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Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter – The Long Mars | Review

Title: The Long Mars

Author: Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 448

Rating 3.5/5

By now, we’re up to book three of five in this series, and while I do think that the first book was incredible, it’s struggled to live up to the same high standard as the series has continued. We’re helped by the fact that the basic idea behind the story is pretty good and so it’s fun to watch the authors investigate.

In the first of these books, we follow what happens when stepping, a sort of new technology, is unleashed on the unsuspecting population of the world that we live in. With stepper boxes, people can hop from our world to a sort of adjacent parallel world, and that opens up whole new horizons when it comes to exploration.

The last two books have focused mainly on what’s been happening on our world, but in this one we see what happens when some explorers from a version of the earth near the Gap decide to head for Mars. Once there, they discover that you can hop between worlds on Mars too, and that opens up an entirely new type of exploration.

These books tend to take it pretty easy when it comes to the plot, and so sometimes it can feel as though the plot is dragging as you’re waiting for things to happen. In the first one, I quite liked that because I was having a lot of fun looking at all of the underlying science and the other ideas that it had in it. The problem is that the more time goes on, the more I kind of want the plot to accelerate.

Still, there’s plenty of good stuff here, and I’ll be continuing on with the last two books in the series and maybe even finishing the series by the end of the month. I just think that the series set itself up for a fall because the first book was so good, and the vibe that I’m getting so far is that pretty much everyone should give The Long Earth a go and then only the people who really enjoy that should keep going.

All in all then, I am of course glad that I read this, but at the same time I can appreciate that it’s not for everyone. Still, if you’ve read the first two books and you were thinking about continuing, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t. And it didn’t even end on a crazy cliffhanger like the first two did, so it has that going for it too. And that’s it.

Click here to buy The Long Mars.

Peter James – Not Dead Enough | Review

Title: Not Dead Enough

Author: Peter James

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 626

Rating 3.75/5

This is another of Peter James’ Roy Grace novels and so as such, it follows Detective Superintendent Grace as he investigates a crime in his native Brighton. James is a Brighton native himself and he also spends a lot of time carrying out research so his books are as accurate as possible.

In this one, Grace has to investigate the murder of a socialite called Katie Bishop. The problem is that the main suspect, her husband Brian, seems to be innocent. Then things start to get a little bit weird, and I can’t really talk about it without sharing spoilers. Suffice to say, though, that the storyline touches on identity theft and family secrets. I’d also say that it’s one of those rare books where the investigation of the crime is more interesting than the crime itself.

In fact, I think that the most interesting part about this particular book is the side story. Each of the Roy Grace books can be read as a standalone, but you’ll get a little more out of it if you read them all in order. That’s because each of the books also covers what’s going on in the personal lives of many of Grace’s fellow coppers, but we also get a lot of Grace’s own back story including an update on his missing wife Sandy and a little bit of development when it comes to his current squeeze, Cleo.

Now like I say, I’ve read these out of order and so I kind of knew what to expect and what was coming, at least with the cops’ personal lives. Still, I’ve read enough of these books by now that I’m pretty attached to most of the characters and so it was a lot of fun to revisit them and to just hang out with them.

This is one of the longer Roy Grace books, and that poses a little bit of a problem because each of my reviews has the same number of words as the book has pages, and yet I don’t have much more to say about it because there wasn’t a whole load of stuff going on. I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t seem to have as much substance as some of the others, so it was kind of like snacking on a big bag of crisps instead of eating a proper meal.

Because of that, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this one if you’re new to Peter James’ stuff, but if you’re working your way through the series then you also shouldn’t skip it either. It’s one of those weird books where there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it but where it feels as though it’s just business as usual. The good news is that I know from experience that the series continues to get better and to evolve and so you’ve got that to look forward to, too.