Friday 22 June 2012

SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW: The Long Earth - Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Release Date: 21/06/12

SYNOPSIS:

t's 1916: the Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where have the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No Man's Land gone? 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive - some said mad, others dangerous - scientist when she finds a curious gadget - a box containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a...potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way Mankind views his world for ever. And that's an understatement if ever there was one..."The Long Earth" is the first novel in an exciting new collaboration between the creator of Discworld Terry Pratchett and the acclaimed SF writer Stephen Baxter.


REVIEW:

To be honest I like Stephen Baxter and I like Terry Pratchett so I was really looking forward to this story for quite some time. After all the last tale that was an amalgamation between Terry and another (Neil Gaiman) was Good Omens and a real joy to read.

What this tale does is unfurl at an incredibly slow and convoluted pace, its sadly lacking the magic that either of the authors bring on their own and sadly feels more like a case of big names selling rather than a tale of gripping imagination. It’s difficult to work your way through, feels like it has no real twists and sadly lacks character wise for me as a reader to have anything to hold onto. All in its OK but at the end of the day it feels like a real let down to me as a reader.



1 comment:

T. James said...

I've been reading Terry Pratchett for years and found his writing to be consistently inspired to levels of wonderful madness, and very entertaining to read. It's a shame that, unlike his collaboration with Gaiman, the merging of these two writer's unique voices left you with a dissonant note.