Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – so Terry Pratchett must, I reckon, be flatter than his own Discworld. Yes, this is the 25th – or is it 26th? – Discworld novel, and continues the long-running series with Pratchett's customary humour, satire, and effervescent imagination. Over the years, Terry Pratchett has had a sufficiency of literary disciples and imitators.
Some soon emerged from Pratchett's influence and took off on their own. Tom Holt, for example, carved out his own niche – first by reworking classical and other myths in comedic terms, and then by producing a series of historical novels that bear little resemblance to his early work. Others (Robert Rankin is one) have tried to out-Pratchett Pratchett by writing books that are bizarre parodies of the master's style. The results of their efforts are patchy at best, and disastrous at worst.
But Pratchett continues enlarging and populating his Discworld, recycling familiar characters from earlier novels, and adding a handful of new players with every book. There are plenty of familiar faces in THIEF OF TIME – among them Death, the horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death's granddaughter Susan, Nanny Ogg, the Monks of History, and etc. and etc.
And I have to say that it's non-stop comedy from the start, where the author muses on the Titanic incident from the iceberg's point of view, to the end, where 'Death by Chocolate' is not just an item on the dessert menu. However – there's always a 'however' – I found something unsatisfying about THIEF OF TIME.
Regular readers will know that Discworld books come in two main flavours – rollicking adventures with a sound down-to-Earth plot – the Rincewind and City Watch novels, for example – and other books that can best be described as metaphysical comedies.
I like Discworld books of the first kind. The humour is less forced, the characters are better developed, and the plots are stronger. THIEF OF TIME is definitely a novel of the metaphysical kind, and has many of the drawbacks I usually associate with those books.
Its premise is strong enough.
Pratchett juggles all these elements very well for most of the book and, to his credit, keeps the laughs coming even as the plot starts to creak and split under its own weight. But inevitably the end of the novel is contrived and somewhat telegraphed.
But why quibble – it's a good read (I have this at first hand from a stranger I passed in the street) – and I now have a queue of people who want to read it after me!
One final point.
Do you need to read some of the more recent Discworld novels in order to appreciate THIEF OF TIME? The answer is NO.
And there's a warning. Before reviewing this book, I hadn't read any Discworld books for quite some time. Now I find myself standing in book shops wondering which of the damn books I need to buy in order to find out exactly what has happened between the my previous visit to the flat planet and this latest adventure.