Book Response: The Thief of Time.

Terry Pratchett, as I’ve mentioned before, is my hero—and one of the most enjoyable novelists in the English language. Imagine the wit of Douglas Adams, the learned imagination of Tolkien, the satiric prescience of Kurt Vonnegut, and the mythic and historical knowledge of Joseph Campbell. Got your brain wrapped around that? Now go read 2001’s The Thief of Time. You won’t be sorry.

The plot of TTOT is that in Discworld, a parallel planet a lot like earth but much, much, funnier, a young prodigy of a clockmaker is commissioned to build the world’s first truly accurate clock—a clock so precise that it keeps time with the cosmos itself. Unbeknownst to Jeremy, our young horologist assigned to the task, when finished the clock will arrest time completely, which is what the universal auditors who commissioned him to build it have wanted all along, so that they can catch up on all the paperwork of counting everything in creation. But, as critic Barbara Mertz points out, “trying to summarize the plot of a Terry Pratchett novel is like describing Hamlet as a play about a troubled guy with an Oedipus complex and a murderous uncle.” They’re works that one must simply read first, as description of good satire usually fails to impart its value, or, in doing so, gives away all the juicy bits.

And juicy bits abound: there’s a weapons master who creates inventive new armaments and gadgetry for the history monks Lu-tse and Lobsang-lang who are sent to prevent the clock’s completion. His name? Qu. It took me two pages before I got the joke and then another thirty seconds to stop laughing. But laugh-out-loud moments abound, especially if you’re paying attention and versed in a little history. The latter isn’t required, though. If you’re a human being that finds humor in the folly of human beings, TTOT will be right up your alley.

On one level, the novel is a “beach read,” as my friend Hamel likes to describe enaging-but-light fare that one blows through quickly. (But, then again, that’s how a contemporary audience would have viewed The Tempest.) It’s plot-driven, rather than character-driven, as satire often is, but it’s also much, much more. Like all Pratchett novels, it’s a funhouse mirror held up to humanity, making us realize how ridiculous we can be by simply fictionalizing and distorting an image of us that is penetratingly, hilariously spot-on and true. In short, it’s a novel that entertains and diverts while investigating serious questions about what it means to be human and the nature of perception. Not too many writers can pull that off; Pratchett does it with nearly every book.

Grade: A-. (“A’s” are reserved for enduring classics in the language, and I’m not sure that this is one of those.)