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A while ago I decided I needed some pure escapism and nothing fits the bill better than a sci-fi, particularly my favourite branch of sci-fi, time-travel. Thank you to my good friend, Tigus, for recommending it.

I’m sure a-lot of you have read this, particularly as it’s considered one of the great time-travel reads, or maybe you’ve seen the shockingly-bad film! Either way, I’m sure you’re aware it’s about a bunch of archaeologists who are investigating a medieval site in France. Suddenly they are whisked away to the headquarters of a multinational corporation, where they learn that technology has been developed which will enable them to go back in time and see the place they were investigating, in France, for real and help in the rescue of a patron of this technology.

Now the real question, did I like it? The short answer is, yes I did. While there were a few problems, overall I was able to see past them to the great story within.

The first problem was the, at times baffling, explanations of the methods employed to avail of time-travel. What Michael Crichton didn’t seem to understand too well, is that a reader of time-travel accepts the said time-travel and therefore doesn’t need too much explanation. That being said, I did enjoy the explanation of quantum theory and felt like I finally understood something that before, was hard for me to wrap my head around. I just felt that overall the reader didn’t need quite so much in the way of hard facts. If you’re now put off this book, don’t be, because the lengthy explanations are mostly confined to the first third of the book and wrapping your head around then isn’t all that vital.

Secondly there was a hell of a lot of action. I’ve never been one for too much action, so I would have preferred more character development or something, but that’s a personal thing. I did find that I got a little lost when I set this book down for several days, simply because there was so much going on, but I quickly caught up.

The characters, in the most part, came second to the story, but it was such a rich and layered story that I didn’t mind that too much. It delivered just what I needed; a great story that I could really get my teeth into.