{"id":786,"date":"2013-09-28T13:29:11","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T21:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=786"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:32:14","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:32:14","slug":"review-the-long-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/28\/review-the-long-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Long Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The Long Earth<\/a> by Terry Pratchett<\/a>
\n My rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a Pratchett fan, like most of the people who’ve read The Long Earth<\/i>. Not so much that I’ve scoured the world for every scrap of his writing, but enough that if I see something with his name on it, I\u2019ll pick it up. Not so much with Baxter. I wound up with a free copy of one his books on my e-reader, and I just couldn’t get into it. And since free means easy come easy go, I didn’t make it past page 10.<\/p>\n

But I figured I\u2019d give The Long Earth<\/i>. After all, even though I can\u2019t seem to get into Neil Gaiman either, I like what Pratchett and Gaiman did with their collaboration. So for this novel I guess everything was resting on Pratchett. And I guess it wasn’t enough.<\/p>\n

Either that or there was some horribly deep metaphor here that I just never picked up on. I liked the concept of the ‘Long Earth’, and even liked the way the \u201ctechnology\u201d was discovered\u2026 but after that, all everything else was just spread too thin. Lobsang\u2019s airship was too convenient. The natural steppers were just too convenient. The Gap, and the very Buddha-like meta-mind was too convenient. The terrible thing that happens to Madison at the end was really very too convenient. I was unmoved by any of it. I wasn’t sure what the plot was all about, if there was one at all. None of the characters resonated for me.<\/p>\n

I could tell where Pratchett\u2019s hand was writing the words, his light but skillful way with language, like Bach playing around on a clavichord. So it wasn’t all bad. But it wasn’t immersive enough. Pratchett\u2019s characters (and yes I\u2019m thinking of Discworld here) are usually so dynamic and interesting. But in The Long Earth<\/i>: flat.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to \u201cblame\u201d Baxter for the things I didn’t like, but that\u2019s too easy. Instead, I\u2019m going to blame the collaborative process. Yes, I said I\u2019d liked Good Omens<\/i>, so it\u2019s not that the collaborative process is guaranteed to fail. But this time, I think there was more cancelling out than augmentation.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett My rating: 2 of 5 stars I\u2019m a Pratchett fan, like most of the people who’ve read The Long Earth. Not so much that I’ve scoured the world for every scrap of his writing, but enough that if I see something with his name on it, I\u2019ll pick it … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The Long Earth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-cG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}