Thief of Time: 26 (Discworld) - Softcover

Pratchett, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062307398 ISBN 13: 9780062307392

Publisher: Harper, 2014

Synopsis

Time itself is threatened-- and it's up to the History Monks to save it in Terry Pratchett's bestselling Discworld(R) series

Everybody wants more time. Which is why, on Discworld, only the experts can manage it--the venerable Monks of History who store it and pump it from where it's wasted, like underwater (how much time does a codfish really need?) to places like cities, where busy denizens lament never having enough of it.

While everyone talks about slowing down, one young horologist is about to do the unthinkable. He's going to stop. Well, stop time, that is, by building the world's first truly accurate clock. Which means esteemed History Monk Lu-Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd have to put on some speed to stop the timepiece before it starts. For if the Perfect Clock starts ticking, time--as we know it--will end. And then the trouble will really begin . . .

About this title

Review:

In Thief of Time in the great stinking metropolis of Ankh Morpork, an obsessed clockmaker receives an unusual commission from an excessively beautiful woman whose feet do not touch the ground; strict school-teacher Susan finds herself summoned by her grandfather, Death, to do him a favour; the monks who manage the even distribution of Time find themselves with a recalcitrant novice; and dairyman Ronnie Soak muses on his glory days, when he was the Fifth Rider of the Apocalypse, the one who left before they got famous.

Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time, confronts Discworld and a variety of its defenders with an insidious menace; never before has the phrase "The End of History" had quite so sinister a sound. As always, the sometimes startlingly surrealistically original, sometimes comfortingly groan-worthy, jokes are underlain by some intensely complex ideas and tight plotting. Susan makes a reappearance as one of Pratchett's more interesting heroines; the sinister Lady LeJean is one of Pratchett's most interesting villains, particularly once we learn the answer to the mystery about her.

There is an attractive darkness to much of the humour here--Pratchett is often at his best when at his darkest.--Roz Kaveney

Review:

"In a better world he would be acclaimed as a great writer rather than a merely successful one...This is the best Pratchett I've read...ought to be a strong contender for the Booker prize." -- Charles Spencer, "Sunday Telegraph"

"Reads with all the polished fluency and sure-footed pacing that have become Pratchett's hallmarks over the years." -- Peter Ingham, "Times on Saturday"

"Terry Pratchett is one of the great inventors of secondary -- or imaginative or alternative -- worlds. He is not derivative. He is too strong...He has the real energy of the primary storyteller." -- A.S. Byatt, "The Times"

"The unique selling point of the Discworld novels is their irony, allied to lashings of broad pantomime humour." -- "TES"

"Fans look to him for brilliantly funny dialogue, high peaks of imagination and a sense of participating in events which are strange, yet filled with everyday occurrences -- the real world in disguise." -- "The Times"

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0062307398
• ISBN 13: 9780062307392
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 432