I enjoyed the first half of Timeline, and like I said, it was my first exposure to the quantum physics presented there. The second half (after everyone was trapped in the past) seemed kind of cliche.
I didn't find Prey too interesting though. I'd already known about nanobots and at that point was a professional software developer, so the programming aspect didn't have the same "magical" appeal as the others.
Perhaps if you're already familiar with the area he covered, it doesn't hold as much of an appeal?
Undoubtedly. The reason Timeline held (and does hold) such an attraction for me is that it helped me realize that the people in the past weren't stupid or maybe even misguided compared to our current selves. They were just working with different sets of information.
A professional historian would not find something like this new at all, so your perspective does matter.
I didn't find Prey too interesting though. I'd already known about nanobots and at that point was a professional software developer, so the programming aspect didn't have the same "magical" appeal as the others.
Perhaps if you're already familiar with the area he covered, it doesn't hold as much of an appeal?