Category Archives: fantasy

Book review, Death, Discworld, fantasy, Mort, science fiction', Terry Pratchett

Mort, (Discworld 4) by Terry Pratchett, 1987

If you are still counting, ‘Mort’ is the fourth novel in the Discworld series. It is also the first novel in the series where Death is a central character – some people read the books thematically like that (i.e Death 1, 2 etc.).

Anyway, experiencing the need to get out a bit more and live, Death takes an apprentice, Mortimer, aka Mort (see what he did there?) to help with the harvesting of souls. And mucking out Binky’s stable. There is also the nod and a wink promise in the unwritten job description of taking over the family business when Death finally retires, however unlikely that sounds. (If that is the bit that sounds unlikely, whereas Death taking an apprentice you are OK with, then I would question your grip on reality!mort)

One of the things readers of the Discworld novels know is that Sir Terry was a bit of a philosopher. He had important insights into the way the world works, and shared them with us through the medium of humour. ‘Mort’ includes plenty of examples of this, because there are few more serious or profound issues to meditate on than death itself (or indeed, Death himself). Death doesn’t kill people, he is just there when they die, and eases their passage into the beyond. People react to Death’s arrival in a range of ways, from anger to annoyance, surprise, resignation, and occasionally with a welcome.  Sir Terry’s insights range across all of life’s big issues, and most of the small ones – this sentence jumped out at me for example:

“People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it”.

Which is a bit wonderful don’t you think?

A quick plot synopsis for those of you who expect that kind of thing in a book review. Once his initial stable cleaning duties have been completed, Mort gets to accompany Death on ‘the duties’. In Sto Lat King Olerve is due to be assassinated, but in the course of their otherwise successful visit Mort falls heavily for the King’s daughter, Keli. Later on a unscheduled half day off Mort tries to return to Sto Lat to find out whether the princess really saw him, in the course of which he meets Igneous Cutwell, a young wizard, whom he hopes can help explain his developing tendency to manifest magical powers such as walking through walls. We can tell that Mort is becoming like his master, but he remains blithely unaware of it, for now.

Death then decides that Mort is ready to perform the Duty on his own, and sends him to collect three lives. Goodie Hamstring, a witch from Lancre is very understanding about his inexperience, as is Abbot Lobsang, from the Listening Monks who is destined to be perpetually reincarnated. As soul collections go these are ideal learning deaths. But the training wheels come off with a big when Mort finds out that the third death is to be that of Princess Keli, due to be assassinated on the orders of her uncle.  Mort can’t bring himself to do it, thus creating a rift in reality that is going to cause some serious issues when time catches up with it.

Keli, suffering a temporal anomaly in which everyone thinks she is dead, appoints Cutwell as Royal Recogniser. In a badly timed move, Death decides to take some more time off, leaving Mort in charge. He tries drinking, gambling, partying and fishing before finally taking a job as a short order chef in Ankh-Morpork. Mort tries to keep the show on the road, but in doing so he slowly becomes more and more like Death, including the capitalised speech. Reality is beginning to assert itself now, for example by changing a pub sign from The Quene’s Head to The Duke’s Head. Finally, after the intervention of a very ancient wizard, (and a brief reappearance by Rincewind) Death discovers Mort’s mistake, and in a climatic scene they duel as the old reality closes in on the Princess.

Pratchett’s “and they all lived happily ever after” endings can sometimes feel a bit forced, but the resolution to this clash is well managed, and well, they all live happily ever after. If Death can’t adjust reality just a tweak to make matters right, then who can? The old universe (in which the Princess dies) becomes a wedding present which will expand into another universe once the current one dies. Which I thought was rather neat.

P.S. You will recall, because I have written about it before, that the way Sir Terry chose to notify people of his death in 2015 was the extraordinary tweet “AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER”. Of the thousands of comments this tweet received, one of the earliest was by an account in the name of the ‘Death of Rats’ (aka The Grim Squeaker) which went “Squeak, squeak, squeak”. For reasons known only to themselves, Microsoft offers the option to “translate this tweet” – sadly the link doesn’t work. But I think we know what he was trying to say.

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Book review, Discworld, Equal rites, fantasy, science fiction', Terry Pratchett

Equal Rites, (Discworld 3) by Terry Pratchett, 1987

Equal Rites’ is the third novel in the Discworld series. This is the novel where Pratchett really hits his stride. ‘The Colour of Magic’ and ‘The Light Fantastic’ are good, of course, but by comparison they felt a little childish when I was rereading them recently (see the reviews earlier in July). Some of the jokes in particular are quite crude, and the plotting is simplistic if not awkward – magic is used as the ultimate get out of jail card. Pratchett dips his toe in the waters of social issues, but quickly reverts to the frothy irreverent humour that is the trademark of these books.

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‘Equal Rites’ is different in kind. It introduces the extraordinary, imperious Granny Weatherwax -‘I’m not a lady, I’m a witch’. This is going to sound like hyperbole, but if Terry Pratchett had not written about any other character his place in the pantheon of great writers would have been secured by his portrait of Granny Weatherwax. She is funny and kind and clever and wise and respected and seems almost a real person.

“Granny Weatherwax was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed.”

I also love her stubbornness:

“She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn’t.”

Pratchett’s theory of magic – that a large part of it is in the head of the person on whom the magic is being performed – ‘headology’ – is cleverer than any system of runes mana or potions you find in other fantasy series.

“I saved a man’s life once,” said Granny. “Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I’d bought it from the dwarves. That’s the biggest part of doct’rin, really. Most people’ll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest.”

