Customer Reviews

Strata

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A scifi/fantasy blend about a jaded planetary designer who gets embroiled in a mission with two very alien aliens to a disc shaped world where magic appears to work, this early work by Terry Pratchett also deftly parodies Larry Niven's Ringworld as well as several fantasy tropes.

This is the first book outside of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett that I have read and it will not be the last. The humor here is more subdued than with the Discworld books but it still is present more or less throughout the story. There is a sense in reading that Pratchett is finding his wings as the book progresses. The begining is a bit rigid, however by the end the author relaxes and the style becomes more playful. It was a pleasure reading this book and I strongly recommend anyone who likes Pratchett's work to give it a try.

This book was one of the first few T.Prattchet books that I read and is probably my favourite. It is more science-fiction than fantasy, looking at a fantasy world with scientific tools. This is not only a good solid read. It parodys Larry Niven's Ringworld, it introduces new and origional ideas, and has a delightful twist (I read that bit twice before I understood it). You read it again and again and see more each time.

Those of you who are familiar with Pratchett from his Discworld series will be puzzled by this book -- it seems to be about Discworld but it has none of the magic or wild humor of that series. It was written before Pratchett created the "real" Discworld with its Unseen University, wizards and wild parodies of our world. That said, those of you who are Discworld fanatics might find this interesting as it's a hard-science (sort of) explanation of the flat Discworld planet. It's not a bad story -- just don't expect the usual Pratchett funny fireworks.

This is the first Terry Pratchett book I ever read, and it led me to keep reading him. This is not a Discworld novel, but equally as inventive. It may not be as funny as the other novels, but it has its own sense of humor and surprises. I highly recommend this if you are already a fan, and I doubly recommend it if you haven't ready any Pratchett yet. This one will get you hooked!

Strata is fun rather than rolling-about-laughing funny - it is similar in style to Alan Dean Foster's SF comedy. In this book T.P. created an interesting and thought provoking universe in which he makes fun of human (and alien) nature, and an odd plot twist explains some of the more bizarre things that people used to believe in our history.

Terry Pratchett's Strata, is an early work, that stands on its own as a nice piece of science fiction. The characters are interesting and the plot line is clever. For me, the ending wasn't as crisp as you'd find in his more recent works, but the journey is worth the effort. For those who've read Pratchett's Discworld novels, the novel gives one an early peak at what will become the author's best known works. The disc world here is not the same Discworld of the subsequent novels, but some of the lunacy and wonder of that universe are first glimpsed in Strata. It is a fascinating look at the conception of what will become a place where magic comes alive.

This was my first T. Pratchett book and all I can say is BRING ON THE REST! What an imagination and funnaaay! Perfect balance of the science and the fiction. Not "hard s/f".

This is a book by Terry Pratchett and it is about a disc-shaped world, but it is NOT a Discworld book. That's an important note. Strata was first published two years before the first Discworld book, The Color of Magic, so you can think of it as sort of a precursor to the series.

Kin Arad wrote the book on terraforming--literally. Thanks to gene engineering and other stuff she's lived over two hundred years, most of it for The Company, which is in the business of terraforming planets to make them habitable for humans. The idea is for humanity to spread out as much as possible to ensure the continuation of the species. The technology for the terraforming comes from artifacts left behind by a dead species known as the Spindle Kings. Another interesting side note is that in this universe Rome was founded by Remus and called Reme and Vikings colonized North America (called Valhalla), mating with Native Americans (or Native Valhallans I suppose) and eventually taking over Europe.

Then one day Kin is paid a visit by a supposedly lost space pilot called Jago Jalo, who shows her a cloak of invisibility and tells her there's more goodies to be found on a mysterious planet. She decides to travel with him to this planet, along with a Kung (a four-armed paranoid alien who sees violence as the first and best solution) named Marco and a Shandi (a big bear-like alien with walrus tusks who eat a very specialized diet--mainly each other) called Silver. Jago soon dies of a heart attack, but the other three go on to find a planet that is completely flat and contained in a sort of bubble with its own stars and planets. (Unlike the Discworld, this flat disc-shaped world is not carried by four elephants on the back of a giant turtle.)

