Emperors’ new clothes or the ragged, smelly poncho of well paced and well thought out fiction? (Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: BatCat

Product:	Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett
Date:	28/06/01 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: more Pratchett!

Disadvantages: none

The Thief of Time is, I think, Pratchett’s 26th instalment in the ever-expanding Discworld series. If you’re a fan there’s no point in you even reading this review as you will have undoubtedly already bought, borrowed or begged a copy by now and no words from this reviewer will dissuade you. On the other hand if you are a newcomer to the Discworld novels, or are of the frame of mind that reads each new novel and assesses it with a mind unclouded by Pratchett worship you’re still in for a treat. After the long series (or did it just feel like that?) of largely uninspired and uninspiring reworkings of the standard Pratchett formula that spanned the period from Hogfather to The Fifth Elephant, via the forgettable Jingo, The Last Continent and Carpe Jugulum , Pratchett is back with a vengeance. The renaissance started last year when the bearded, publishers’ dream produced The Truth, arguably his finest up to that point. Last month, with the publication of Thief of Time, it is evident that the renaissance of this true Renaissance man continues. The plot appears simple: Lobsang is a simple boy from the city transported to the Monastery of the History Monks. These dudes don’t so much control time as divide it up … a little nip and tuck from where it’s not needed and a little temporal collagen injection where it is (If you’re looking for the semi covert jokes and arcana – keep an eye out for The Matrix references; but James Bond’s Q is too obvious).

So far so good. The only problem is that the Auditors are knocking on the doors of your perception and time is running out … literally. Like all beings with a background in the occult arts of accountancy, they like things to be nice and orderly and to them humans are not particularly orderly and they don’t care too much for nice. As with any Pratchett novel worth it’s salt the answer is simple … get an Auditor to take on human for
m, find a young man of dubious parentage, who (as it would just happen) has a big interest in clocks and get him to build a multi-dimensional lightening-powered glass clock that will stop time (look out for the Jules Verne 20,000 leagues under the sea reference – most cunning). Worried yet? Well, you should be … Death is: he’s enlisted the help of his schoolteacher granddaughter and he’s rounding up the Old Gang of War, Famine et. al to go riding out one last time. And his troubles are just beginning.

So much for the storyline … anyone who’s ever read a Discworld novel (even the bad ones) knows that it’s nigh impossible to accurately convey the warp of plot and the weft of character that Pratchett weaves together without feeling you’ve left something out (in the case of this reviewer it’s ‘the salad cream’ joke). Admittedly, sometimes all this weaving comes out as the Emperors’ new clothes … other times as the ragged, slightly smelly poncho of well paced and well thought out fiction. Thief of Time falls into neither of these sartorial categories. Instead, this is a novel of many interwoven strands that found the place where tailoring references went to die, crossed the line and was last seen heading for the horizon. To put it simply he has excelled himself: this is possibly the most accomplished and mature level we have yet seen a Pratchett novel. We can only hope that the renaissance will continue for some time yet.

Summary: