Review: Thief of Time

[jducoeur]

Just finished my latest book on tape: Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett. Capsule summary: the book is fun, whimsical, and just a little deeper than I had expected.

This is really the first full Discworld book that I've read. I've read comic book adaptations of one or two, and a little bit of other Pratchett, but I haven't really done the main series before. I was pleasantly surprised. I had expected it to be funny, but I hadn't expected the writing to be quite so good, and I had figured on coming into the middle of the story.

In fact, while prior knowledge of Discworld is probably helpful in catching some nuances and details, it really isn't all that important. Most of the characters were clearly created specifically for this novel, and there isn't any apparently-critical continuity. If you accept that it's an oddly whimsical little fantasy world, that suffices for the purpose.

This book is an extended musing on Time, in all its facets. Much of it is simply whimsy, but the fantasy is underpinned with just enough science to feel curiously right. This isn't hard science fiction, mind -- Pratchett is much more interested in telling a good yarn than anything else -- but where it is convenient to make a bit of scientific or philosophical sense he does so. The result is much more satisfying than a typically random confection of fantasy.

The story is complex and winding, and takes its time. Despite a rather apocalyptic plot, it never really rushes -- after all, the subjective nature of Time is laced throughout. But the writing is consistently delicious, and worth savoring.

(Why all the flavor metaphors? Suffice it to say, the fourth principal element of the universe -- chocolate -- features prominently in the plot.)

Of course, Pratchett is known for his humor, and the story does not disappoint in that regard. The writing ranges from droll to laugh-out-loud funny. Even as the situation gets grimmer, it gets funnier -- about halfway through is a scene that I can only describe as the perfect melding of Monty Python and the Coneheads. Every character is well-drawn, and everyone gets a good arc.

No, it's not a book for the ages. But it's well worth reading -- a lot of fun and chewier than brain candy.

As for the recording, it's an unabridged reading on eight longish cassettes. The reading style is a tad odd. There are five principal readers, and each one is mainly focused on a particular character's plots. But it isn't consistent, and it isn't the usual "cast" style of recording. Each chapter is read by a particular reader, so you often have to deal with a character being read by someone other than their usual voice. That's sometimes a bit distracting. But the readers are good, and each is well-cast for their principal role, so it generally works.

(And actually, there is a sixth reader: Harlan Ellison plays The Voice of the Snarky Parenthetical Comments. This, too, is excellently cast.)

Comments

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

You should try more of the Discworld books. They all share the quality you seem to like about Thief of Time: whimsical with moments of laugh-out-loud funny, but underneath it a good solid treatment of a serious theme. And though the series definitely grows over time, each book can stand well on its own. I especially recommend Wyrd Sisters or especially (for your Masonic interests) Guards, Guards.

Incidentally, though you can't tell from an audio book, Discworld books have no chapters (so your recording must have found its own arbitrary way of divvying up the reading). And the "Snarky Parenthetical Comments" are done as footnotes in the harcopy books.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. In print.

[jducoeur]

Ah. Not wholly surprising -- the sections were rather short to be proper chapters. Basically, the reading splits at scene changes, following whichever character is central to the next scene. (More or less.)

And thanks for the recommendations. I clearly want to check out more of this...

[siderea]

I disagree that they all share those properties. I thought the earlier books to be very shallow and uninteresting, and the later books to be uneven in the depth of their commentary. (I just finished Soul Music, which while fun, was pretty repetitive of past books and really didn't have much to say.) But I haven't read this one, so I am not sure where exactly it falls on the spectrum.

Of all the ones I've read, Small Gods stands head and shoulders above the rest.

[dsrtao]

While I prefer the City Guards stories, Small Gods is the best Pratchett to begin reading. In my experience, if you don't like SG, you are unlikely to really enjoy most of the rest.

