The Long Earth by Pratchett and Baxter

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - 352 pages

This Scifi - Fantasy collaboration takes us into a future where mankind discovers the means to travel between parallel Earths.  Some people can do it at will or under times of great stress.  Others require the use of a mechanical box to "step" between worlds.  The alternate Earths are filled with all kinds of life except for people.  No one knows if the other Earths form a circuit that takes the stepper back to our Earth or if they just go on endlessly.  Joshua takes on the challenge of finding out the truth behind the Long Earth and discovers much more than he bargained for.  This book doesn't have much of Pratchett's trademark Discworld humor.  It's much more serious but I enjoyed it for making me think about parallel universes in a different way.  Humanity's impact on the environment and vice versa are also explored in a fascinating manner. 

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter --- 336 pages

Obviously intended to be the first in a series, this collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, both award-winning science fiction/fantasy authors, has gotten rave reviews from a lot of critics. I'm a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, but this book disappointed me.

Yes the scope is epic and the premise is intriguing: the discovery of untold multiple  versions of Earth and a means of traveling to them that involves a concept called "stepping," a kind of sideways movement between consecutive but differently-evolved realities.

Some of the elements are distinctively Pratchett, especially the potato-powered Stepper devices, the "trolls" and the "elfs" that inhabit the parallel Earths, even the cogito ex machina (formerly a Tibetan motorcycle repairman) named Lobsang who is the one of the main characters.

The rest of it is like a new fashioned Jules Verne novel, with long vistas of exposition occasionally interrupted by brief flashes of action. It just failed to float my boat.