The Long Utopia

A Novel

By: Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter

Narrated by: Michael Fenton Stevens

Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The fourth novel in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's internationally best-selling Long Earth series, hailed as "a brilliant science fiction collaboration...a love letter to all Pratchett fans, readers, and lovers of wonder everywhere" (Io9).

It's 2045-2059. Human society continues to evolve on Datum Earth, its battered and weary origin planet, as the spread of humanity progresses throughout the many Earths beyond.

Lobsang, now an elderly and complex AI, suffers a breakdown and, disguised as a human, attempts to live a "normal" life on one of the millions of Long Earth worlds. His old friend, Joshua, now in his 50s, searches for his father and discovers a heretofore unknown family history. And the superintelligent posthumans known as "the Next" continue to adapt to life among "lesser" humans.

But an alarming new challenge looms. An alien planet has somehow become "entangled" with one of the Long Earth worlds, and, as Lobsang and Joshua learn, its voracious denizens intend to capture, conquer, and colonize the new universe - the Long Earth - they have inadvertently discovered.

World building, the intersection of universes, the coexistence of diverse species, and the cosmic meaning of the Long Earth itself are among the mind-expanding themes explored in this exciting new installment of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's extraordinary Long Earth series.

©2015 Terry and Lyn Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

Short Review

Everything you'd expect from TP and SB. Glorious ending. I'll be subscribing to audible in order to finish the series, and I won't regret it.

Unexpectedly good.

I'd thought the series to have stopped being interesting by now, but Baxter came through with the goods. Not a dramatic barnburner, but lots of fun to read.

Fun Listen

Entertaining and captivating listen. Loved the reader. Annoyed by the strictures of the rating system. 😜

terrible at accents

Where does The Long Utopia rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Pretty good

Who was your favorite character and why?

Why are you testing me?

How could the performance have been better?

Michael Fenton Stevens was a poor choice for a book with mainly American characters. His attempt at American accents is laughable at best. As an American, listening to him is just annoying. He's actually a good reader and voice actor but he just can't do American accents. Clearly he hasn't had any accent training, so I'm not sure why he was chosen. Maybe if the book had mainly British characters, and one or two American characters he would be fine. Because he just sucks. Not only do George, Agnes, Sally, and Joshua not sound like any actual American ever, I think Agnes and Joshua are supposed to be from Wisconsin which has its own accent. Duh.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I don't know.

Any additional comments?

No.

another well done story and reading

I am a fan of the series and once again they told us a riveting tale. I listened to the entire audio book in one weekend with no regrets other than fear with no more Terry Pratchett the series may be over. I hope that is not the case and I hope Michael Fenton Stevens returns to bring the voices back to these iconic characters.

This is as good as a Disk World novel

For me this is the best of the Long World books that I have listened to. It is as good as a Disk World novel, though not funny, not fantasy, and not a spoof of a genre. I'm glad Baxter partnered with him on the series. Typically, when someone like Pratchett publishes a novel outside of his usual genre the results will be something that looks like an apprentice piece, only worth reading by fans who will read anything by the author. The Long Earth series, written by Pratchett and Baxter, is solid science fiction that I will listen to or read again in the future. They are a worthy series of books. I'm glad Pratchett got to do some science fiction.

A rewarding ending to the series

Any additional comments?

I tremendously enjoyed the first novel, The Long Earth. Unfortunately none of the rest of the novels ever really recaptured the sense of adventure and exploration found in the first (Although The Long Mars came close)

I mostly enjoyed this last novel. It mostly answered a lot of questions raised by the first three novels, but still left a lot unanswered. I'm not sure there is much else to do with the series. But all in all it was fun to listen to and I enjoyed Michael Fenton Steven's performance.

The next book is in June 2016

And I'll get it as soon as I can. this series has been an addiction and I've devoured every book I could, the writing is superb and Michael Fenton Stevens preforms it beautifully.

Wonderful world

The world built is the best part of the book, for me, and this continues to deliver on the natural consequences of an unnatural phenomenon. I would describe this series as reliable, consistent, and interesting, but not as riveting or brilliant.

Before going into the few negatives: I fully plan to finish the series and enjoy it greatly.

Some things I don't like:
The exposition is very painful. Not only do the authors assume that you have forgotten everything from book to book, or that you for some reason decided to start in the middle of a series (and all of that is forgivable), but what truly irks me is the way the exposition is shoehorned into dialog. Characters waste time saying things that everybody present already knows, or saying things their character wouldn't say, especially the Next, all for the sake of explaining things to the reader.
If you need to communicate something to the reader, just write it like you describe a planet or a person - not in dialog! Anything is better than compromising characters for that.

In the narration, characters sometimes lose their accents or voice pitches. Women become men and Nelson loses his South African accent. It's small but has given me a few moments of confusion.

The chapters also feel a bit disjointed at times, not in the way us as viewers get moved between time periods, but in the writing - it seems sometimes like chapters were written separately and out of order, then edited together, and not always enough to flow properly, leading to repeating information.

Overall, though, enjoying quite a bit. Great worldsbuilding.

neatly done

enjoyed the flight of imagination by two masters of the craft.
The theory of Long Phenomena as outlined in this book might yet prove to be accurate and prescient.