I hate reading books from a series that isn't finished yet, I don't know how all of those fantasy geeks do it. This being the second entry in The Long series I found it somewhat of a disappointment after the world building that was done, presumably as a set up for the longer series, in the first novel was essentially just continued with further travelogue-like anecdotes from several characters scattered about The Long Earth. I'm not complaining too much, I've signed up for this ride now, afterall Baxter and Pratchett are describing some interesting scenarios and exciting my imagination BUT I wish I'd known to expect that this would be all I would be getting as opposed to something intricate and fascinating and exciting, something like the Xeelee sequence mixed with the characters that inhabit The Discworld perhaps.

If anything The Long War is a better book than the first one, the two authors have largely avoided the annoying issues I had this time around, gone are the endless arbitrary pop culture references for example, and the evolution of the culture and politics of their universe is handled well, the frustrating nature of the America-centric tale becoming a positive as the reprehensible nature of their government and people in reality allows for an easy villain of the piece in near future fiction; you can truly believe that the extrapolation made by Baxter and Pratchett would come to pass, and it made me angry, which would be exactly what the authors intended.

But still I wanted more from this one, I have no real preference for war fiction and I was disappointed that the story was going there so quickly but as it turns out when you're promised war and there is no war in the novel you actually get more disappointed.

So the third part is called The Long Mars, at least I'll know to expect a bunch of characters travelling to various Mars incarnations, probably in a direct copy of the "plot" from the first book, which will be interesting, but nothing too exciting will happen, there won't be any conflict or any real science, there will just be a calm exploration.