Thief of Time

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett is a fantasy novel for teenagers and adults, and the twenty-sixth book in the acclaimed Discworld series. Within the Discworld universe, Thief of Time is the fifth “Death” novel, which follows a personified Death character who interferes with the Discworld universe. The book follows to parallel narratives. One thread follows a clockmaker named Jeremy Clockson who is hired by the Auditors of Reality, villainous god-like beings who carry throughout the series, to build a perfect glass clock that has the power to stop time. The second thread has the feeling of a kung-fu or martial arts movie, and follows Lu-Tze, a member of the mysterious religious organization the History Monks, as he leads an apprentice named Lobsang Ludd on an important mission.

Thief of Time essentially pits three main adversaries against each other; the Monks of History, the Auditors, and Death fight on a primordial level in an attempt to maintain the order of the universe, while humans are thrown into the mix in an often comically ignorant way while these powers argue around them. The conflict begins when the Auditors of Reality, the god-like beings who have some control over the workings of the universe, decide that it would be much easier to maintain order if they could freeze time forever. This, they believe, would give them ample space to fix whatever the humans have broken, and to keep everything tidy and orderly for all eternity, because humans wouldn't be able to move through the world in order to mess everything up. In order to achieve this task, the Auditors manipulate a relatively unstable but talented clockmaker named Jeremy Clockson to build the perfect glass clock, which when it is finished will be so precise that it's workings will have the power to stop time itself.

The Auditor who does the most work to persuade Jeremy is one particular character, who transforms itself from a deity into a human woman named Lady LeJean. Lady LeJean spends her time with Jeremy, ensuring the clock is finished properly, but while she is inside a human body she begins to have uncommon, base urges and feelings unknown to Auditors, like cravings for chocolate and feelings of romantic love for Jeremy.



Meanwhile, many other groups have heard about the Auditors' scheme, and have plans to stop them. One of these groups is the Monks of History. The Monks live high on a mountaintop in a world much like modern Tibet, and are part of a mysterious and powerful religious community. Part of their power stems from their desire to dispense time to various regions depending on need – in crisis, for instance, a town might need more time to settle, and it is the job of the Monks to see those deficiencies and balance the world by distributing time more fairly. Of course, if the Auditors stop time, this ability goes away, and the world cannot continue on. To stop the Auditors, a prominent monk named Lu-Tze has taken on an orphan child named Lobsang Ludd, who has demonstrated the ability to shift time. He uses his powers now as a petty thief in the local village, but Lu-Tze believes that with proper training, Lobsang could be a powerful monk – perhaps powerful enough to stop the Auditors and Jeremy's clock.

Finally, the personified character of Death has some concerns about this plot to stop time. By removing chaos from the world, and time itself, which inevitably leads all humans to their end, Death is basically out of a job. Unfortunately, Death has a job to do, organizing the Final Ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but in his place he sends his granddaughter Susan Sto Helit, who possesses many of Death's powers.

These narratives wind together to create a complicated network of action and chaos, before ending with time continuing on, and the Auditors once again defeated in their plot.



Terry Pratchett is the author of dozens of fantasy novels, particularly humorous fantasy novels. He was born and died in England, and was knighted for his literary accomplishments in 2009. He is best known for the Discworld series, which has a total of forty-one books, but also wrote the Nome trilogy, and co-authored Good Omens with Neil Gaiman. Beyond writing the forty-one novels for Discworld, Pratchett also collaborated with experts to create guidebooks on the science and folklore of the Discworld universe for his dedicated readers. He died in 2015.