As an experiment I tried crowd-sourcing this review. I joined a Terry Pratchett appreciation group on Facebook, and posted the following message:

Hi all. Quick question – what do people think of ‘Pyramids’? I am writing a review and my initial impression is that it is one of STP’s less successful books in the series, but struggling to pinpoint why. There’s some great lines and ideas, but it just doesn’t take off. What do people think?

I received over 100 replies (and counting) which was amazing – this is obviously a really vibrant online community. Given this was a group for fans of all-thing Discworld, it is hardly surprising that most of the comments were along the lines of “amazing” and “wonderful”. At the same time it’s hardly in the spirit of crowd-sourcing to only selection for quotation those comments I agreed with – I may have well just written my own review in the first place!

Quick plot summary for context – Pteppic, the crown prince of Djelibeybi (one of the better jokes in the book) is a trainee at the Assassins’ Guild in Ankh-Morpork. On the death of his father he returns home to become king, and oversee the construction of his father’s tomb, the biggest pyramid ever built. it’s not all fun as a living god however – the high priest Dios acts as voice of the king, and doesn’t allow Pteppic to make any decisions for himself.

The ancestral pyramids covering most of the country are used to control time in the kingdom, apparently, and in a scene that you just have to accept, the new pyramid, being built with magic, is so large that it causes some kind of space/time anomaly. Djelebeybi rotates out of alignment with the rest of the world by ninety degrees. Pteppic and his handmaiden Ptraci travel to neighbouring Ephebe to try and find a way of recovering the kingdom, while back in Djelibeybi the Old Gods and all the late kings come back to life, causing chaos. With the help of a mathematically advanced camel, Pteppic manages to put things back to right and all is well with the Disc.

So back to these readers’ comments. Positive comments first. There is a consensus here that the jokes really work, the ideas are great and the characters are believable and interesting. Lots of people tried to explain really engaged with the question I posed about my doubts about the novel (which was really kind actually) which mainly revolved around it being one of the few standalone novels, in a setting which STP didn’t return to. No-one said I was wrong – this isn’t that kind of community.

I really liked it. But I think the books with recurring characters will always have an edge as favourites

Love it. Sometimes it has to do with the mood you are in. Try again in a year.

It’s better on the second read through. Not his best, but not bad by any stretch.

I think as a stand alone discworld novel its great, like Reaper Man or Small Gods. However because the witches, the Watch (my personal favourite) or Rincewind appear in multiple books you have more time to get to know them and so you care more about them. Just a hypothesis based on opinion though

Love the book. Possible the reason it “less successful” is that there is not seque, As with Vimes or the witches books. As a stand allow or is as strong as any.

I love it. Its take on organized religion and the nature of belief is spot on.

I really loved it, one of my favourites. Teppic is a great characters and Dios is one of STP’s best written antagonists in my opinion, even if his name is a little on-the-nose.

I love it. That opening sequence (the assassin exam) is exquisite.

I really like it. One issue for me as a fan is that I like the relationship that develops as characters mature through the cannon. As a stand alone book it feels more superficial because of the need to establish the characters.

One of my favourites actually. Of course we all have different tastes and they often change over time.

It’s one of my favourites, possibly because it is one of the first times the theology of the disc becomes explicit.

One of if not my favourite. love the detail and so many jokes

One of my favourites, it was the second I read after small Gods. I think the standalones are a good entry point. And a bit of religion and mythic philosophy were very appealing to teenage me

Loved the school stuff! One of my favourite passages of any discworld books 👍

You Bastard (the camel) is one of my favourite characters.

These were the comments that were generally negative, and tried to explain why:

I agree, and I blame inferior characterization. Ptepppic is no Moist von Lipwick, Ptraci is no AdoraBelle, Dios is no Vorbis. Hence their verbal and dramatic interactions don’t stand up to comparison with later novels. Nonetheless, I re-read it … and my initial dislike lessened. A not-quite-so-good Pratchett novel is better than anything else.

I have just finished rereading this in my chronological reread, and I agree that it’s not his best. It has some good ideas, but for some reason the whole just doesn’t gel. It feels like he raced through it to meet a deadline. It especially suffers in comparison to Guards! Guards! which comes after it.

They don’t quite work together cohesively as a theme, I think. The assassins are great, the camels are great, Ephebe is great, all the Djelibeybi jokes are great… But nothing really ties them together thematically except the plot.

One of my least favourites. Didn’t find myself rooting for the characters. Didn’t understand what was going on a lot of the time.

Just rereading and think it’s the lack of familiar characters. It makes it hard to latch on to.

My “least favourites” tend to be the early ones where the plot and characters are mostly there to serve the jokes. I think Pyramids qualifies. At times, it’s like the really good pun or silly name is hard-elbowing its way past everything else.

It’s not one of my favourites but I do like it a fair bit. It’s one of the few of his books that doesn’t really flow as a whole story and feels a bit more like the storyline could have been created by another author.

Interesting that you asked. It was my 7th or 8th one from the series and I thought it was so boring and dumb I stopped reading his books for a few years. Would not recommend it.

For me, it is one of my least favourites. Although I do like Dios as a character, the book seems to be either a bit too stretched, as in thin in the middle, the beginning and the end are fun and go along at a decent pace, but the middle just loses something for me. I trend to have the same reaction to small gods and moving pictures however.

Not my favourite. I think it is because there isn’t a character I really care about.

There are some really good points here – even STP not at his best is still worth reading – but what is interesting is that people seemed to agree that the lack of familiar characters and settings – or characters that were to go on to become familiar – was an issue.

My sneaking suspicion is that Sir Terry would have happily accepted that this wasn’t his finest hour, which is why he never returned to these characters. It’s not that its a dud, it’s just not quite at the same standard as most of his other work. There are some jumps in the logic of the story where the reader just has to do a little too much work. But I would also agree with many commentators that the Assassins’ Guild examination chapter is worth the purchase price of the novel on its own.