The Long War By: Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

“The Long Earth is bountiful but not forgiving.”

Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

I love a good collaboration. I will admit that the first title in this series was sitting in my “to be read” pile for a very long time before I got to it.

So many books, so little time.

The series was also my first introduction to Terry Pratchett. I had heard of him because he is so prominent in the genre but I had somehow not gotten around to any of his titles.

Overview: Set a decade after The Long Earth, Joshua Valienté, is now married and living a quiet life in Hell-Knows-Where when his former co-explore, Sally Linsay appears.

She convinces him to help her and the AI Lobsang on another adventure for the sake of all worlds.

Datum America and the Long Earth colony of “Valhalla” are in constant tension with one another and war seems inevitable. Also, the hive-minded humanoids called Trolls are starting to disappear and relationships with the species must be repaired.

Joshua and his companions must try to restore the balance of The Long Earth before it is too far gone. But how do you restore balance when there are infinite worlds and crises can appear after each step?

My thoughts: I found this book to be very reminiscent of titles of Jules Verne. Most of the story is about exploring and documentation of what is observed and that reminds me of The Mysterious Island or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Just like these titles, the novel is very back-to-basics Sci-Fi, which is refreshing given the complexities of modern Sci-Fi novels. It would be easy for the story to be muddied as they are traveling through millions of worlds, but Pratchett and Baxter are able to connect everything seamlessly, even with two different writing styles.

The characters overall are relatable and you get invested in their journey but the real star of the book is the world building aspect. I kept thinking about Minecraft while reading this and imagining what I would build on each world and what resources there would be.

There is a fair amount of set-up for the next title in the series, The Long Mars, which I am excited to pick up soon. There is so much that they can do with this series and so far they have taken advantage of that to create great stories.

Something that I was a little disappointed with was the lack of war considering that it is in the title. I found myself with only a few pages left wondering when the conflict would take place. In the end it turned out to be more about the threat of war and tension that really lead the story. Perhaps there will be a large conflict later on in the series, but I would have liked to see how battle would have taken place when everyone could just step to the next world when they were in danger.

Overall, it is a solid Sci-Fi read with great visual descriptions. I am looking forward to continuing with the series and with the two authors.

Rating: 4/5 stars