{"id":1294,"date":"2018-10-31T15:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T21:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2018-10-25T09:44:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T15:44:51","slug":"book-the-long-mars-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/31\/book-the-long-mars-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Long Mars (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheThe Long Mars
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2014
\nAuthor: Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
\nLength: 723 minutes \/ 12.05 hours<\/p>\n

While the previous two entries in this series seemed to be disjointed in their writing styles,\u00a0The Long Mars<\/em>\u00a0seemed to iron out some of these discrepancies . .\u00a0.\u00a0finally. In\u00a0The Long Earth<\/a><\/em> and\u00a0The Long War<\/a><\/em>, you could almost pinpoint the sections that Terry Pratchett wrote and the sections primarily written by Stephen Baxter. By\u00a0The Long Mars<\/em>, there are still a few moments of Terry Pratchett\u2019s goofiness, but they are few and far between. Consequently, the narrative of\u00a0The Long Mars<\/em>\u00a0seemed a lot more consistent than its predecessors.<\/p>\n

Of course, this doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that\u00a0The Long Mars<\/em>\u00a0is absent of problems. While there was plenty of exploration of these parallel universes, the ones that were deemed necessary enough to describe didn\u2019t add anything to the plot. In fact, I felt like this book could have been much shorter if these thought experiments that explored how parallel universes would function were cut out entirely. If these momentary breaks in the action were tied to critical moments or conflicts, then I could see their necessity. As they are right now, you could remove almost every one of them and still have the same basic story.<\/p>\n

The scientist in me did like the broader examination of what to do with multiple universes, like easily visiting Mars. These concepts were touched on in the previous books, but now they felt a lot more fleshed out. Similarly, I felt like the characters were a lot more interesting, especially the dynamic between Sally and her father. Sure, there were probably a few too many plotlines to follow, but at least I cared about the characters now. I\u2019m also not sure if the ending was supposed to mimic its predecessors, as that was one of my frustrations with\u00a0The Long War<\/em>: an almost identical ending to\u00a0The Long Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A significant improvement in the\u00a0Long Earth<\/em>\u00a0series, I give\u00a0The Long Mars<\/em>\u00a03.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a01\/2<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Long Mars Year: 2014 Author: Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter Length: 723 minutes \/ 12.05 hours While the previous two entries in this series seemed to be disjointed in their writing styles,\u00a0The Long Mars\u00a0seemed to iron out some of these discrepancies . .\u00a0.\u00a0finally. In\u00a0The Long Earth and\u00a0The Long War, you could almost pinpoint the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,54],"tags":[26,55,368,724,8,337,235,28,1437,1040,1436,1542,1447],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-book","tag-26","tag-book","tag-multiverse","tag-parallel-universes","tag-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-series","tag-stephen-baxter","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-long-earth","tag-the-long-mars","tag-the-long-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","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=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}