Elementary" and some newspaper clippings about a murdered girl. After extricating himself from the rubble of his study, a reluctant Conan Doyle is launched into his own investigation with his own Watson, an unexpected, but well-cast Bram Stoker. They hunt the suspect through the foggy streets of London during the time the missing diary was supposed to chronicle. The author volleys back and forth between the two eras like a jaunty yet foreboding tennis match.

It is not a bone chilling mystery by any means. There are moments of action and thrills, but it is a leisurely mystery, as mysteries go. Harold falls into the job of detective rather by accident: he wears the biggest fanboy pants (or in this case, deerstalker hat), and he's the only one crazy enough to actually interfere with a police investigation. You have to admire his enthusiasm, though! With HIS Watson-like only-just-met reporter companion, Sarah (who is a vaguely suspicious character in a way you know will pay off later), Harold follows the trail of literary clues to find the murderer and the diary.

One failing I would have to say is that this book struggled with trying to be Holmes, but from inside the would-be detectives head, rather than Watson's. Holmes is a fascinating enigma because he sits in silence for a few days, and then jumps up with the answer, and then has to explain to us how he got there. Since we are in Harold's head, we get him deep-thinking quite a bit, trying to emulate Holmes, thinking detailed, but unhelpful thoughts. Then, he jumps up with an epiphany, and we think it has come out of nowhere, because the thought process we heard did not lead him there. He then, like Holmes, has to explain this sudden outburst with thoughts to which we were not privy to his slower Watson, and it comes across as a bit conjecture-y.

Some of the twists were obvious, some seemed weak, and and others seemed unrealistic. Still it was a fun ride!

I liked the Conan Doyle sections, as he is a grouchy, yet earnest unlikely hero. He comes across as a stick-in-the-mud, and then puts himself through incredible indignities to sink his teeth into a criminal. The author also does some delightful name dropping: Bram Stoker (along with J.M. Barrie and Oscar Wilde) were historically friends with Arthur Conan Doyle. Bram also worked as theater manager to a playhouse where Henry Irving and Ellen Terry performed. It was like a delicious literary figure parade! Once the story revs to life, however, frivolity is gone, and the game is afoot! It is thrilling to follow the twists and turns, speckled by murder after murder, as Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker speed closer and closer to an ending that someone would kill Alex Cale to hide.

Woven through this tale is the sad thought that Holmes and Watson could not survive the electric lamp. That their London thrived in the romance of fog and shadow. That the world now is too complicated. We trust Holmes to take us through uncertainty to a satisfactory ending where everything is clear. In the real world, left to our own devices, we are not so lucky.

One extra juicy bit of trivia is that this is based on true events. There was a Sherlockian scholar who was killed in the same manner which sparked a worldwide Sherlockian search for his killer.

A delectable easy read, chock full of noms for Sherlockians, mystery fans, and literary buffs!

If you liked this book, you may like:

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ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Name of the Wind (7/18/11)

The Name of the Wind

by Patrick Rothfuss

"It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story." 

This was one of those books that everyone told me that I should read, and that I would love. And they were right! But it was not what I expected at all.

The book intrigued me from the first page, a beautiful poetic construction which I won't spoil here. It begins with our hero as a humble innkeeper, trying to keep his head down. When trouble comes to him, I expected the story to explode, as he throws off his disguise and goes off to kick some evil ass. However that is not what happens. A Chronicler comes and the innkeeper, Kvothe, tells his life story.

It has all my favorite elements, a childhood in a group of traveling players, meeting an old arcanist (scientistwizard) and learning from him, urchin-ing on the streets of a city, going to a scientistwizard university. Training montages galore! He develops into a resourceful, powerful wizard with a flare for showmanship and a disregard for authority. He therefore becomes the most notorious arcanist in the region! At times, it seemed like the book should be titled "How to Succeed in Arcanist University Without Really Trying."

With brief moments of shock and excitement, it is actually a very leisurely narrative. Yes, bad things happen, and in the first half of the book, life sucks for him. But by the second half, you know he'll get out of trouble through sheer dumb luck and cockiness. And he does. Every time. I almost wished something would blow up in his face once in a while. And I think it will, but that is for another book.

His female characters intrigue me. They are idealistic in the best sense of the word. These women are beautiful, funny, brave, and intelligent, and I want to be all of them. However, they have very few flaws. And there are so many women with whom he has a close relationship, that you have no idea who he will end up with. My hope is that he will get together with the delicate, elf-like, potentially-a-student-gone-mad girl who lives in the tunnels under the university and has a delightful way of looking at the world.

Often what struck me the most was his descriptions of love or women. I'll leave you with two examples, as they speak for themselves:

"My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you're lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years."

"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."

All in all, it is an entertaining and well-written story, but, again, it read like the first half of a book. Actually, it reads like he ran out of paper, realized he had already written 662 pages and was only partially through the story, so he tacked on an ending and started Volume II. Which I am looking forward to immensely.

This story ends with them still in the inn, having told part of the life story. I am hoping the next book will have at least mentioned a king, if not killed him (as it is called the King Killer Chronicles), and I hope Kvothe will stop telling us about his life and start doing something about the demon spiders that threaten his town. Maybe even go fight the Big Bad evil. Something to get him out of the house.

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ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Bestiary (6/16/11)

The Bestiary

by Nicholas Christopher

"If we find in the depiction of an animal an uplifting or penetrating symbol, we should not worry whether that creature really exists, or if it ever existed." - St. Augustine

Xeno Atlas was a neglected child, raised by his grandmother who told him about the animal spirits who haunt the world. So many animals die every day that the air is thick with them. Some people have animal spirits inside them, or were animals in another life.

Xeno has had glimpses of mysterious animals since he was a child, from the gargoyle from a city building that appeared at his window one night, to the fox present when his grandmother died. When he learns of an ancient book called the Caravan Bestiary, a book about the strange animals who were denied entrance to Noah's ark, he makes it his life's mission to find this book. His quest spans several decades, and several countries, and along the way he is confronted with the ubiquitous symbolic world of animals and animal imagery. In his search for the book, he finds himself and his place in the world.

This is exactly how I wish all actual memoirs were written. Each event mentioned is highly, if quietly, significant and echoes of it reverberate back and forth throughout the book. The child is abandoned when he is young, but there is less of a sense of sickly despair or resignation as an ownership and adaption. I understand that this is fiction, and the memoirs were real, so it is difficult to write about what you do not feel, but my GOD this book was refreshing.

Christopher treads the fine line between realism and fantasy. He has mystical, beautiful events that may or may not have happened, but he lets the reader judge. Xeno lives in the real world, but a world filled with wonder and mystery.

His quest for the Caravan Bestiary becomes incredibly academic, but still gripping, as your heart soars with each clue he discovers. I became quite jealous as he was able to devote his life to medieval academia in little flats he rented in Paris, Venice, and Greece. Seems perfect to me!

His life surrounding the quest for the Caravan Bestiary is also beautifully constructed. As his father never sees him, he creates his own family, a boy named Bruno who is a sickly biology genius hell-bent on keeping animals from extinction, and Bruno's sister, Lena, a gentle, reserved veterinarian. Occasionally, his life is shattered and he has to pick up the pieces.

The story weaves back and forth from light to dark, from heaven to hell, and the sharp contrast makes each more acutely felt. The one small thing that irked me about the book was that Christopher seemed to be foreshadowing a sinister event that never came. I wonder if anyone else had the same experience?