Review: The Long War

The Long War by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm lukewarm about this book. The first one was so, so good and kept me interested the whole time, and I'm pretty sure that if I'd picked this one up cold I would've put it down after a few chapters. The characters aren't as solid - many are muddy, undefined and out of nowhere, with either little or no payoff to their plot. In fact, at least four characters don't get a real plot; their stories go "get in an airship, travel, get to location and see thing." Joshua Valiente's story (one of maybe three characters with actual plots) doesn't start until about halfway through the novel, and even then it's mostly about traveling through the world. Which was really cool in the first book, but that journey had a point *and* it was the first we'd seen of the Long Earth. Now we're already familiar with a lot of the characters and the setting and even most of the politics of this world, but the whole first half of the book is establishing setting and character again. And the new characters are hardly given a proper treatment here, with Helen (actually in book 1, but a slightly larger character here) being nothing more than a nagging wife who fears her husband will be taken away "again" (although his last journey was before they ever met, so...?) and who despite all the awkward buildup is irrelevant after about 150 pages. The Reverend Nelson, also introduced last book, has a similar buildup with no actual impact on any event in the story. Two characters from Happy Landings get a tour of the East Earths, and NOTHING HAPPENS except that we see more Earths and hear that there is life on some iterations of Mars. And the climax of the titular "Long War" is resolved without a single shot just by literally showing up to a place, the conflict with the trolls is solved by Lobsang giving a speech once they find a bunch of trolls (though he could've given it to any group of trolls, because as we know, the long call eventually gets to every single troll in all the Earths). All of that combined with a major foreshadowed event happening in the last chapter of the book gives this book a crippling second-in-a-trilogy feel (though there are more than 3 in the series), with nothing actually happening except for some more cool travel and species reveals (though I could've done without the beagles, and also, why reveal those to us in the first goddman chapter? Finding out there are other sentient species would've been much cooler if we'd seen it grow out of the plot and not just had it thrown at us in the first few pages out of context!) and a political climate change that sets the stage for the next story. And on top of everything, it could've used some serious editing. There were a bunch of times where the same sentence structure was used 3 or 4 times within two paragraphs (i.e. "Well, ..." or "Of course, ...") and a lot of the prose just sounded awkward. All in all, a disappointing follow-up to one of the more intriguing stories I've read in a while, but it has some more cool iterations of Earth so it's okay I guess.

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Review: The Long Earth

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So I've had a somewhat disappointing run of books lately, "The Book of Phoenix" mostly excepted, but I am glad to say that "The Long Earth" was definitely not a disappointment! This is one of a few books that make me wish I was still working at a bookstore, because I wouldn't have known this existed if I hadn't obsessively reorganized our sci-fi/fantasy section. The author combination is what first intrigued me - Stephen Baxter, who is well-known for his science fiction and his collaborations with Isaac Asimov (though I must admit this is the first thing of his I've read) partnering with Terry Pratchett, known for absurdly comical fantasy novels and his collaboration with Neil Gaiman? Really? It was unexpected - but it worked.

"The Long Earth" has a pretty simple premise: there are a large number of other Earths, and suddenly (almost) everyone on Earth has access to them. Most of the closely-clustered ones are similar to each other, but there is variation especially as you go "farther" from our Earth. (The Earths are kind of superlocated on each other... but maybe not? Nobody quite understands how this works yet.) There's a lot of Pratchett's trademark humor that lies subtly in the background and the dialogue. It's definitely tempered with the more serious setting and story, but there are a few characters where it really comes out (Lobsang, the computer program who claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan motorcycle repairman is the shining example).

The characters - even and especially the idiosyncratic Lobsang - are solidly constructed and very much serve to move the story forward, although some can get a little flat and many seem to be variations on the "sturdy Englishman who just wants order and stability and his tea, thank you very much" trope (see: any character Martin Freeman has ever played). But only occasionally, and hardly to the detriment of the story because in a world where literally any variation on Earth is possible, that kind of down-to-Earthyness (pun intended) is necessary. And to say that the characters move the story isn't saying they're slaves to it; their interactions are delightful and the plot movement rises naturally from those interactions.

And the plot. The plot! It drags occasionally toward the middle as there is some time spent sightseeing and revealing just how much (and how little) these other Earths differ from our own, but again, these parts are both useful to the plot in small ways and very pleasant to read. And while I found myself wondering what could possibly make this journey worth it - what could be that interesting without being overdone - I was wholly satisfied and excited at what lay at the end of their journey.

Highly recommend to anyone who likes stories of the fantastical. It crosses the borders of sci-fi and fantasy and tells one heck of a good story in the process. The only downside is that now I'm gonna have to read the rest, and I already have a lot of books on my to-read list.

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