The central question posed in ‘Equal Rites’ is why can’t a woman be a wizard? Eskarina Smith is accidentally given a wizard’s staff, and despite all efforts to the contrary is destined to be a powerful magical person – be that a witch, wizard, warlock, sourcerer, thaumaturge or otherwise. She is apprenticed to Granny Weatherwax, who soon realises the girl’s potential, and they set off on a classic road trip to try to gain access to Discworld’s only college for wizards, the Unseen University. Her application to join the university is dismissed out of hand, and a passionate battle for equal rights ensues, with only one winner ever being likely.

Given that female wizards are unheard of in Discworld, Granny has to get a bit creative, so Esk enters the university as a servant. She is reunited there with Simon, an apprentice encountered earlier on the route to Ankh-Morpork. Simon is, like Esk, a naturally talented wizard, but he loses control of his magic and accidentally opens a rift to the Dungeon Dimensions. As you can probably guess this is not a good thing. With the help of Granny Weatherwax, Archchancellor Cutangle, and Esk’s staff, Simon and Esk manage to defeat the demons and escape back to Discworld.

The ending of the novel is one of its weaker features – there is never any real sense of peril or doubt that Esk and Simon will escape unharmed from the Dungeon Dimensions – but who reads Pratchett novels for their plot? it was great to read what is in effect Granny’s origin story. I am really enjoying my rediscovery of early Discworld, watching it emerge and expand before my eyes. The next novel in the series, Mort, takes us to Death’s own domain – I can’t wait!

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Book review, fantasy, Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones

I started to read GoT for two simple reasons. First, I watched the television series, but found the constant cutting between scenes made it really hard to follow the story. I suspect my constant “Which one is he trying to murder/trap/skin?” became somewhat annoying. Second, my teenage sons raved about them, and in the past their judgment has been pretty reliable, at least when it comes to this genre. So I dutifully made my way through the several thousand pages across the – how many novels is it now, five but several are divided into different segments and published as separate books, so approximately eight – without finding it a particular effort. Short chapters and constant switching of scene help drive the narrative along nicely.
Having looked it up across the five books there are well over 3000 pages of text, as follows:
A Game of Thrones 704
A Clash of Kings 768
A Storm of Swords 992
A Feast for Crows 753
A Dance with Dragons 1056
I know this is not really relevant to the content of the novels itself, but I can’t avoid mentioning this fact – it has taken Martin nearly 20 years to write the five novels, the last being published in 2011 i.e. four years ago. The chances of the series being finished (by Martin) seems slim – although I have no doubt his estate will continue to allow novels set in this fictional world for many decades to come – in fact his output is likely to accelerate after his death.
Because the novels, and the television series, have been such huge successes, it is as usual (I always seem to say this) going to be hard to find something original in this review. So as a different approach, I wanted to summarises some of the debates about the series, and perhaps take some sides.
Martin is following in some well-trodden footsteps in these novels. This ground has been covered extensively before, pillaging medieval England for characters, themes, incident and drama, with an overlaid patina of magic. It is all informed by a very late 20th century perspective – the people don’t really sound or behave like pre-industrial warlords, knights, peasants and so on – they could easily be translated into numerous other settings. If you’ve only seen the television series then you might be surprised that the incidence of rape and sexual abuse is much lower in the novels – for instance the attack on Cersei by Jaime is consensual in the novel, but clearly rape on screen. (Martin’s subsequent justification for the “sexing up” of the television series, that there is plenty of sexual violence in war, doesn’t really make sense when the attack is brother on sister.) There are also plenty of strong female characters, unlike in Tolkien for example,
My main reaction to all this however is a growing conviction that Martin has quite literally lost the plot. He has lost control of his material, pulling out so many random threads that he has no chance whatsoever of drawing them back together again. Sure he will do it, but only at the expense of any credibility or coherence, most of which has already been lost anyway. Plot development were set up three or four books ago but left hanging for hundreds of chapters. Whenever you think he is going to turn to tying something together he then introduces a whole cast of new characters, (the Sand Snakes anyone) only to then throw them away and not return to them again. The whole thing shows a complete lack of control in a way that almost every other series of this kind does not. My diagnosis is JK Rowling syndrome – the phenomenon where an author becomes so successful they start to ignore or over-ride their editors. (Philosopher’s Stone is an almost perfect children’s novel – Harry Potter goes Camping aka Deathly Hallows is a bloated mess).
My other reaction to A Song of Ice and Fire is that despite the efforts to make the world of Westeros believable, it is all actually hugely incredible.  Very few if any of Martin’s characters behave in a rational or realistic manner. They make bizarre, life threatening decisions. They put themselves in danger for no sensible reason. Stannis for example has the power to kill people using magic – which he then seems to completely forget about after he kills his brother Renly. The northmen are panicking for the whole of the duration of the novels about the rise of mysterious undead creatures north of the Wall, when all the signs are that they just need to close their gates and forget about them. Wherever you look people say and do stupid, unlikely things constantly. No wonder they all die so frequently. Would the huge tribes of wildlings be able to survive north of the wall given the weather (what do they eat?) and predation by the undead. Why has it taken Daenerys five novels to even start to return to Westeros, when she now has an army of ninja berserkers? (the unsullied). Why would the Black Watch recruit from the dregs of society and then expect them to behave like virtuous monks? It’s just daftness wherever you look. The suspension of critical scrutiny will only take you so far, and there comes a point when you just have to say “I’m not buying this.” How does he get away with this? Mainly because there is so much going on, and it happens so quickly, the reader isn’t given time to consider just how stupidly most of the characters are behaving. Secondly the characters are quite well realised, despite their irrational behaviour. Varys the eunuch master spy, or Littlefinger the brothel owner and master politician with the, er, little finger, are memorable characters, reinforced by their portrayal on screen.
I’ll carry on reading when and if Martin brings out 6 and 7, and may even watch the television series as it spins off on its own axis, but this will never be anything other than expensive nonsense.

 

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