The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Summary from GoodReads:

1916: the Western Front, France. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No man’s Land gone?

2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson has returned to the burned-out home of one Willis Linsay, a reclusive and some said mad, others dangerous, scientist. It was arson but, as is often the way, the firemen seem to have caused more damage than the fire itself. Stepping through the wreck of a house, there’s no sign of any human remains but on the mantelpiece Monica finds a curious gadget – a box, containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a…potato. It is the prototype of an invention that Linsay called a ‘stepper’. An invention he put up on the web for all the world to see, and use, an invention that would to change the way mankind viewed his world Earth for ever. And that’s an understatement if ever there was one…

…because the stepper allowed the person using it to step sideways into another America, another Earth, and if you kept on stepping, you kept on entering even more Earths…this is the Long Earth. It’s our our Earth but one of chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side each differing from its neighbour by really very little (or actually quite a lot). It’s an infinite chain, offering ‘steppers’ an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger – and sometimes more dangerous – the Earths get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently.

But, until Willis Linsay invented his stepper, only our Earth hosted mankind…or so we thought. Because it turns out there are some people who are natural ‘steppers’, who don’t need his invention and now the great migration has begun..

My Review:

As a rule, I’m not a fan of co-authored books. I mean, I enjoyed Good Omens because I knew I love Neil Gaiman and had heard good things about Terry Pratchett. So, following in that vein, I enjoyed Good Omens and Pratchett’s writing, so I was willing to give The Long Earth a shot.

While this wasn’t the best book I’ve read, I will say it was pretty amusing and interesting. Gee, that’s glowing praise isn’t it? I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t like the book, because I did. I found myself wanting to pick it up and read more and I loved the world building (LOVED the world building). I felt like I was back in my childhood days, exploring those new worlds via Star Trek. In fact, that’s what this book really reminds me of – if you liked Star Trek, Stargate or any sci-fi show that involves world exploring then I think this book will really appeal to you.

The humor was okay most of the time, sometimes I laughed out loud, sometimes I barely cracked a smile. The robot-man and ship (you will have to learn about them when you read it – including names because my book is in the other room and their names escape me) were okay and frankly, reminded me more of Douglas Adams than anything else.

When all is said and done, I don’t feel as if I wasted my time reading this one, but I don’t want to jump all around and push it on all my friends either. It was an amusing past time and when I put it down I was ready to move on to the next book on my pile.

Don’t just take my word for it! Check out what these bloggers say!

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