Strata

This is a review of the novel “Strata” by Sir Terry Pratchett.

I am still coming to terms with the fact that this wonderful man is gone from the world.

I was given “Strata” as a birthday present some time ago, by one of my dearest friends. Due to the sheer number of books I have had in my To Be Read pile, I have only just gotten to it.

Kin Arad is one of the foremost experts on terraforming. She is a planetary engineer and a famous author to boot. She is very, very old. She has lived many lifetimes, but never has she met anyone quite like Jago Jalo.

Jago is a human from a time long ago. Yes, he’s even older than Kin. He says he has found a world that is not a sphere, nor a planet, but a disc. And Kin’s curiosity is sparked. She follows Jago’s instructions and meets with Marco, a four-armed, frog-like, paranoid warrior Kung, and Silver, a Shand, a shaggy bear-like creature. Kin knows that they are not human like her, but their differences sometimes take her by surprise. They set out to find the Disc, but never did they imagine what they would find, or just how their expedition would pan out.

I loved this novel. It had a very Pratchett feel (of course) but it was also very different to a lot of his other works that I have read. I loved his slant on a more sci-fi type of work. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I enjoyed it quite immensely. The tone of this novel seemed more serious and less flippant than his novels in the Discworld Series, and I still appreciated that.