This was quite good.
It's still not QUITE a Terry Pratchett novel, not in the way the Discworld books are, but it's still a fun series and it's a lot of fun in it's own way.

I was expecting this to pick up where the previous book left off, but it doesn't it starts off 10 years later and moves forward from there. There's plenty of flashbacks, but it's one thing to flashback to an event and another thing to have characters experience it first hand.

I really liked the way some of the characters developed and how the different types of intelligence are shown. There's some really neat ideas explored and some interesting conclusions made. It's fun and moves pretty quickly.
There are some things that aren't well explained, like how people find each other when they're out in the Long Earth and are hopping around from world to world. But that seems to be left intentionally vague and I'm really OK with that.

The story keeps moving forward, but in a way it's moving along and you can kind of tell where it's going before the characters do. But I couldn't tell if they'd figure out what was happening without an explanation, and an explanation is given, which seems almost like the authors were worried people weren't able to figure out what was being said, despite the fact that it had been pretty well spelled out over the course of the book.

There was a character that I liked that was using her military mission to just be a good person and try to teach others to be better as well. That was a great storyline. I could have done with an entire novel about that alone. And yeah, that's referred to in the book as "Star Trek stuff", but... I like Star Trek when it's done well, and this was a well done Star Trek sort of thing.

Overall I still really liked the book and will probably be reading the next one soon.

Pretty much just a continuation of [b:The Long Earth|13147230|The Long Earth (The Long Earth #1)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1335532694s/13147230.jpg|18164154], though I liked it that little bit better. Not much of a war, but Pratchett and Baxter do a slow build of foreboding very well. Very fun to read.

Terry Pratchett loves cat but I'm not sure how he feels about dogs considering the dogs in this book. But that's okay, he loves cats. His cat apparently tried to eat hamsters once.


For the record, I love Pratchett's work, and the three books I read by [a:Stephen Baxter|20295|Stephen Baxter|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1223817214p2/20295.jpg] I enjoyed. I was thrilled they were working together. It should be noted, however, that I am a reader, not a fan as Pratchett would say. I still love Pratchett, and I am glad about his book deal.

However,

If you have never read [a:Stephen Baxter|20295|Stephen Baxter|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1223817214p2/20295.jpg] or [a:Terry Pratchett|1654|Terry Pratchett|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1235562205p2/1654.jpg] before do not start with the series let alone this book. Start elsewhere. Do.

This book, the second in a series (most likely of three) raises some very interesting topics and questions. It would make for a good philosphey and moralstic debate. The world building is nice.

And it is a morals and world building novel looking for a plot because there is not one. Sorry, no plot, maybe a wink of one. Have to call it as I see it. No plot. At least the first book in the series had some humor going for it. No humor in this one. Some very boring characters who talk too much. Some more interesting characters who don't do enough (and in one case disapper for about half the book), and some interesting characters who sing, but who knows what they sing. Something happened at the end, but honestly at that point I didn't care because THERE WASN'T A PLOT.

It reminded me of the Otherworld series by Tad Williams. The writers got caught up in the idea and were able to overlook the plot that was jumping up and down to be included.

The world creation is so complex that it is somewhat difficult and slow-moving at points. What happened in the first novel is also very integral to most aspects of the plot. I should have re-read the first one. And now I am interested in reading the sequel, The Long Mars, but I may have to go back and read the prequel - just for my own sense of understanding the full picture as it becomes even denser.

Sequel to the Long Earth, this one started slow but once it had its threads in place moved along. It's less a novel than it is a short story collection of two authors who interwove their tales into a single book. That's not a bad thing, but it does make it feel like a patchwork rather than an narrative. Still, it went in some interesting directions and ended with enough of a bang that I'll look at the Long Mars, the third in the series.

This is a great improvement over the first book, possibly in part because the difficulty of building a world - well, so to speak - has been worked out. In The Long War, the characters are allowed more free reign. And frankly, with a bit less Lobsang, the whole story is a bit less annoying.

It took me a bit longer than I would have preferred to get properly immersed in the flow of the story, but I kept with it because I have faith in Terry Pratchett's writing. Once the story does really get going, I found it quite good.