{"id":1216,"date":"2018-08-22T15:00:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T21:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2018-08-29T17:54:47","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T23:54:47","slug":"book-the-long-war-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/22\/book-the-long-war-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Long War (2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1393783517l\/20608343.jpg\" alt=\"The Long War\" width=\"318\" height=\"355\" \/>The Long War<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2013<br \/>\nAuthor: Terry Pratchett &amp; Stephen Baxter<br \/>\nLength: 828 minutes \/ 13.80 hours<\/p>\n<p>You think with an inciting incident as extreme as the one at the end of\u00a0<em>The Long Earth<\/em>, the follow-on book,\u00a0<em>The Long War,<\/em>\u00a0would be an exciting series of battles. If you thought that, you\u2019d be wrong. Instead, authors Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter take the\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/24\/book-speaker-for-the-dead-1986\/\">Speaker for the Dead<\/a><\/em>\u00a0route by aging the main character of the first book by at least a decade and throwing in heavy doses of non-human racism (speciesism?). For a book that has \u201cwar\u201d in the title, there isn\u2019t much war at all. This is disappointing for many reasons.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, there\u2019s still plenty of neat science fiction ideas presented here, but\u00a0<em>The Long War\u00a0<\/em>exhibits the same problems that were present in\u00a0<em>The Long Earth<\/em>. First and foremost, the wit and humor of Terry Pratchett is hardly to be seen in this book, only occasionally popping up to add levity to a situation. Secondly, there\u2019s so much exposition that the book \u201ctells\u201d instead of \u201cshows,\u201d that it almost becomes a bore to read. Finally, with so many subplots strung together, it was difficult to know precisely what was going on, who these characters were, or why I should care.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll still probably suffer through the rest of this series since I don\u2019t have to think very hard when I\u2019m listening to the audiobook. The fact that I want to get through this five-book series as quickly as possible says something, though. The real problem is that the ideas and settings presented here could have been great. If the end of the first book had transitioned seamlessly into this one, causing the people who could \u201cstep\u201d to rise up against those who would perform the despicable act that affected datum Earth, then we\u2019d actually have a war on our hands instead of . . . this. Don&#8217;t even get me started on the ending, which I&#8217;m pretty sure had a good paragraph of dialogue copied from <em>The Long Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>An overly long book with little to no war, I give\u00a0<em>The Long War<\/em>\u00a02.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Long War Year: 2013 Author: Terry Pratchett &amp; Stephen Baxter Length: 828 minutes \/ 13.80 hours You think with an inciting incident as extreme as the one at the end of\u00a0The Long Earth, the follow-on book,\u00a0The Long War,\u00a0would be an exciting series of battles. If you thought that, you\u2019d be wrong. Instead, authors Terry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,54],"tags":[121,55,8,337,235,28,1437,1040,1436,1447],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-0-stars","category-book","tag-121","tag-book","tag-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-series","tag-stephen-baxter","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-long-earth","tag-the-long-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}