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Thief of time [Hardcover]

Terry Pratchett
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition / First Impression edition (20 Jan 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0385601883
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385601887
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 3.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 220,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Sir Terry Pratchett
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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

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. 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.

As always, the sometimes startlingly surrealistically original, sometimes comfortingly groanworthy, jokes are underlain by some intensely complex ideas and tight plotting. Susan sto Helit 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

"Other writers are mining the rich seam of comic fantasy that Pratchett first unearthed, but what keeps Pratchett on top is - quite literally -- the way he tells them." - "The Times"
"["Discworld"] has the energy of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the inventiveness of "Alice in Wonderland,.".[Terry Pratchett] has an intelligent wit and a truly original grim and comic grasp of the nature of things." - A.S. Byatt, "Sunday Times"

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Customer Reviews

91 Reviews
5 star:
 (62)
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 (18)
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (91 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Time and again, 28 Jun 2004
By 
Chris (London, UK) - See all my reviews
I have read all the Discworld novels and most of them I rated 5 stars for enjoyment. This book, however, would get 7 stars for enjoyment, style and the ideas behind it. My friends usually borrow my TP books but so far they have not been able to put their hands on this one!

There really isn't much of a plot (depending on your point of view of course), but the action is continuous and the punchline - although a little bit expectable - quite striking.

I got to meet one of my favourite characters in a bit more detail - Susan. We meet a new guy - Lobsang - whose namesake actually has some achievement in real-life buddhism. Also all the other nicking from 'well-known' ideas, films, etc will keep your head spinning until the last page, because you start wondering after a while if you have missed anything.

Another thing I love about Terry Pratchett is his thought-provoking style. Even a unenthusiast of physics like me has been inspired to read up a little more on the subjects of time and relativity thanks to this book.

I agree with the others that this book is not for the beginning Discworld novel reader, since most of the characters are already well known from the other books and their personalities - and in some cases personifications - are well developed there up to this book.

Once you get to sit down with this book you only have to do two things: read and enjoy!

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars As good as he ever was, 18 Nov 2002
By 
ghandibob (Swansea) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   
It is difficult to write about this the twenty-sixth Discworld novel, without having ever written about any of its predecessors. It seems to lack context. Much the way, I would imagine, that new readers must feel in opening the first page of a later Pratchett book without, like myself, having grown up with the Discworld series. It is hard, also, to be objective when I can chart the passage of my life by what the characters in these books were up to.

But, for new readers, Thief of Time surely represents the best way in. There are new characters at the centre of events - Lu Tze, Lobsang Ludd, Jeremy, a renegade Auditor. There is no Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind or Vimes, with all their associated baggage of sharp, subtle characterisation and well-earned history and affection, to contend with. True, Nanny Ogg appears, but her role is that of a big film star making a cameo in a film: notable and warmly received, but not integral to the understanding of the story. Susan is also in place, and her role is entirely central, but she has been growing up with the series, and she is now a very different woman to the one who appeared in Soul Music, for instance. Death also performs a role that he has not previously investigated in earnest - that of a horeseman riding out in the face of an apocalypse - and so even the (almost) unchanging face of mortality appears fresh for the new recruits.

There is another reason that this novel represents the ideal entry point for the novice. It is as sure-handed a book as Pratchett has produced. It is funny, it is warm and it flows with the incredible pacing that Pratchett has made his hallmark. Out of thin air he can form a thriller of plot and anticipation. Imagine Waiting For Godot reading like a Raymond Chandler story. That is what the unquestionable genius of Pratchetts's timing can do for anything he chooses to tell us.

And, as ever, the narrative is filled with light touches of wonder that collapse myth and storytelling and history into atoms of glowing humour. A smile can break out on your face like an infectious rash at any time in the course of the story. Take an example: War, personification extraordinaire, and one of the four horseman of the apocalypse (apologies to Ronnie), has, with the passing of time and the increasing maturity of humankind, become a different man. He has settled down and married Mrs War. A once blood-thirsty, unrepentant force of nature, he is now a brow-beaten husband who is not allowed to eat red meat because his wife tells him that it will bring on his trouble. He thinks that, in this day and age, he may as well change his name to Negotiated Settlement in keeping with how humans now resolve dispute. He has taken up a hobby even, now watching the unflinching battles of ants at the bottom of his garden. His hacking arm isn't what it used to be. It is just a short scene showing us War's home life, but it is a snapshot of perfect and quiet humour that steals its way into your affections just as so many of Pratchett's characters do.

I won't say that this is the best Discworld book, as I think we are no longer in those realms. But I will say that Thief of Time is a wonderful book. It is impossible to put it down once you pick it up. It bids your body to stay up late at night when your mind knows that you have work in the morning. It draws your eyes towards it when you should be looking at the football match you've been waiting to watch for months. It is wonderful because it inspires wonder. It is enchanted. It is magic.

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars PRATCHETT BACK ON TOP FORM, 18 Jun 2002
By 
J. C. Bailey (East Sussex United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Terry Pratchett's wit, erudition and sheer volume of words & ideas will continue to amaze, long after he retires from Discworld writing. Even so, as he got up to the two dozen mark, some of us began to suspect that perhaps he was at last tiring of his creation. He never ran out of fresh ideas, but the way the ideas coalesced into novels started to seem mechanical. It wasn't so certain as before that he was affectionately disposed towards his lead characters. The same bit-part actors began constantly to put in cameo appearances (e.g. the irritating talking dog, the meat pie man, and so on), and to deliver the same predictable punchlines ("on-a-stick", "woof", token appearances by Death talking "IN CAPITAL LETTERS", etc). For a time, even at best, it looked like writing by numbers. Worse still, the plots sometimes only worked because of holes in the narrative, essential connections between people or actions that the author withheld from the reader in a slightly contrived way (check it out for yourself if you don't believe me). Of course Pratchett remained entertaining - I think he finds it quite hard not to be - but it made me look back nostalgically to "Equal Rites" and "Small Gods".

The good news is that "Thief of Time" is a triumphant return to form. The plot runs like clockwork. The wit, simultaneously affectionate and bitingly ironic, is delivered with beautiful timing. The lead characters are gently heroic, and the villains chilling, even as they are comic. The tragi-comedy runs particularly deep with Lady LeJean, the poignancy of whose inner turmoil (and I don't want to spoil things for anyone who still has the book to look forward to) has been tackled with special warmth and compassion. She ranks as one of the finest creations in Pratchett's entire body of work.

I'm not going to waste your time or mine recycling the plot. Suffice it to say that once again the Universe is in danger of imminent demise. Pratchett develops yet another strand in the cosmology of a universe that works according to the science and superstitions of our medieval ancestors. One more cinematic genre is held up to satire (this time the Kung Fu tradition). And once again, Pratchett makes some deceptively deep observations about the world we ourselves live in.

This is Pratchett's best book for some years. Even allowing for the fact that there as always quite a few in-jokes for long terms fans, this would be as good a place as any for a new reader to start.

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