he 26th book of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series begins, typically enough, with a little history, a little philosophy, a little humor and a bunch of deliberate ambiguity, which takes a while to interpret. As the book gradually coheres, a few things become clear: a mad scientist once created a clock made of glass to capture Time herself. History shattered and had to be rebuilt piece by piece by specialists--the History Monks, a secret order who manage the flow of time. When they rebuilt the past, they left out the part of history where the clock was built. But somehow the story endured.
The Auditors--a shadowy collective of incorporeal beings who monitor and keep track of everything in the universe--are aware of the story of the clock and have determined to repeat the experiment. After all, they reason, humanity (including humanoid races like trolls and dwarves) are chaotic, nonlinear, nonsensical creatures that fit into no logical pattern. They're messy and unpleasant, and the universe would be far more orderly without them moving about and doing their strange stuff. So the Auditors commission a special clock from a very special clockmaker--Jeremy Clockson, a strange, obsessive genius who lives in Ankh-Morpork.
Meanwhile, the personification of Death realizes history is about to stop again, and alerts his phenomenally gifted granddaughter Susan. Meanwhile, a packing crate containing a mad-scientist's-helper named Igor arrives on Jeremy's doorstep. Meanwhile, the Monks of History suddenly hit upon the idea of foisting their most fundamentally talented novice, an incorrigible troublemaker named Lobsang, off on their most revered and mysterious teacher, Lu-Tze, who spends most of his time humbly sweeping
the monastery. Meanwhile, the Auditors' representative in Ankh-Morpork, having incarnated herself in order to handle negotiations and procure materials to get the clock built, is learning some unanticipated things about humanity. There are a lot of "meanwhiles" in Thief of Time, which (as usual for a Discworld book) follows half a dozen different plotlines at once, and takes its own good time (so to speak) in bringing them together.
Not your usual Pratchett job
Die-hard Pratchett fans fall into a couple of broad categories: those who like his fantasy novels because they're comic, and those who like his comedies because they're fantastical. The former group is a lot more likely to enjoy Thief of Time. While the book's certainly sprinkled with the usual irreverence, straight-faced absurdism, genre spoofs and dry wit, it's still very clearly part of Pratchett's recent pattern of development. Where he once wrote hilarious slapstick parodies of fantasy novels, he's gradually tended toward writing light fantasy with a dark edge, spicing his stories with a little humor instead of structuring his humor with a little story. As a result, there are few belly laughs in Thief of Time, which isn't trying to pack the comic punch of the giddier Discworld books.
Unfortunately, it also doesn't quite pack the dramatic punch of recent stellar books like The Fifth Elephant or The Truth. The protagonists--sullen Susan, who treats everyone like the most intractable of her elementary-school students, and arrogant Lobsang, and the crafty but purposefully perverse Lu-Tze, and creepily fanatical Jeremy--are all relatively unlikable. They produce comic effects, but are too full of themselves to actually participate in the comedy. They're also all far too competent. By contrast, the nebulous, malevolent but easily stymied Auditors just don't seem like much of a threat; their goals are impersonal, abstract and huge, which makes it difficult for Pratchett to establish any specific, personal danger to his high-powered heroes. (It certainly helps to have read Pratchett's Hogfather, in which the Auditors were more mysterious, organized and competent, and Susan was better established as a character.)
So Thief of Time isn't Pratchett's funniest book, and it isn't his most dramatic. But he's still a master near the top of his game, producing colorful, creative, quick-stepping books that mix parody with philosophy with sheer inventive cleverness. Even if the overall picture isn't as sharply drawn as with the best of Pratchett's books, the fine details--the parodies, the wordplay and the surprising ideas about the nature of the universe--are still as enjoyable as ever. Even when Pratchett doesn't quite score a bull's-eye, he hits his mark more often than most of his competitors.
