Thief of Time

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Compact discs.
Unabridged.
"This CD is track marked for your convenience. Simply remember the last track number before turning off"--Container.
Read by Stephen Briggs.
"Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. And on the Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like under water - how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough of it. 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 be only the start of everyone's problems."--Container.

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my beloved diskworld submitted by ferdoble on August 11, 2011, 3:53pm To describe Terry Pratchett’s books is a difficult thing to do. The disc world series is in a word fantastic. Terry Pratchett, would seem to use the disk world, to take any theme, or know story and then twist it in his own very humorous way. These are not always laugh out loud funny (sometimes they are), bur rather the sort of funny that just sort of lifts your spirits a little bit.

I will say that in some cases there isn’t always a really strong story, sometimes its just his characters moving through one of those twisted themes. I like them all, you may want to start with the Most Von Lipwig story line (“Going Postal” and then “making money”) as at least the first one has a really great story line.

I love to pepper my reading queue with these books to keep all those books that take themselves seriously fresh and interesting.

I recommend reading them ALL.

OR listening to them. The two main narrators of Terry Pratchett’s books are Stephen Briggs & Nigel Planer and they take Terry Pratchett’s phenomenal writing to a whole new level.

Humerous Time Travel submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on August 16, 2012, 3:57pm Like all his novels, "Thief of Time" is hilarious and features some beloved, recurring characters.
I highly recommend all of Sir Terry Pratchett's novels, especially his 39 Discworld ones of which this is the 26th.
The book brings back Death and his granddaughter Susan, assisted in her assignment to (again) save the world by Death of Rats, a highly entertaining and cute "mini me" of Death. Meanwhile, in a mysterious, faraway land, History Monk apprentice Lobsang and his mentor are also trying to undo the basic cause of the world's imminent demise.
Read "Reaper Man," "Hogfather" and "Small Gods" first to understand the background storyline on the characters in "Thief of Time" and to get an understanding about how the Discworld works.
If you enjoy fantasy novels and books about time travel, you will find "Thief of Time" an entertaining read.

Hooray! submitted by slugwhisperer on June 14, 2013, 6:59pm Totally love all the books - especially on CD, for they make the usually boring commute more interesting.

discworld submitted by unknown on August 10, 2013, 11:01pm I admit to enjoying Terry Pratchett very much. I've read all 26 Discworld books. I've got the juveniles and the early experiments like _Strata_. Perhaps the best part of reading so much of his work is that I can see how he has grown and evolved as a writer. _Thief of Time_ is an extremely sophisticated book and, while not his funniest, is plainly his best yet.

Early Discworld books were comedy monologues strung together by a plot. Sometimes a pretty thin plot. As just one example, a whole page was required to set up the famous "felonious monk" pun in _Soul Music_. The early stories tended to be pretty much a structure to support the jokes. Sure, there was more, but it was mostly for laughs.

Somewhere between _Hogfather_ and _Carpe Jugulum_, Pratchett brought his writing to a new level. It's controversial among some of his fans, but the newer books raise deeper issues and work at multiple levels. There are still lots of laughs - you can't read about a raven named "Quoth" without smiling - but there's also a terrific, compelling story to be told. While the humor in _Color of Magic_ could be sophomoric - remember when the imp ran out of the color pink when Rincewind and Twoflower visited the Whore Pits? - there is nothing even slightly sophomoric about the plot or jokes in _Thief of Time_.

This story involves the ongoing struggle between Death and the Auditors, the use and abuse of time, quantum physics, the Monks of Time (appearing for the first itme since _Small Gods_) and the peculiar and completely different aptitudes of two very different young men to manipulate time. As an unexpected bonus, you learn why there are those nagging inconsistencies across the Discworld novels; it turns out its not Terry's fault at all... Oh, and the whole Kung Fu/Mystic Masters thing gets the Pratchett Treatment.

On the Discworld, natural forces and even unnatural forces are personified. Death is a person. Well, maybe three persons, but I don't want to spoil anything. The Auditors - roughly, the heat death of the universe - are more or less persons. Time, as it turns out, is a person. And each of those Personifications has most of the foibles of humans. After all, humans invented them.

Trust me, it all makes perfect sense.

This is a terrific book. Highly recommended. You don't need to know anything about Terry Pratchett, the Discworld or Susan Sto Helit to appreciate this book. I disagree with other reviewers who say that we won't read Pratchett 25 years from now. We will, for the same reason we read Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain and other great satirists: their skewed view of their times that they present helps us understand our past. They help us understand what it means to be human.

The Discworld truly is a mirror of our world and, while it is mostly a fun house mirror, it's still possible to know without doubt what it is you are seeing in that distorting mirror. And it makes you laugh.