History Literature / ThiefOfTime

* {{Crowning Moment of Awesome}}: See {{CrowningMoment.Discworld}}

->''Tick''

* TheXOfY

->''Ti-''

* TheXOfY

->''-ck''

* ShoutOut: As usual, plenty. Kaos being 'the one who left before they became famous' is a reference to Pete Best, former drummer of TheBeatles. The inventive monk Qu is an obvious CaptainErsatz of Q from JamesBond. Lu-Tze tells Lobsang he won't [[KungFu call him some insect nickname]]. Lu-Tze's line after figuring out Kaos' identity is a reference to a famous Rolling Stones song. Also, "Jeremy Clockson" is almost certainly a pun on Jeremy Clarkson of TopGear, though the two don't share anything apart from the name (and, possibly, a fascination with engineering).

Meanwhile, another foundling called Lobsang Ludd has been taken away by the History Monks and is taught their disciplines - chiefly chronological kung fu. A difficult but know-it-all student, he is apprenticed to Lu-Tze (from ''Discworld/SmallGods''), spoken of with fear yet claiming to be only a simple sweeper, and thus outside the system. Via their Mandala, the monks learn of the attempt to reconstruct the Glass Clock, and know that this time there's no hope of repairing history if it strikes. Merely a birth pang of the coming doom causes the room of Procrastinators (time manipulating machines) to go haywire, yet Lobsang somehow instinctively calms them. Lu-Tze, who failed to stop the first clock, is put on the case by the Abbot, a serial reincarnator currently in the body of a baby. He and Lobsang journey down towards Ankh-Morpork.

Death is also involved, asking Susan - now a teacher of young children - to try and stop the Clock. When she asks why he can't do it himself, Death replies that the end of the world is coming, and so he must get [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse the old band]] back together. However, War, Famine and Pestilence have all been changed by the way the world is moving on, and [[RefusalOfTheCall refuse the call]].

In the end, everyone fails and the clock strikes, stopping time. Only Lu-Tze and Lobsang keep going thanks to portable Procrastinators, along with all anthropomorphic personifications and those close enough, like Susan. However, the Auditors now all start manifesting as humans and becoming corrupted by sensory experiences: Lady Lejean turns against them, taking the name "Unity" and protecting Jeremy, who is unconscious but not time-stopped. Lobsang's Procrastinator unwinds and he too keeps going, showing both of them are part personification. In fact they are both the same person, the child of Time and a mortal man, the monks' original guru Wen the Eternally Surprised, split into two by the possibility of a second. When Lobsang touches his brother, they merge and manifest their full power as the son of Time.

Susan fights the Auditors with chocolates (to overwhelm their new senses) while the other Three Horsemen finally turn up at the end. They and Death inform the Auditors still in their original form that they've decided that, when it comes to the crunch, they're on the side of humanity - without humans, there can ''be'' no death, war, famine or pestilence. The Horsemen fight the Auditors and are losing, but at the last moment the Fifth Horseman turns up - Kaos, [[TheBeatles the one who left before they became famous]], who has been living a quiet life as [[strike:Jeremy's]] ''everyone's'' milkman. Lu-Tze has persuaded him to reinvent himself for the new age as Chaos.

Due to his power, Lobsang is capable of smashing the Clock but still repairing the damage caused. The original Time retires and he takes over the job. The Auditors are defeated and Unity ends her life, but finds herself surprised to be somewhere else afterwards: she has lived long enough to be counted as a soul. Lobsang returns to the History Monks to face his master Lu-Tze in ceremonial combat, and loses. There are hints at the end that he and Susan may end up romantically involved...

* ColourCodedTimestop: Not only the passages in which time is sliced are described as having weird colours, Lobsang eventually confirms that there are scrolls explaining how the world changes it's colours the more thin time is sliced.

** Of course, the theme of Auditors in human form all dressing in monochrome grey -- grey clothes, grey hats, grey shoes -- might be a {{homage}} to the Grey Gentlemen in MichaelEnde's famous fantasy novel ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) Momo]]'', published in 1973 (alternative titles in English were ''The Grey Gentlemen'' or ''The Men in Grey''). The villanous (and non-human) Grey Gentlemen were also called "time thieves" because they stole time from humans by persuading them to "save" time and deposit it in the Grey Gentlemen's time banks to be paid back with interest at an unspecified date. (But the more time people saved the less time they seemed to have for themselves or others.) The Grey Men's ultimate goal: controlling all of Time and freezing the world forever. Grey Gentlemen, like the Auditors, lacked individuality. They were entirely banal, cold (literally, they exuded coldness) and emotionally empty and thus had a special dislike for mankind's creativity. They loved authority, rules and straight lines. Under their influence, life became sterile and hectic, cities became hostile places to live, everything looked alike. In the novel, Time was personified as gentle Master Hora, the lord and guardian of time; he looked like an whitehaired old man or a youth or anything in between.

