The Long Earth: (Long Earth 1)

Terry Pratchett · Stephen Baxter

Jun 2012 · Random House

About this ebook

'A charming, absorbing and somehow spacious piece of imagineering' Guardian
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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 has 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 is an understatement if ever there was one...
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This is the first novel in The Long Earth series.

Ratings and reviews

I am sad to report that I have found Pratchett's book that is… bad. Poorly executed story - what have we learned about parallel earths at the end of explorer's journey? "Final Boss Fight" never happened: "let's convince him to stop doing bad things: done!" LAZY descriptions that suppose to make you feel wonder of discovering new lifeforms and worlds - "it looked like elephant on two legs", "an seagull with body of cat", "monkeys but tall", "pig with wings and human feet". Add all that to inconsistencies.

Liked the book - knew I would since I have read all books by both authors. A shame it took so long to get a good head of steam up, and that the ending is so abrupt. I was on page 335, thinking it was getting really interesting, and the end came so fast, it sort of blindsided me! On the whole, not bad at all. Some other reviewers complain that this book's style is unlike either authors' usual offering - what do you expect, it's a collaborative effort!

Interesting idea. Hooked me immediately and couldn't put it down for much of the first third. But once it settled in to the second half, the story didn't seem to advance in any meaningful way until near the end when it suddenly throws a flurry of plot developments at the reader crammed into the last few dozen pages. It's almost as though it's nothing more than a needlessly long prologue to the ACTUAL story still to come in subsequent books. Still, an easy three stars for the premise and characters.

About the author

Terry Pratchett (Author)
Terry Pratchett was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. His fortieth Discworld novel, Raising Steam, was published in 2013. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. He died in March 2015.

www.terrypratchett.co.uk
@terryandrob

Stephen Baxter (Author)
Stephen Baxter is one of the UK's most acclaimed writers of science fiction and a multi-award winner. His many books include the classic Xeelee sequence, the Time's Odyssey novels (written with Arthur C. Clarke) and Time Ships, a sequel to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, a Doctor Who novel, The Wheel of Ice, and most recently the epic, far-future novels Proxima and Ultima. He lives in Northumberland.