[fiantha.livejournal.com]

Really? I find that surprising. I read Small Gods first, and disliked it so much that I didn't touch another Terry Pratchett book for years, until I happened across The Truth. I didn't connect it with Small Gods until much later, by which time I was hooked.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Small Gods is Pratchett's turning point, the book that, in my mind, vaulted him from "he's fun; I'll read what he writes" to "he's amazing". Very little before that point can be compared with anything after--even Soul Music, which came after, is more interesting than Moving Pictures, which came before. (They're both lazy retellings of Earth media history, but Soul Music is more compelling.)

I think I first recognized this turning point when I reread Small Gods and Bujold's Memory in close succession, because Memory is Bujold's turning point, the book that transformed her from an accomplished writer of space opera with interesting characters to a first-rank writer of novels of character with a space-opera background. (In her case, of course, it was easier to recognize because it was the novel that transformed Miles.)

[kiya]

Reading Discworld is part of where I developed my theory that humor is guerilla thought.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Technically, some Discworld books do have chapters. But it's basically just The Colour of Magic and, apparently, Going Postal (which I have not yet read).

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Overall, I like Pratchett's books immensely. However, he's got uneven spots, usually, to my mind, when he plunks down something from this world into his world without sufficient backup theory/setup/disguise.

I believe that you'll find people pointing fingers at different books of his identifying them in this way, so I'm not going to give you a list to avoid. As with many authors, it's probably best if you find a chronologic list of when they were written, and follow it.

However, like the Vorkosigan books, they're the ones I read when I need something familiar, and I usually come away with a new insight (or new giggle) even when I've read it 5 times already.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

he's got uneven spots, usually, to my mind, when he plunks down something from this world into his world without sufficient backup theory/setup/disguise.

Most of those are from long ago. The last one I can think of is Soul Music, which, yes, is terrible. About the best you can say for the book is that it's much better than the animated adaptation...but that's no great achievement.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, yes. Wyrd Sisters wasn't so bad animated, but Soul Music was actively painful, and I can take a lot of pain in that genre.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

The Truth inserts the printing press, and the most recent Going Postal inserts the postal system. I agree that he's gotten better at making these non-trivial, but I still find the Discworld (or rather Ankh-Morpork) + Modern Invention formula weak, and Men at Arms is probably the only one I thought was at core done really well.

[laurion]

Definitely try more Pratchett. The writing is always good, and always with a surprisingly deep subtle understory. Although the series is well over 20 books long, you should be able to pick up any one that you happen to get; as you've already found, reading the earlier ones gives more character flavor, but each book stands on it's own. You'll find that he usually has a cadre of characters around whom to center the books, but few of the books are direct sequels, so there is an evolution of the characters, but not such that makes you miss too much in any given book. Thief of Time actually focuses on someone other than one of his regular characters though.

I have many of the books, including the first few, and would be happy to lend them.

[tafkad.livejournal.com]

My favorite part is when Susan gets caught eating the chocolate "ammunition." Showing chocoholism as one of her foibles fleshes her out just that little bit.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

The series will be 30 books in October, so there's a lot to catch up on. My perspective is doubtless skewed by having started at the beginning (and before there were nearly as many), but I find that there are some unusual and interesting qualities to the first few that, despite a certain roughness of style, makes them eminently worth reading, and worth reading first. Or at least, worth reading before the books that build upon them. Ones like Small Gods, or Thief of Time, are largely independant of ongoing plot threads, so their order is mostly unimportant.

There are some notable global changes in how the universe works over the course of the books, though. For instance, in the first few novels everything weird is Octarine, an 8th colour that only specially trained people can see, whereas after a while Pratchett drops this idea and goes with the more common (and Adams-esque) "people ignore what they can't wrap their minds around" approach. I found the former interesting, and I was disappointed to see it undeveloped, but your mileage may vary.

Whether you start at the beginning or not, it is probably worth reading each subseries in order: the main ongoing plots are Rincewind (The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Eric, Interesting Times, The Last Continent (This is the original main thread of the series)), The Witches (Equal Rites (though only sort of; you can skip it if you're less interested in the early works), Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, Carpe Jugulum), and The Guards (Guards Guards, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch). All of these have a moderate amount of crossover, but mostly nothing is spoiled if you read those threads in order.