Instruct: Classify a given review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: Criticism valid -- so what?

Read all the critiques you want about this book: It's formulaic (you can almost hear Crichton "plugging in" his characters into the Jurassic Park templates: the dubious scientist, the nasty obnoxious mastermind, etc.), it reads more like a screenplay than a novel, character continuity is completely thrown out the window... all of it's true, and none of it really matters... "Timeline" is a fun, fast read, with Crichton's trademarked meticulous research, both into the quantum theories going into his time travel apparati (note the bizzarre statements, typical of trying to explain quantum phenomena in everyday terms), and the details of "Dark Age" life (the phrase getting a well-deserved debunking by Chrichton at the end of the novel).Sit back for an evening or two, and go back to when chivalry wasn't dead (although you might be, if you're not careful), castles were deadly serious places, and plotting, fighting, backstabbing, and intrigue were all part of a day's work.