Thief of Time: 07/17/14

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett is the 26th Discworld book. It's also the thematic prequel, if you will, to The Long Earth.

Lu Tze, a Monk of History, has taken on a new pupil, Lobsang. Together they must prevent the End of Time. Helping out is Susan, now working as a teacher, and still as ever, frustrated by the fact she's Death's granddaughter.

The man everyone is after is Jeremy. He can do to time what Joshua can do with the stepwise Earths. I point this out because Lobsang the automaton claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan. Mind you, he says he was a motorcycle repairman in Tibet, but if he's really as human as he claims, he can lie.

But I'm getting ahead of myself and Pratchett as Thief of Time was published eleven years before. And of course we can't ignore Stephen Baxter's role in the creation of The Long Earth.

Nonetheless, Thief of Time isn't about a multiverse of multiple Earths. It is instead about a multiverse of multiple Discs, all being mucked about by a devious clock, it's maker, and lots of wibbly wobbly timy wimy bits (minus the Doctor, his TARDIS, or any of his companions).

As with the majority of the Discworld books, this one lacks chapter breaks. Like Thud, the breaks are all marked with something relevant to the plot. Here it is a TOCK, the counting down of the clock to doomsday.

Four stars

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