* EverythingsBetterWithChocolate: After killing many of the Auditors with chocolate, Lady Lejean [[spoiler: drowns herself in chocolate.]]

** Killing the Auditors also works as a ShoutOut: [[Discworld/SoulMusic an earlier book]] had noted that Susan's mother's favorite dish was Genocide By Chocolate.

* GRatedDrug: The Auditors eventually become somewhat addicted to life, after entire existences bereft of senses or individuality. It literally drives them insane.

* HesBack: Kaos becomes Chaos, which is something the auditors loathe, allowing the horsemen to finally turn the tide.
* HumanityIsInfectious: The Auditors, especially Lejean and Mr White.

* LogicBomb: Used by Lejean/Unity against her fellow orderly-minded Auditors, such as signs that point right but say "Keep Left" and signs that read "Ignore This Sign -- By Order", and "Do Not Feed the Elephant" when there is no elephant.

** The auditors finally find a way around it by creating the new category of orders that are "bloody stupid" and thus don't have to be followed -- after taking heavy losses.

* NoBodyLeftBehind: When the Auditors "die" in their artificially made human bodies, the bodies sometimes simply breakdown at the atomic level, seeming to turn to dust.

* SdrawkcabName: Ronnie Soak.

* {{Split at Birth}}: Lobsang and Jeremy. [[spoiler: In a very literal way.]]

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: [[spoiler:Susan, Lobsang and [=LeJean=] using ''Chocolate'' as ammunition. Justified, sort of, as the Auditors die of over-stimulation from taste.]]

->''Tick''

* TheXOfY

* DefectorFromDecadence: LeJean decides to stop the other Auditors' plan after experiencing the sensations and thoughts that come with being alive.

* FooFu: Déjà Fu.

* LoneDalek: Lejean becomes more like this the longer she stays human.

The Auditors of Reality are at it again. This time, they plot to stop time and therefore all the messiness of life, freezing it perfectly. To do so, they approach a driven, unstable watchmaker called [[ShoutOut Jeremy Clockson]] - so called because he was a foundling of the Clockmaker's Guild - to build, or rather ''re''build, the Glass Clock of [[AWorldwidePunomenon Bad Schueschein]]. This Clock, built by a MadScientist, previously stopped time briefly before breaking and then shattered history, causing the History Monks to have to put it back together imperfectly (and incidentally explaining all the Discworld series' continuity errors). Its existence survives only in a fairytale and the memory of an [[TheIgor Igor]], the grandson of the one who helped build the Clock. In order to interact with Jeremy, an Auditor makes a human body and inhabits it under the alias Lady [[MeaningfulName Myria Lejean]], but in the process finds herself losing her former nature and becoming addicted to life.

* EverythingsBetterWithChocolate: After killing many of the Auditors with chocolate, Lady Lejean drowns herself in chocolate.

* TheXOfY
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* DontTouchItYouIdiot

* {{Conservation of Ninjutsu}}: [[spoiler:Five Horsemen against millions of Auditors. Guess who wins.]]
** [[spoiler:Well, yes, but take in mind that a. Auditors do not really fight back; b. the five of them are the bloody horsemen of apocraplypse aka the primal fears aka the ultimate dangers; c Auditors are the personification of cold and sterile order - one of the horsemen is their opposing principle.]]

The Auditors of Reality are at it again. This time, they plot to stop time and therefore all the messiness of life, freezing it perfectly. To do so, they approach a driven, unstable watchmaker called [[ShoutOut Jeremy Clockson]] - so called because he was a foundling of the Clockmaker's Guild - to build, or rather ''re''build, the Glass Clock of [[AWorldwidePunomenon Bad Schueschein]]. This Clock, built by a MadScientist, previously stopped time briefly before breaking and then shattered history, causing the History Monks to have to put it back together imperfectly and incidentally explaining all the Discworld series' continuity errors. Its existence survives only in a fairytale and the memory of an [[TheIgor Igor]], the grandson of the one who helped build the Clock. In order to interact with Jeremy, an Auditor makes a human body and inhabits it under the alias Lady [[MeaningfulName Myria Lejean]], but in the process finds herself losing her former nature and becoming addicted to life.

* InsaneEqualsViolent: Jeremy

* MeaningfulName: Doubles as punnt -- Wen the eternal surprised. His name sounds like "when", and interestingly enough, wen in Chinese means "to ask a question", which he did after his enlightenment.