Unfortunately, their ship crashes on this planet, where they soon bump into Vikings who are searching for North America, which doesn't exist here. Not long after that they come under attack from dragons. Demons, genies, flying carpets, and even the Grim Reaper also call this strange place home. But who built it and why? That is the question.

This was an OK book, but not really great. I read somewhere that it's a parody of "Ringworld" by Larry Niven, which I've never read; if I had I might have understood this better. That Kin's "real" Earth is an alternate history just makes things more confusing than they already are. Some of the action scenes were a little confusing as well. Having read all the Discworld books, I know Pratchett is capable of better, but then this was one of his earliest works, so it's not right to punish him just for setting a higher standard for himself later on.

Really there are some books, including a few of the Discworld books, that should be shorter, but this is a case where a little more length might have been helpful. I felt like I didn't really get to see enough of this flat world with all its magical inhabitants. As well Kin and the other characters felt a little flat--pun intended--so a little exposition might have been nice. (But character development has never been Pratchett's strong suit, even in the Discworld books.)

Another thing to note here is that while the Discworld books are fantasy, this is aimed more at science-fiction readers with space travel and aliens and whatnot. Of course there is some fantasy as well, just not as much of it.

Overall I'd say there's no reason to read this unless you're a big Discworld fan, or like me you got it in a box of other books and had a couple hours to kill.

That is all.

The word "quirky" gets used a lot in descriptions of "Strata". Gee, d'ya think so? Here we start with Kin Arad explaining to a couple amateurs why burying a dinosaur skeleton holding a sign that says "End nuclear testing" in a fake cretacious bog for future generations of paleontologists to finds is a bad idea. Later Kin will join a human transformed into a Kung, which is a really really violent species, and a cannibalistic Shand on a voyage to a huge artificial disc where they get stalked by a raven, employed by Leif Ericson, and almost betrayed by a teleporting demon. Quirky? A little.

The principle problem with "Strata" is that Pratchett seems like he never quite decided what he wanted to do with it. There are moments that are laugh out loud (a bitter and repressed genie comes to mind), but not nearly as many as you would expect in a real Discworld novel. And there's a big slab of far-out science fiction adventure, which as others have remarked is much in the vein of Larry Niven. And there's an ending, which sort of ties together most of what has happened throughout the book, but it's not exactly a knockout. "Strata" shows us a young author finding his legs early in his career, with hints of the greatness to come. Hints, yes, but not that many hints.

Before Terry Pratchett wrote his first Discworld novel - there are nearly 40 of them now - he wrote Strata, a technologically rationalized version of his now-famous flat planet. Strata is also a lovely satire of Larry Niven's Ringworld, which only adds to the fun.

Kim Arad is well into her third century, and spends her time designing planets. She is also the author of a famous book proposing a history of creation in which mankind and its predecessors have invented the universe rather than the other way around. When she is approached by Jago Jalo, an explorer long presumed dead, who has technological miracles in his pocket, she is intrigued. When he offers her a chance to visit the mysterious world where that technology originated, she can't say no.

She's accompanied by the requisite aliens - this is a Niven satire, remember - and, of course, crash lands on the mysterious flat world, which bears a more-than-passing resemblance to ours. Kim and her alien allies must come to terms with a mechanical world populated by humans and their mythical monsters, a construct that is falling apart from old age. They are in a race against time - and one of the alien's descent into starvation-induced madness - to find the creatures in charge.

The story stands on its own just fine, although the writing is not as strong and self-assured as later Pratchett. But the last thirty pages give you a glimpse of the great skills Pratchett would develop: the ability to make thought-provoking, intelligent points in an entertaining, even amusing way. This is a science fiction novel, at least within the limits of Clarke's Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."), but there are hints of Discworld-to-come. Among other things, the aliens note that humans have myths about flat worlds riding on the back of elephants, standing on turtles.

A good story for any fan of sci-fi or fantasy. A great novel for Pratchett fans who haven't yet read it. Strongly recommended.