The Long Mars (2015)

By Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter

448pp, Fiction

Notes

2025-09-20

A sense of diminishing returns with this series. Most of the characters who we spend time with are not particularly vibrant and I honestly don't have much memory of the events of previous books so the ongoing storylines don't really come into it *. That said, it's a pleasant read and always interesting to see some new weird life forms that Baxter has dreamed up. I do get the sense that Pratchett had less to do with this series as it went on, Baxter's nature red in tooth and claw instincts coming to the fore, the absurdist humanism getting dialed back.

I will be reading the next in the series, they're fairly undemanding and I bought The Long Utopia at the same time as this one (both cheap in Muswell Hill Oxfam). It will surely be pulled off the shelf sometime.

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* I really do feel like if you're writing an ongoing series you should have a couple of pages recapping the events and dramatis personae of previous installments, yes Tamsyn Muir, I'm looking at you!