So, The Long Earth turned into a bad Star Trek episode.
A bad Stark Trek: The Animated Series episode.
By the way: HERE BE SPOILERS. Stop reading now unless you
don’t want to finish reading the book.
Which I did – and which I recommend, but only for study
purposes if you’re a writer trying to deconstruct a genre.
The ending, sentient, symbiotic yet entirely innocently
menacing Blob Monster aside, is acceptable. But the philosophical discussions
of having unlimited Earths to explore and exploit are rather tepid and
unimaginative, and The Long Earth’s characters are beyond cardboard-cutout
dull.
Even the villains and their motivations are dull – or at
best, incoherent. Where Pratchett and Baxter could have painted a much more
menacing menace than the wimpy, pseudo-whatever (is he a religious zealot? I
don’t know. There are only enough hints to make me assume, but not near enough
detail to make me even know why he decides to nuke Madison, Wisconsin, in
reaction to the book’s phenomena) Brian Crowley. (Is that really his name? I
don’t care enough about him to verify.)
Same can be said of Joshua Valiente and Sally Whatshername,
the paleo chick he connects with just before Lobsang and company find and
become voluntarily absorbed by the Blob Monster. Yes, that sets up something
neato nifty for the next book, but part of me wishes they’d spent more time
with the neato nifty in this book.
And then in the acknowledgements the authors profusely thank
someone in Wisconsin for taking them on what appears to be a complicated tour
of Madison so they can get to know the city as a setting for the novel – and
then share nothing more about the city than what could have been gleaned from a
few minutes’ perusal of Wikipedia.
This book is weak sauce, through and through.
I’ve said this before about the differences between fantasy
and science fiction: Sci-fi is the realm of ideas, while fantasy is the realm
of characters reacting to ideas. I’ve never read a book as pronounced in this
effect, but of course I’ve never read a sci-fi book co-authored by Terry
Pratchett before, so I’ve never had such a vast wad of material with which to
make comparisons. I certainly prefer the character-driven pursuit of ideas that
Terry Pratchett has perfected in his fantasy novels. And I’m pretty sure I can
pass on the rest of the books in this series.
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