En smakebit på søndag: The Long Utopia av Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

Mari på bloggen Flukten fra Virkeligheten hjälper oss att bjuda varandra på smakbitar ur de böcker vi läser just nu. Alltid kul att få lite boktips och lite försmak. Inga spoilers! Se andras smakbitar för dagen HÄR!

Min smakbit kommer den här gången från en bok 4 i en serie på fem, skriven av Terry Pratchett och Stephen Baxter. Serien är känd som The Long Earth-serien. Se alla böckerna i serien på Goodreads sida HÄR!

Den stora storyn är att det jord är en av ett pärlband med parallella (inte för varandra synlig - men som i parallella universum) jordar som man kan sid-kliva till, öst eller väst. Hur många? Ingen vet - kanske tar de aldrig slut.

Om första boken kan man läsa:

2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Junior cop Sally Jansson is called out to the house of Willis Lynsey, a reclusive scientist, for an animal-cruelty complaint: the man was seen forcing a horse in through the door of his home. Inside there is no horse. But Sally finds a kind of home-made utility belt. She straps this on -- and 'steps' sideways into an America covered with virgin forest. Willis came here with equipment and animals, meaning to explore and colonise. And when Sally gets back, she finds Willis has put the secret of the belt on the internet. The great migration has begun...The Long Earth our Earth is but one of a chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side in a higher space of possibilities, each differing from its neighbours by a little (or a lot): an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger the worlds get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular version of Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently. But only our Earth hosts mankind.

I fjärde boken har mycket hänt och det bor människor på många av de parallella jordarna, för original-jorden har nästintill gått under. Den finns - men är en hårdare plats att bo på. Men nu tätnar handling - mer finns att upptäcka.

Här kommer en smakbit ... eller, ja, två ... för hur kan man välja?

“Agnes could read the history of this place, this hilltop. The first settlers here must have made a start clearing fields for their crops or livestock, even put up these grand houses. Then, after no time at all, they had evidently given up and wondered off to do – well, whatever it was most people did around here to make a living these days. And now here was the forest already taking back the land, or trying to.” 

“I despise the religions we have, nothing but flummery and manipulation based on texts and materials so reworked over time they’re all meaningless. I despise the division religions bring; humans have enough problems without that. I despise conmen like Father Melly. And yet, and yet …”