The third book in
Sir Terry Pratchett's Long Earth Series, comes in as the twentieth book of the
year. The Long Mars by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. The narrator is Michael Fenton-Stevens. Fenton-Stevens is also the narrator of The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett,
Ian Stewart
and Jack Cohen.
To be honest, I am
not impressed with this trilogy. Like many
other books, including a couple of the more recent Discworld books, which I did
not like on first listen, if I listen to them again, I might actually like them
a bit better. However, I think it will
be a while before I go through this series again.
For one thing, while
this is extremely minor, I cringe every time I hear Fenton-Stevens say
"en-sign" for "en-sin" as Americans would pronounce
it. And, to be honest, if I had not
listened to The Science of Discworld
back in November 2014 (twice, because I was intrigued by some of the science
presented -- things have changed in the world of science since I was in school
and even since I gave up TV and no longer get to watch Nova and other science
programs) I probably would not have really "gotten" some of the
speculative science in The Long Mars.
I had listened to
the first two books of the trilogy, The
Long Earth (10-15-14) and
The Long War (10-20-14), because I finally decided to see
what they were about. Lots of reader
reviews were very complimentary -- so I decided to give it a try.
A second listen will
probably let me speculate about the philosophical issues raised by the books
but in terms of plot -- eh, not all that interesting (in my opinion). When the third book came up available from
the public library's OverDrive service, I decided to go ahead and give it a
listen, just to finish off the series. I
did not expect to like it a lot. And --
I don't hate it. I don't love it. It was okay.
However, as a novel
to explain some of the science that intrigues Pratchett, go with The Science of Discworld instead. The Wizards are certainly more interesting
than the characters in this trilogy (to me).
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