The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I know. I know in my heart. With all my soul. That Terry Pratchett can do better than this. I don’t know Stephen Baxter, I can’t speak for him.
Lobsang hides and reveals information not when an actual person would, or when a robot would. Over and over again we ask, “Why wouldn’t Lobsang have told Joshua this earlier?” And the answer is, “No good reason.” Lobsang is also the most reliable vehicle of artificial exposition.
And it doesn’t seem to have an ending? I mean, they journey and then they journey back. But the central question of the story was never whether they could make the journey. The first thing we know about the protagonist is that he’s the best at making this journey. So there’s not that much suspense there. The other major question is, “What is the Long Earth?” and only Lobsang ever does anything toward answering it, and none of that research is visible to us. Only the resulting exposition at convenient times.
They tacked the character conflict on because there’s supposed to be conflict. The arguments come from nowhere and have no consequences. Not believable.
There’s a terrorism sub-plot tacked on, too, for no reason I can tell. It doesn’t affect the journey. It doesn’t tell us about the Long Earth.
The Douglas Adams references don’t make up for all these problems. All they do is make me wish I was reading a Douglas Adams book.
I’m sorry. It just suffers from poor construction. If you’re bored reading this, that’s why. Every Discworld book is better.
(A quick note on the audiobook. The British guy who narrates it has to fake an American accent for most of the character voices. It’s not convincing.)