The Long War

Written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Narrated by Michael Fenton Stevens

A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping.

Where Joshua and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth — but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind...

A new 'America', called Valhalla, is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth, with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth — and Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government...

Meanwhile the Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls, graceful hive-mind humanoids. But the trolls are beginning to react to humanity's thoughtless exploitation...

Joshua, now a married man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any mankind has waged before.

A Random House UK audio production.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House UK Audio
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781448154104

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

Reviews for The Long War

[neverstopreading-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although I enjoyed the book, the title and description led me to believe it was going to be more about the conflict and struggles in the long Earth, and less about general, sometimes vague tensions between the Datum/Colonists and Humans/Trolls. The story felt like more of an extension of The Long Earth (no pun intended), rather than a real, self-contained story of its own with its own (literary) conflicts.

[soubhikiewiet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Such a very different story. I love all of the creatures, and just the concept of whole other worlds being just a step away. Makes me want to go exploring.

[pierthinker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Long War is the second volume in the Long Earth series and continues where the opening volume, The Long Earth, left off. Essentially, the whole series is just one long story, so jumping in at this point may leave the reader a little confused or, at least, less focused on what matters in this story than perhaps they should be.A major theme of this series is to explore convergent evolution. That is, how might evolution have driven the emergence of intelligence in different ways on different, but similar, worlds where humans do not exist. In short, and to paraphrase another scifi franchise, life will find a way. The action here is really subordinate to revelations regarding other sentient species across the Long Earth and how humans react to and interact with them. As one can expect, humans do not play well with others.The action set pieces here are generally sketchily drawn and rushed to their conclusion. It is as if the authors want to concentrate on the consequences of these events rather than describing the events themselves. A solid follow up the series opener, The Long Earth, and a book that expands the science and sociology surrounding humans and their reactions to effectively infinite land and to alien contact (except these are not really aliens, but Earth species that have emerged from a different set of evolutionary branches).

[chrisriesbeck · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Long War is the second in the Long Earth pentalogy. Within just a few years, people from Datum (as in "starting point') Earth have settled in 100s or 1000s of parallel Earth's, East and West (with just a hint that there might be another direction). Explorers hve traversed through millions of Earths. In so doing, we've encountered a few other intelligent species, evolved either from a different branch of the family tree, or other sources entirely, e.g., dogs and reptiles. We've pissed off all of them, and that, children, is why we can't have nice things. Most of the characters from the first book return, along with several new story arcs. Unfortunately, the new characters don't make a dent. Who they are is never well defined, there's no emotional substance to their quests. Several chapters at a time are spent with each arc, just long enough to make me forget the other arcs. At the end, when the characters converge (but not their storylines), I couldn't remember where things left off for anyone except the main character from the first book.Recommended only for BIG fans of the first book.

[annasazi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this one even more than book one. Now that humanity has become more established in the stepwise worlds, relations between Datum and the rest have become more complicated, an people are encountering more sentient life abroad. Conditions are right for a war, except they are also exactly right for the opposite. How can you have a war with a group that can always just walk away? As usual, Lobsang is in the middle of everything, but now he has Sister Agnes, to mind him. Love the characters.

[leo8-15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Giving a three star review to a sequel of one of my favorite books is really difficult. So let me try to warrant this in writing.

The Long Earth book introduces us to so many new, interesting, and weird concepts. Its sequel, The Long War, provides us with just some human centered stories that run in parallel and, as usual, foreshadow the existence of a third part.

The writing of this book was very well copyedited, as is the case with all Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter books that I have read so far. That makes it a fairly easy and quick read.

The problems are many and they infuse the book cover to cover. A peculiar plot line spans almost the entire book. While being mentioned in other plot lines, it could be simply dropped. Even the mentions of the plot line could be kept since they were completely self-contained.

While the entire book has a rather light feel to it, our main hero goes through rather suddenly through a kind of torture. The torture pops up without any good reason and rather suddenly. And leaves the same way. The hero gets hurt, but not lethally, and none of the characters are significantly influenced by what has happened. Why leave it there? It changed the mood of the book without warning and without reward for the reader who empathized with the torture.

