Title: Johnny and the Bomb
Author: Terry Pratchett
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 208
Rating: 9/10
Terry Pratchett – Johnny and the Bomb
I’ve always been a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Johnny Maxwell series – they were written and published during what I’d consider to be his golden years, and what’s interesting about the Johnny Maxwell books is that they’re set in our reality.
In this book, Johnny and his friends take a trip back in time after finding a magic, time-travelling trolley that belongs to the local bag lady. That allows Pratchett to experiment with genre, by writing a sort of realistic fantasy, which has some grounding in historical fact – it takes you back to the Second World War, albeit in the fictional town of Blackbury.
It’s a lot of fun, because Pratchett plays around with cause and effect, and shows us his own bastardised version of the butterfly effect. He also talks about the trousers of time, a concept which I think he also used in the Discworld. And the crazy bag lady said “Millenium hand and shrimp”, which might sound familiar.
Overall, I have a lot of love for the Johnny Maxwell series, and this was probably my second favourite so far. So read it!
Terry Pratchett
