The Long Earth

A Novel

By: Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter

Narrated by: Michael Fenton-Stevens

Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

The possibilities are endless. Just be careful what you wish for....

The Western Front, 1916. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone?

Madison, Wisconsin, 2015. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive - some say mad, others allege dangerous - scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through the wreckage, Jansson find a curious gadget: a box containing some rudimentary wiring, a three-way switch, and . . . a potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way humankind views the world forever.

The first novel in an exciting new collaboration between Discworld creator Terry Pratchett and the acclaimed SF writer Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth transports readers to the ends of the earth - and far beyond. All it takes is a single step. . . .

©2012 Terry Pratchett, Lyn Pratchett, and Stephen Baxter (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers

An unlikely pair of authors

I love Terry Pratchett almost better than life itself. I've read a little Stephen Baxter, but nothing recently. I was a little apprehensive when I read that they were collaborating. I was afraid I'd be disappointed.

I wasn't.

The book is science fiction. It's obviously the beginning of a series, and there are lots of threads left dangling. But I really liked the idea of the multiple Earths that people suddenly learned how to "step" into. I'd've loved to have a little more actual STORY rather than just foundation-laying, but I still enjoyed the book.

The narrator does an EXCELLENT job. Again, I'm used to Nigel Planer or Stephen Briggs with Pratchett, and I was worried that I wouldn't like this narrator. But his use of voices and accents was exceptionally good, and really helped to make the characters stand out one from another. I thoroughly enjoyed his performance. Well done all around.

ONE Complaint

This was a fantastic story. Not typical Pratchett whimsy, but highly imaginative. My only gripe is with the narrator. He's really not too bad, but this is a story full of American characters and he's British. As I got deeper into the book, the bad dialects started to wear on me and I became painfully aware of the miscues. I wouldn't do well voicing 15 different British characters either. The main character is named Joshua and somewhere around the 50th time you hear it pronounced "Joshu-er" it's irritating.

Not what I expected.

The story was fair and the premise was somewhat interesting. Regrettably, I could not tell that Terry Pratchett had anything to do with this book. The wit and humor I have loved in the 30+ books of his I have read was absent. If I had been reading it as a physical book, I doubt that I would have finished.

Not a Pratchett

As a long time fan of Terry Pratchett, I can tell you that this isn't a Terry Pratchett book. At least, there is little that would cause a Pratchett fan to think so. There's no humor, no amusing human element, no charm or wit. It's a fairly flat narrative, in fact. It's a sci fi that deals with time travel and other dimensions - hardly original stuff, but not bad either. In my opinion, there are better sci fi works out there.

daydream

This has been such a great book. Well explored concept with many points of view.

Mesmerizing Story

Great book that was thought provoking. Can not wait to listen to the next one.

A thrilling sci-fi story that has just begun.

I would have to say that this is one of my favorite sci-fi stories now. It is different, creative, and holds a possible answer to what would happen if we as people had infinite earths to explore!

Fascinating premise...

...adequate story. A unique perspective on parallel worlds, and a fun world to discover. One of the main characters was very unique.

There were some gems of writing, dialog, character and plot. Overall it was interesting enough to pull this reader along and maintain engagement with the story, even if it was missing that certain elusive something that makes a book sparkle.

It is difficult to imagine where the story could go from here, and--despite the plot hook at the end of this book--there's not much interest to pick up the next one.

The narrator did a fine job, and helped to keep the story alive and bright. There was a few places where his regional accent was noticeable, but they were too free to distract from the overall performance.

picks up at the end

Initially I loved it, a great concept and I like Joshua as a character and later Lhap Sang (sp?). There are little biopics scattered around that are very entertaining. However, for the first two thirds of the story.. there is no story. It is primarily an exploration of the concept and what could happen if we were able to step. however, in the last third it picks up and becomes interesting. I felt it lacked most of the whimsical observations and humor of Pratchett that I had been looking forward to.

Great Concept Less Interesting Story

I've read a lot of books where I love the concept at the inception and then fall out of love with it as the story goes along. But what's interesting about The Long Earth is that its concept remains pure and a mind bending throughout. The idea is that on a random day an invention called a "stepper" is released and it allows almost the entire world to move to other versions of Earth.

No one is quite sure how many Earth's there are and what the differences are between each iteration of the Earth. In short one day everything is just normal modern day society, the next people are able to move through hundreds, of thousands of worlds. What this does to the Earth we all inhabit now is fascinating. Overnight all industry dries up. Thousands begin to migrate through what the book describes as the "Long Earth." It's a truly fascinating and well thought out idea that for me was the crux of what I enjoyed about the novel.

However the actual storyline that then takes you on this adventure through thousands of Earth's is no where near as interesting. In fact its overly convoluted and comes off hamstrung. I personally was vying for more time to hear about what happened to the original Earth and what the settlers were doing on the new Earth's to care about the scientific anomalies of Earth's millions of "steps" away.

What worked however in The Long Earth's favor is that it keeps things light and feel good throughout. This could easily have been 1000+ pages of one groups adventure to settle and colonize a new Earth. Part of me sort of wishes this book was that. The brief times the book discusses religion, politics, and finances are by far the high points of the novel. At the end of the day the concept is fascinating but the execution was middle of the road.