This book had a strange problem of non-interference from deus ex machina. As a deus ex machina character is written into the book without many practical limitations, the moments when it could step in and resolve the situation, but did not, were disappointing. Feels like a moment in a James Bond movie where Bond chooses to get beaten/tortured/you-name-it by choosing not to use one of his gadgets without making any significant impact on the plot.

The previous book was published nearly a year ago, and that is when I read it. In the meantime, I forgot many of the details about the characters and world mechanics. In this book we are reminded about most things relevant to the plot, but some of the reminders simply arrive too late. After the points where they were relevant in the plot.

I realize that one can already preorder the next book from Amazon, with the release date in January 2014. Still, even a second book from a three part series can be made to function much better than this. Patches for the above problems are fairly straightforward and it is strange that they were not applied. The Long War looses two stars for having easily fixable problems despite the level of professionalism that the rest of the book exhibits.

[themulhern · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Barely stands on its own as a novel. The beagles are a bit ridiculous. My theory is that Terry Pratchett's goal was to convince some of his readers, already fans of his Discworld novels, to temporarily suspend their disbelief in the theory of evolution by natural selection, for as long as they enjoyed the novel, and maybe a little while longer. I hope he succeeded. But the characters are uninteresting and the actual events have very little narrative weight.The pace of exploitation of the Long Earth is scary, but believable, as is the rapid change in message of the President of the United States.The discussion of the exciting invention of barter is ridiculous. You can think of a lot of systems that don't rely on cash, credit cards, and ATMs. But barter is hideously ill-suited to a long earth.The catastrophe at the end of "The Long Earth" nicely foreshadowed the catastrophe at the end of this book. But the timing is so weirdly convenient.

[bilabialboxing · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This may seem like a minor thing, but I was continually annoyed by the Britishisms in this book. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter are both British, fine, but the main characters are largely from Madison, WI. I can tell you with great certainty that no one there says "bollocks". Not anyone who you want to take seriously, anyway.

[kristen_nicoson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a well done sequel to Pratchett's The Long Earth and brings back Joshua, Sally, and the ubiquitous Lobsang some years after the end of the first book. It is an interesting commentary on war, independence, empire, and manifest destiny which also makes one think about tricky subjects such as the balance between technology and privacy and the meaning of sapience.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Further exploration of what humanity might do with infinite resources and worlds.

[eclecticdodo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second instalment in the Long Earth series. A series of Stepwise Americas declare their independence, triggering a war, sort of, meanwhile relationships between humans and the other sapient creatures are deteriorating too. Many of the same characters from the first book return, though there is an intervening period between the books when situations have changed somewhat, ensuring it isn't just a repeat of the first adventure. Highly recommended, if only for the pun that all kids want to be "twain drivers".

[thecrow2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second book of the Long Earth series wasn't a disappointment at all. The title a bit misleading because it's not the story of a war more like the attempts to prevent it. It was rather interesting to find the similarities to the present political and social state of the world.

[pantalaimon01 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't like this, the second book in the series anywhere near as much as the first. For me, there were too many plot strands, which slowed things rather. Just as I would get gripped by something, the plot would veer off into one of several other areas, which often had a completely different tempo and so broke any tension and momentum. The Long Earth idea is an interesting and exciting one, but I can't help but wonder how you would police it.

[juva_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This second installment in the Long Earth series is just as thought-provoking as the first one. Though I didn't care for the time spent on the religo-political nonsense, I did enjoy exploring and imagining what this advancement in tech would mean for American culture. As a novel, the different strands weren't really cohesive. It's hard to say what exactly the plot was. There was a cloud of characters each doing their own things all over the place. It's more like a series of thought experiments than a traditional novel. That said, I still liked it and would recommend it.

[sarcher-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The world building and the narrative fight for space, leaving nothing interesting to grasp onto. I stopped reading the series after this book.

[morgan.goose · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great continuation of the series.

[kittycunningh-815148 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a good follow up to the Long Earth, but this just isn't my favorite of his series. It ended with possibility of another one, but I don't know that I'll care to read it. Then, again, I have a hard time saying "no" to anything he writes.

