Just finished The Long Earth series by Sir Terry Pratchett and Steven Baxter. I’m a huge Pratchett fan and these were my first Baxter novels. It pains me to say it, but it was kind of awful…
The whole series can be summed up by “amazing premises that go entirely to waste”. The pacing and plot of the books are just terrible, to be frank - each book feels like 9/10 exposition 1/10 plot & character development.
So many fascinating plot points are just abandoned without ever being revisited.
Where did the rectangle buildings with the ray guns come from?
What became of the Beagles after humanities intervention?
Who built the martian beanstalk, and what became of them?
What happened to the fragment of Lobsong/Abraham that was left in the satellite on the Silver Beetle world?
Who sent “The Invitation”, and why?
And then even more plot points are kept going, but it feels clear that Baxter really had no idea what to do with them.
The Next show up (out of nowhere) and then proceed to just spend all their time naval gazing until the Deus Ex Machina that is “The Thinker”
Valhalla’s quiet revolution was the subject of the whole second book - but then at the point of the third book, basically nothing has changed.
The Traversers went from being an existential threat to the whole long Earth to just being a cool tourist destination, seemingly overnight.
Lobsang’s avatar which he sent to 1st person singular was supposed to become absorbed into it, but it turns out he was just having a beach vacation the whole time.
Ultimately I wound up severely dissapointed given how excited I was in the first half of the first book. It’s an amazing premise and has so much potential. But ultimately it feels squandered.
I had to really force myself to finish the final book, without much enjoyment
Thanks for writing this (and putting yourself through the pain). I picked up the ebook years ago and tried starting it, and found it really difficult to wade through. I liked the premise, it took its sweet time getting to it, and once it was there I felt…whelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed.
Usually that’s not so bad, but coupled with everything else you’ve pointed out about the writing style I’m glad I didn’t force myself to finish now.
I liked the long-earth short story in one of Pratchett’s short story collections. Sounds like I should avoid the books.
Ah, a while ago I read The Long War, just cause I found it at a library and the premise seemed neat (I didn’t realise it was book 2 of a series). I’ve been wondering if I should get books 1 and 3, I guess this answers that.
If you’re just looking for an easy read to pass the time, maybe via audiobook when you won’t 100% be focusing on it - it’s not a terrible option, the premises are certainly interesting enough to keep you from becoming totally disengaged, it’s just a frustration with how much better it could be
I stopped at the fourth book I think, because it was just getting worse and I didn’t want to have my entire experience with the series soured. I’m glad I did too.
I’m a big Baxter fan, never really read anything by Pratchett somehow, and I ended up with the same opinion pretty much. I gave up reading after three books, they just didn’t seem to be going anywhere or anything really happening. Great idea, it just ended up being boring.
