August Books 7) The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
Like, I guess, a lot of people I was intrigued by the announcement four years ago that Pratchett and Baxter, two authors whose styles are not exactly next adjacent to each other, were to collaborate on a series of books set after the pathways between universes have been discovered; and now anyone with a problem can just run away to a parallel world. It reminded me a bit of Chris Beckett's Shifter stories, and a bit less of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, and a bit more of Charles Stross's Merchant Princes.
The style does end up somewhere less exciting than either Pratchett's zany parables or Baxter's hard-sf prose, without quite taking off until quite near the end (with a couple of mis-steps towards humour). But I felt that compared to, say, Orbitsville or Ringworld, the authors did manage to convey the grandeur of the multitude of settings, and the potential variation of worlds from a common start. This is the first of the novels, so there's quite a lot of scene-setting, because there are an awful lot of scenes; but clearly something is being set up for later delivery. I won't rush to get the others in the series, but I will keep en eye out for them.
The style does end up somewhere less exciting than either Pratchett's zany parables or Baxter's hard-sf prose, without quite taking off until quite near the end (with a couple of mis-steps towards humour). But I felt that compared to, say, Orbitsville or Ringworld, the authors did manage to convey the grandeur of the multitude of settings, and the potential variation of worlds from a common start. This is the first of the novels, so there's quite a lot of scene-setting, because there are an awful lot of scenes; but clearly something is being set up for later delivery. I won't rush to get the others in the series, but I will keep en eye out for them.