[lindaliu-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There wasn't much of a war really - a lot of jumping between worlds and exploration individually and on twains - airships designed to jump between worlds. Explores what people do when they find new lands and how humans treat other species they encounter, like the gentle "trolls", the not so gentle "elves", "kobolds", and "Beagles". The immortal and omniscient Lobsang acts behind the scenes to pull people into the "war" to ensure humans do not destroy themselves and the new worlds. It was OK, the story was a bit slow and sparse though being set in this vast universe of endless possibilities. The concepts are interesting and I liked the idea that the inhabitants of other Earths stepping in must have been the basis for so many of our folk legends and fairy tales, and perhaps the source of some technology.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You know, I put off reading this one for a long time, because one of the things I liked about the first one so much was that it didn't have much of a plot, and definitely not a military one. I should have known Terry Pratchett wouldn't let me down.

[mikerhode · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ends w/ another cliffhanger!

[shabacus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Much like the first volume, The Long Earth, this is a book about a concept, not about the players involved. The reader is expected to remember the faces from the previous book, as well as the concept, and the result is a book that gets much quicker off the mark. And although it never quite lives up to its title, there is much of interest within its pages.The strengths of this book are in the possibilities it introduces--fitting, since the whole point of it is the notion of infinite potential Earths. There are two main threads, one to the West and one to the East. In the first, we revisit the scenes from the first book, and much of its promise begins to pay off. To the East, we get several new characters, who I believe will gain greater focus in the inevitable sequel, and we first discover that infinite and extensive may not be the same thing.The climax of the novel is followed by a quick denouement, and then a massive finale, with much further-reaching implications than that of the previous volume. It is almost a teaser for the next book, and the reader is left to imagine what sociological implications might be forthcoming for this strange new society.Recommended for those who enjoy a high concept science fiction story in which the premise is more highly developed than the characters. A fun read, but ultimately unsatisfying as anything other than the next chapter in (what I hope is) a much longer tale.

[charlottebabb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I so wanted to love this book, but the scale is so large and epic that the individual players get lost in it. Thre are funny moments ("There is no such thing as a free launch" p.190) and bits that maade me laugh aloud.

There is so much more that I want to know, but each story is like a rock that skips over the depths so that we can see the big picture. Maybe they are hurrying through to record it while Terry Pratchett can contribute, with the idea that sometime someone else will delve deeper. The concepts are wonderful, the characters well-drawn, to the extent that we can keep one in sight, and the conflicts abound. If you loved the first book, you'll love this ione, but if you felt step-nausea from that one, you won't get over it here.

I so wanted to love this book, but I feel like I haven't gotten it yet: all forest and not enough trees, much less kobolds, trolls and beagles, oh my.

[exfed_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Alas, the uniqueness of The Long Earth has faded with its follow-up novel -- The Long War. There are some enjoyable moments in the book, but overall, I found it to wander and meander with no real purpose or plot line. I'm also getting tired of the characters from the original novel. When Pratchett and Baxter write the next installment, I hope they introduce new people (and creatures) and stick with a more focused plot.

[wifilibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If you pick up this book based on the title you'd be disappointed. It carries on the story set-up in [The long earth] but set 10 years later. Many worlds have now been populated by humans, who use trolls for free labour, and the trolls don't seem to mind, of course if they did they could just step (teleport to another duplicate earth) away. Unfortunately for humanity's expansion of the long earth, the trolls are beginning to drop tools and escape after some bad treatment of trolls by a few unethical humans. The trolls are able to communicate across the long earth by the "long call" a song that can spread news and information surprisingly quickly. What the book didn't show was the alleged humans who were missing the trolls, or demanding their return or asking for help for their return. The main protagonists' regularly said how important the trolls were for the ecology of every long earth they had been established in, which makes sense as they hunt and gather and thus would have shaped the evolution of any animals and plants they ate, or competed with. This troll migration leads to a "war" between the colonists of the long earth, original earth's military who travel in Air balloons across the earth's. I wasn't that invested in what happened, and the climax was so anti-climatic to be laughable. I did enjoy the fact New Zealand had a significant part towards the end of the book, but I did see it coming, and if you know any Maori (aboriginal people's of New Zealand) mythology you may guess it too. Overall, it was an okay read and I won't be actively hunting out the sequel, but may read it to be a completest.

