August Books 7) The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

[nwhyte]

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

Comments

[justphoenix]

Sadly, the Long War is much of the same, though we get a lot of new characters

[duck2ducks]

Regrettably have to agree here. I REALLY enjoyed the first book, largely due to the unique premise. And so I was surprised and massively disappointed when the second turned out to be more of the same without the a sense of the plot actually going anywhere new.

[djm4]

FWIW (and mileage on this certainly varies a lot) I still very much liked The Long War despite the paucity of plot. In a sense, paucity of plot is the point, the universe is suddenly so vast that it's easier for groups of people to get away from everyone else in a way that wasn't possible before stepping, and for me the books did a great job of exploring how that affects not just people, but the sort of stories they end up having. Both books are travelogues more than anything else - the second is set later, so the landscape is different, and involves more people.

I'm not saying you'll like the second book; you may well not. But I did, and I was expecting it to have a lot more plot than it actually did, so it wrong-footed me and I enjoyed it anyway.

[bopeepsheep]

I've enjoyed all three - though I did feel, as with Good Omens, that there were bits I could have highlighted as "this is all Pratchett" and "this is all Baxter", that wasn't actually a problem for me.

Handily they filled a fourth shelf of Pratchetts neatly, so for the moment they're being categorised as Fantasy, in my house at least. Funnier Than Usual SF wouldn't make a full shelf yet.

[nwhyte]

Funnier Than Usual books by Stephen Baxter would probably come down to the trilogy with Terry Pratchett!