Timeline, by Michael Crichton

Crichton is the king of concept.  Jurassic Park is still one of the best concepts ever, and Crichton has gotten rich off of his brilliant What If's.  The concept in Timeline is:  What if a company secretly developed a time travel machine and an archeology professor got trapped in the 14th century.  It's not bringing dinosaurs to life, but it was good enough to get me to buy the book after reading the Kindle sample.

Unfortunately, once the time travel takes place, most of the book takes place in the 14th century, with battling knights, political maneuvering among the royal class, and a castle siege.  I don't like renaissance faires, and I wasn't interested in the details of the 14th century which Crichton seemed fascinated with.  But the real problem with the plot in the medieval time was that I didn't care about the characters.  Character development has always been a weak spot for Crichton--I can't think of a memorable character from any of the Crichton novels I've read.  Timeline had plenty of action, but without characters to care about, it was tedious to wade through page after page of chases.

Perhaps the problem is that we never get an honest look inside any of the characters skulls.   We see some inner thoughts, but they are superficial without any deep introspection, like "I really like that girl, I wonder if she'd go out with me." Or:  "Why is she laughing at his stupid jokes--probably because he makes more money than me."

In the end, Timeline was a disappointment; it was a great concept which didn't live up to its potential due to a lack of character development.