Johnny and the Bomb

Terry Pratchett

Average Rating 9/10 (1 Review)

Mrs Tachyon the bag-lady is not the sort of person you'd normally choose to hang out with. But when Johnny Maxwell and his friends find her semi-conscious in an alley, they have to do something... as long as it's not the kiss of life.

The more time Johnny spends with her, the more he finds that Mrs Tachyon isn't the ranting old nutter everyone thinks she is. She seems to hold the key to different times, different eras - including the Blackbury Blitz in 1941. Suddenly now isn't the safe place Johnny once thought it was, as he finds himself bound up more and more with then. And as time shifts beneath him, and the shopping mall and TV aerials melt into air-raid sirens and ration books, Johnny wonders just how much changing the past can really change the future...

This time-stoppingly funny, richly entertaining new adventure from the master of fantastical and irreverent wit, Terry Pratchett, is the third in the series about Johnny Maxwell, following Only You Can Save Mankind and Johnny and the Dead.

Review by Chrissi (010602) Rating (9/10)

Review by Chrissi
Rating 9/10
Old Mrs Tachyon is related to Foul Ole Ron, I am sure. Did you notice? Well you should have done. She is the original bag lady, only her bags are not full of old coke cans and newspapers, she collects something altogether stranger.

Upon finding Mrs Tachyon unconscious in an alleyway, Johnny and his friends call for an ambulance and take her trolley to be kept in Johnny's Grandad's garage, where it will be safe. It is here that they discover a strange phenomenon; Johnny's bike has become fixed, even though he had a puncture and has dismantled it in preparation for mending the hole in his inner tube. But how has it become mended? And who is the man with the big black car chasing them?

I would heartily recommend this book to anyone, child or not, even though it is aimed at children, it reads on a different level, too. This is dealing with quite a large subject, which I am being careful not to give away, but you will love it.
Chrissi (1st June 2002)