Sir Terence David John Pratchett was born on April 28th, in Buckinghamshire, England. He was very good with grammar because of his ample time spent at the public library. His interests as a kid were astronomy, and British and American science fiction. He was also a journalist and a press officer in his early life.The genre that best describes his books would have to be animated or comic fantasy. His first "Disc world" novel was published in 1983. Disc world was a world that Pratchett invented himself. A world where any and everything was possible. And in "Thief of Time" he goes way beyond extraordinary with the use of time. Being that one of his interests was astronomy, I understand the book "Thief of Time" a little more. In this world, the time they live in is very inaccurate, but of the essence. Until somebody attempts to change that.
Jeremy Clockson, a clockmaker, understood time like nobody else. He completely understood what makes clocks tick. Jeremy was an orphan and adopted by the Guild Clock makers since a few days old. He was never good with people, communicating or keeping a conversation so he devoted all his time to clock-making. In this "Disc world", or time frame, it is said that orphans are born with a trade, a future, and a name. He felt as if he was just a boring person just made to fix and create clocks. He is also said to be insane, and is obligated to take medication every day, which he has never done. Obsessed with time, he often set his clocks for a certain time and wakes up a minute before the alarm to make sure it was accurate. He read books on how to be a more interesting person. Trying to keep conversation with other people was very difficult being that he could only relate to clocks. One day, a woman by the name of Lady LeJean asks him to do the unthinkable. She asked him to build a clock with the most accurate time. Because of his like for her, he considers doing it but tells her that it is impossible. She then hands him a book, "Grim Fairy Tales" which has a story of the first attempt to build a glass clock. The glass clock was built to capture time, holding it almost between the past, present, and the future. The first attempt to build one failed because of a non-glass spring that broke under strain. To build a clock with perfect time in this world means to stop the time in which they live in. With the help of an Igor, named Igor, Jeremy begins his master plan. They get along quite well, despite Igor's replacement of the letter "S" with "TH". Jeremy finally gets to know someone for the first time, or something. They might have gotten along so well because of Igor's strict code. They are to never contradict or complain to their masters, never make personal remarks, and never ask questions.
There is somehow something very strange that Jeremy doesn't notice about Lady LeJean. Igor tells Jeremy that he notices she has no feet. Sort of like a ghost. Jeremy disagrees. She belongs to the Auditors, which were some type of group of ghosts that can read through people's minds. They are people from a different time frame that had the power to create humans. The auditors created Lady LeJean maybe to lure Jeremy into creating the clock that no human has ever created(or created and worked). But they created her human, which means she starts to feel and see things that humans see on a every day basis. Like eating, sleeping, blushing, and sense. As the days went by, she found herself becoming more and more human. Feelings started to develop She did abnormal things to try and feed herself by swallowing nutrients out of the air. The auditors believed that doing anything human related would make them turn into a human being. So they avoided almost everything that Lady LeJean did since her creation. They were also able to cut into a time frame that nobody else could see or exist in. Except a monk named Master Lu-Tze and his apprentice named Lobsang. They are on their way from another time frame and planet. Master Lu-Tze is an old short bald monk, full of wisdom, logic, and speed. Lobsang is their to earn higher in rank or improve his skills to one day become a monk. Little did he know the adventure he goes on is to try and save their world. As Lady LeJean remained in a human body, she also realized that what she was doing was wrong. Making Jeremy build that clock will change the world forever. That is why the Auditors no longer wanted her to remain in a human form. "Be a duck for too long and a duck you'll stay. A bright duck, maybe, with some odd memories, but still a duck.(Pg 250)"
Jeremy and his assistant finally get the clock together with solid pieces of glass and crystal. It requires the power of lightning to start working, or to freeze time. He set the clock for one o'clock and watched as the lightning powered it up. Mr Soak, the dairyman experiences the effects of the clocks ability when the air got low and the water became solid. Then to make sure this was true he held a bottle above the floor and watched it float above the ground. The clock has somewhat affected gravity and maybe the mass of their time. Master Lu-Tze and Lobsang Ludd apparently too late. On their way to Jeremy's time, they meet up with a woman named Susan Helit. She happens to be the granddaughter of Death. Susan understands what will happen to the world if the time remains as it is. While Master Lu-Tze, of eight hundred years of age, decides to rest, Susan and Lobsang team up to fix the problem. They find themselves in an art gallery, where, the Auditors seem to sense their presence. Susan picks up a sword and Lobsang uses his fighting techniques to fight a couple of them off. The Auditors can also be defeated by performing human activities. Lady LeJean helps Susan and Lobsang by pushing a piece of chocolate down one of the Auditors throat. Anything humans enjoy, Auditors cannot withstand. And eating which determines whether we live or not, kills Auditors within seconds. After the encounter with the Auditors, Lady LeJean takes them to where Jeremy is. Lobsang realizes that when he speaks, Jeremy's lips moves too. And Susan then explains that they are twin brothers, and when close enough, can feel each others pain. Jeremy is unconscious from the fight earlier, but, when Lobsang speaks, Jeremy's lips try to form the words that he says. When Lobsang reaches in and touches Jeremy's hand with his fingertip, he disappears, turning into silvers of blue light. I think by Lobsang touching his twin brother, they both form together into one spirit. The spirit followed Susan around as she and Lady LeJean travel to a store to purchase large amounts of chocolate. After, they meet up with Death, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Chaos(Mr. Soak). There were many Auditors now, to defend the clock. Susan and her friends were outnumbered. The sky was now a fire, everything changed, the appearance of their world was no more "normal". With the clock working and time stopped, they were in a hell that the Auditors lived for.
Master Lu-Tze creates a decoy and Susan escapes the surrounding of the auditors. She then rushes towards the clock shop with the spirit of Jeremy running besides her. Susan believed that she could reach the clock by believing in herself and in Jeremy. The auditors were just an illusion that they believed were real so they became more and more real, or human. As Susan got closer and closer to the clock, the fire in the sky started to vanish. The Hero's Quest is the quest of Susan, Lobsang, Lu-Tze, Jeremy, Myria(Unity) LeJean and friends. The quest for them was to stop the clock that had frozen time for good. Jeremy built that clock only to prove he was a genius. But after he realized what he had done it was too late. Lobsang and Lu-Tze, as well as everybody else came from a different time frame to team up and destroy the clock, returning time to its original state. After Lobsang enters a different time frame to meet his parents, he returns back to the clock and stops it by grasping the pendulum. After stopping the clock, Lobsang, Lu-Tze, Susan and LeJean return to the time where Lobsang and Lu-Tze had been living. Now that the clock Jeremy had built was destroyed, they now had to fix the clocks in their time to get it ticking again. With their clock ticking, time frames were back to normal. Master Lu-Tze was a sweeper in disguise, and I think the book that Jeremy read from Lady LeJean was true. Just in a different time frame. In the book it said that the glass clock broke due to a spring or some type of mechanism. But what I really think happened is Master Lu-Tze and a few of his friends traveled through time to destroy it like they did the second time. There's always somebody in the world that's going to try the unthinkable. And when they do, Master Lu-Tze should be there, and if not him then somebody he is training to be like him.
In conclusion, Jeremy turns out to be a little of a good guy and a bad guy. When he discovers what he has done, with the power and strength of Lobsang(his brother), they both destroy the clock and save their world. Terry Pratchett uses time to show us that when you can re-arrange time, anything is possible. He used Master Lu-Tze as a dojo master and a sweeper to hide what he does so the world never knows. Time can and should be used efficiently, and in this book shows what can happen if time were to be a human or an weapon x in the wrong hands.
