Battling publicly with Alzheimer's, Pratchett should be congratulated on hatching out new fields for his writing but this one seems to lack his trademark quirky humour and possibly owes most to the SF writer.
Its theme is one of multiple universes, but the basic premise that some people can naturally "step" from one to another - or that other people can do so with the aid of a newly invented little box of wires and switch, powered by a potato (of all things!) - just did not spud in for me. The plot had a lot of teenagers trying the box out and disappearing from their homes.
Steppers soon find they can step sideways into another planet Earth and from that one into another, and so on infinitum. Hence the title The Long Earth; it is a chain of parallel Earths going backwards in time to the dinosaurs and further.
But what was worse than my stretched incredulity was that 52 chapters and 355 pages of this novel are essentially rather boring (apart from its new reason to plant early potatoes).
The only interesting character turns out to be Lobsang, a super-computer within a talking drink-vending machine. The other steppers into new parallel worlds are all engrossed in becoming colonists rather than having any exciting adventures.
Certainly, there is a more serious quest by Joshua (a natural stepper, who doesn't actually need a potato) and Lobsang, but it doesn't go anywhere with really interesting action. I finished the book feeling it was a "Very Long and Slow Earth" indeed and that I had stifled many a yawn as I stepped through it.
• Geoff Adams is a former editor of the ODT.
