Title: Thief of Time
Series: Discworld #26 (Death #5)
Author: Sir Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fantasy
Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), body horror (arguably), abandonment, injury (mentions), unreality, existential horror, mental illness, suicide, ableism
Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-sixth in a series, but neither the book nor the review contain spoilers of any previous books (but knowledge of the previous books will make this review make more sense).
Back Cover:
Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed.
And on Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it’s wasted (like underwater — how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there’s never enough time.
But the construction of the world’s first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time, for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone’s problems.
Thief of Time comes complete with a full supporting cast of heroes and villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous).
Review:
This book is a strange reading experience and not exactly easy to review. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good. But it’s hard to put into words my thoughts on the matter.
First of all, Thief of Time is part of the Death sub-series, and I have struggled with nearly every book in the series for various reasons (although, in the case of Hogfather, that reason was more the circumstances in which I read the book than the book itself). In this case, the book doesn’t follow the same pattern of most of the Death books, wherein Death has a crisis about not being human and makes a stupid decision and the rest of the book is spent trying to fix what he screwed up. In fact, it feels weird to call this a Death book at all, since Death is hardly in it. I think there were Rincewind books that had Death in more scenes than Thief of Time. However, Death’s granddaughter Susan (who is at this point a favorite of mine) does show up and is pretty crucial to the ending, so maybe that’s why it counts? Regardless, Death is not actually a major player in this book.
There are actually a lot of players in this book. If you had to name protagonists, you would probably identify Lopsang Ludd, apprentice History Monk who somehow already seems to know the time tricks the monks are supposed to be teaching him, and Jeremy, obsessive and extremely talented clockmaker with some kind of mental illness. But there’s a definite third-person omnicient vibe in this story. Even if you only count characters who have point-of-view scenes, there’s also Death, Susan, Lu Tze the janitor monk, Nanny Ogg, Myria LeJean the … well, you should just read about that one, Ronnie the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and probably a few others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. And each of those has a cast of secondary characters that only sometimes overlaps. There’s a lot of characters happening. None of them were bad and I liked all of them in their own way, but the frequent jumping between characters and places sometimes left me feeling a bit unfulfilled, like I wanted more out of the scene I just had before it switched to a different scene.
And now that I’ve covered the basic bookish stuff that feels like I should at least say it, let’s get down to the weirdest thing about this book: It does not feel like a Discworld book. It is funny, sure, and full of Sir Terry’s signature wit, but in a way that’s gently amusing, not laugh-out-loud hilarious. Even though the fate of the entire world and existence is at stake, it lacks true urgency. Instead, it’s slightly slower than you would expect for a book so full of characters and stories, it’s thematically rich, and above all it’s deeply philosophical. It pokes fun at a lot of ideas, but it also meditates on the nature of time and what it means to be (or become) a human being. I have really enjoyed most of the Discworld books I’ve read. Many of them have had interesting themes worth thinking about. But this is the only one where I really felt like it was touching on something real and meaningful and was actually expanding the way I think.
I really do not know what to make of this. Out of all of the books in this series, I really want this one to become a movie. I want to study it for the wisdom it contains. It’s a silly funny fantasy story while simultaneously giving me that expanded, slightly-off-kilter feeling of really good magical realism. I’ve learned so much. I know nothing. There are layers of meaning here that I haven’t yet unpacked. A very confused monk apprentice is following his master the janitor on a quest to smash a really fancy clock. Meaning is a glass clock, clear as a mountain stream yet distorted and obscured by joints and angles. This is a Discworld book.
I have maintained for most of my Discworld reading experience that Interesting Times is my favorite. Rincewind is still one of my favorite characters, and not only is it the best of his books, it’s so far the best combination of thematic depth and laugh-out-loud humor. But this one … it is so strangely, confusingly, almost unbelievably good. It does not feel like a Discworld book. It feels momentous. It feels like a book that wins literary awards and deserves them, and like Lu Tze is a powerful monk in the humble guise of a janitor, Thief of Time is a powerful work in the humble guise of a simple funny fantasy story. It hits so far above its weight class and goes so much deeper than it claims that I have no idea how to properly convey what I’m feeling. It’s a good and enjoyable story, but it’s so much more than that. I feel closer to enlightenment having read this. It is such a dramatic departure from anything I expected from a Discworld book, but it is so, so good.
The Discword Series:
- The Colour of Magic
- The Light Fantastic
- Equal Rites
- Mort
- Sourcery
- Wyrd Sisters
- Pyramids
- Guards! Guards!
- Eric
- Moving Pictures
- Reaper Man
- Witches Abroad
- Small Gods
- Lords and Ladies
- Men at Arms
- Soul Music
- Interesting Times
- Maskerade
- Feet of Clay
- Hogfather
- Jingo
- The Last Continent
- Carpe Jugulum
- The Fifth Elephant
- The Truth
- Thief of Time
- The Last Hero
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
- Night Watch
- The Wee Free Men
- Monstrous Regiment
- A Hat Full of Sky
- Going Postal
- Thud!
- Wintersmith
- Making Money
- Unseen Academicals
- I Shall Wear Midnight
- Snuff
- Raising Steam
- The Shepherd’s Crown
Bluejay Reads 