[ben_harnwell · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Coming back to the world if Pratchett and Baxter was one I looked forward to. The long Earth, the first in the series, was a great read A really good premise on a different kind of science fiction, a new way to explore the earth and humanity.
Mixing the fable and the modern world, it threw humanity into a spin with the concept of multiple Earths all divergent - same but different.
In this sequel the Earths have been populated and humanity spread out amongst them. Datum or the Earth humanity originated on, seeks to control these other Earths.
The war in The Long War is a potential something that almost happens through fear and a quest for control.
Frankly this isn't as good as the Long Earth. The additional creatures and interactions in these alternate Earths are not explored enough. Characters are not as deep and I think we were cheated on some great potential on the war.
I enjoyed the book and will loll forward to the third, the redeemer, if that happens!

[kale.dyer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Further exploration of what humanity might do with infinite resources and worlds.

[sunnysd_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Humanity's doing to the Long Earth pretty much what it did to the Datum - fighting over it. Or at least preparing to. After a so-so reaction to the Long Earth, I probably wouldn't have picked this one up, but it was on the new books shelf at the library, so... Lacking Pratchett's trademark humor, the story also lacks much character development, and although it ended on a slightly more positive note than I expected - sort of - it isn't a book I'm ever going to want to read again.

[pussreboots · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter is the sequel to The Long Earth. The book opens fifteen years after the bombing of Madison, Wisconsin. Joshua and Lobsang have parted ways, Joshua to get married and start a family. Lobsang to do continue his quest to map all of the Long Earth and to somewhere along the way prove his humanity.At the gap in the Long Earths, space exploration has begun again in earnest. But it's taking a steep price on the Trolls. Lobsang and Joshua reunite not to work together, but to recruit his wife, who can step better than he can and knows the Trolls better than anyone. They need calm things down before the Trolls, or something worse, decides to wage war on humanity across the Long Earth.The Long War is more than just a story about learning to live with Trolls. It is also an exploration of what it is to explore and to conquer. The United Kingdom, burned out from its Empire days on Datum Earth refuses to do much of anything with its alternate footprints.China, not to be out explored by the United States, begins exploring the Eastern direction, laying claim to all interesting or potentially useful alternate Chinas. The United States, meanwhile, is trying to assert its authority on all the United States settlements across the Western direction (as the cultural psyche still urges one to go West).The Long War is a speculative fiction exploration of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, taken with the modern day political scene (for good and bad). I recommend the series for anyone interested in history, social studies, or politics.

[elizabeth.b.bevins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one you MUST read if you are a fan of Pratchett and/or Baxter's work.

[kaethe_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Okay, mostly it's just a mind-tour through infinite possible worlds. And that's fine. There's also a bit of Star Trek: The Next Generation-like advising in a supremely wise manner. And I like that, too. There isn't a war, which I probably prefer to skip, although it does make the title misleading. There is also stuff that was just plain wrong, specifically about drug abuse. (Drug use and abuse isn't more common among poor people, it's just more visible, and more frequently and harshly punished; rape is a bad plot device, but really especially bad if it's just a lazy-ass way to justify a male character's vigilante "justice"*). And while there are several very interesting and nuanced characters, there are also quite a few who are pure stereotype. Although I appreciate the effort to include a major character of color, it's probably best not to play that game if you aren't going to commit, and pretending that a great big dark-skinned man from South Africa is going to be automatically deferred to, rather than targeted as a thug, is a whole new kind of fantasy.

Some interesting ideas, but the most disappointing book I've ever read with Pratchett's name on it.

Library copy

*And really, the ease of moving between worlds in this scenario creates a nightmare for anyone thinking about sexual or domestic violence. The bad people have a literal infinity to hide in, or keep victims in. You really don't want to get your reader's minds set on that horrific track.