Tag Archives: Sir Terry Pratchett

Book review

The Dark Side of the Sun (playing on the title of Pink Floyd’s iconic 1973 album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, which to be fair makes a lot more sense) was first published in 1976, long before the Discworld series started with The Colour of Magic in 1983. It’s largely forgotten now, kept in print by Pratchett completists I suspect. It’s a fun, lightly sketched sci-fi adventure with numerous throw-away ideas. Fans of Pratchett’s later work will find references to Discworld jumping off the page every so often, which to be honest provided most of the entertainment. 

The novel is really a mystery written in a lightly comic tone very reminiscent of Douglas Adams. Set far in the future the galaxy is populated by fifty-two different sentient species, all of which evolved in the last five million years. Scattered across space are artefacts of ‘the Jokers’ an apparently extinct race of master engineers who may or may not have been the reason life arose in the first place. The only surviving piece of Joker text is a poem which says they have gone to a new home “at the dark side of the sun”.

Dom Sabalos, the novel’s protagonist, sets out with his tutor, Hrsh-Hgn and his Man-Friday robot assistant, on a quest to find the Jokers world. As he travels to the various populated planets he is hunted by a robot assassin who keeps missing despite having good luck engineered into his programme. Something or someone wants Dom to survive to find the Jokers. 

As a sci-fi story The Dark Side of the Sun is eminently forgettable. The science is so lightly sketched as to be closer to magic, and the characters are fairly one-dimensional. The ending is a bit baffling if I am honest. There are some clever ideas alongside quite a lot of clichéd characters and situations. But this will not matter to Discworld fans, who will find lots of points of comparison between this novel and the series. Hogswatchnight and Small Gods both first appear here, without much if any detail about what they are other than annual holidays or celebrations. This is very much in the style of Dark Side – not much detail is provided and the reader is left to fill in most of the gaps, making the novel an immersive experience as we build the world ourselves with the author acting as guide. 

Sir Terry was famously progressive, way before his time (books and programmes from the 1990’s now often come with warnings that they represent ideas and terms that were commonly used at the time but now may be considered offensive). Sir Terry’s works on the other hand have stood the test of time magnificently, and even this early in his writing career he is standing up for fairness and respect. At one point his robot speaks disrespectfully of one of the alien races they encounter, and his is firmly put in his place:

“There’s guards all over the place, boss. I can’t find that gecky frog anywh-”

“That’s shape-hatred talk, Isaac.”

OK, yes it’s a joke about what we now call political correctness, but the point is that the protagonist rejects the idea of judging people because of their body shape. In the 70’s jokes about otherness were the staple of most comic routines, but here we have Pratchett avowing such ideas.

There’s an early incarnation of the Assassins Guild here as well – when an assassin tries to kill Dom he is asked at one point: “I hope you were given due notice” to which he replies “Oh yes, three days and a regular United Spies contract.”

There’s even a character (a planet sized being) who speaks in caps, as famously practised by Death. 

If you enjoy Discworld then you might find some moments of The Dark Side of the Sun diverting. As sci-fi it’s inevitably dated and doesn’t pretend to be more than a fairly derivative piece of light entertainment. The switch to fantasy was the light-bulb moment for Pratchett and once he began the DW series he never really looked back. It’s still interesting to read this early work with its little hints of what was to come, but I recognise this won’t be for everyone.

The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett, 1976

Aside
Book review

Raising Steam (Discworld 40), by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2013

This is the final novel in my reread of the Discworld series – now is not the time to be to revisiting the bitter-sweet The Shepherd’s Crown .

Raising Steam | Terry Pratchett Books | Discworld Novels

Raising Steam is a Moist von Lipwig story. The previous Moist novels (Going Postal and Making Money) saw him take on Ankh-Morpork institutions desperately in need of modernisation, and use his street smarts and quasi-criminal abilities to achieve the impossible. Raising Steam takes a different track. The industrial revolution, already foreshadowed in the arrival of the printing press (The Truth) and the clacks (Going Postal) has now reached the age of steam. Dick Simnel, a self-taught engineer (whose father, Ned Simnel, appeared all the way back in Reaper Man), has perfected the design of a steam engine, one which doesn’t spontaneously explode leaving anyone in the vicinity a red mist. He finds the ideal business partner and investor in the King of the Golden River, Sir Harry King. from this point the railways erupt, with Moist at the heart of making sure they can go where they need to go, and that the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway company has the resources it needs to succeed.

The Patrician appoints Moist von Lipwig, by now (ironically) one of his most reliable employees, to represent him in the management and expansion of the railway. A line is quickly laid to the coast at Quirm, where fresh sea-food now becomes available to the diners of Ankh-Morpork. Moist negotiates with landowners for permission to build across their land, and finds alternative routes when he is refused. The Patrician pushes Moist relentlessly to ensure that the next phase of expansion, the line to Uberwald over a thousand miles away, is completed at breakneck speed.

One of the many joys of Raising Steam is in its imaginative recreation of the early days of the railways. Train spotters write “1” carefully in their notebooks when the first engine appears. Track-side catering, third class carriages, overnight sleepers and flat-bed trucks for the larger customer (i.e. trolls) are all fitted seamlessly into the narrative. Moist is at the heart of spotting the commercial potential of the railways, even down to the marketing of small train sets for (ahem) children. The novel also has its own spin-off. At one point Moist meets a lady traveller, Mrs Bradshaw, who impresses him with her independent and inquiring mind. He commissions her to write an account of her travels on the railway in return for a free go-anywhere ticket. The product of that meeting is Mrs Bradshaw’s Handbook, which is great fun, full of additional detail about Discworld and lots of terrible puns. My favourite was the description of a rat-inna-bun as a “royale with fleas”*

In Thud, Pratchett describes the signing of the Koom Valley Accord, a historic peace agreement between dwarves and trolls. But that agreement is now under attack due to the relentless rise of dwarven fundamentalism. Extremists, led by the sinister grags, begin a terrorist campaign against the most visible signs of modernism, the clacks towers. Attacks on the railroad soon follow. This is all a prelude to a coup against the Low King of the Dwarfs. In the classic tradition of these things the coup is launched while the Low King is attending an international conference in Quirm. The reason for Vetinari’s insistence on the completion of the track to Uberwald now becomes clear – the Low King has to be rushed back to resist the coup. (OK, if Vetenari was so far sighted as to realise the express service to Uberwald was going to be needed, could he not have just organised the conference at a slightly more suitable, less remote location. Or had the Low King send a deputy? No, you are right, it doesn’t really matter.)

If the first half of the novel is an enjoyable spin through the exciting early days of steam, the second half revolves around the Low King’s break-neck journey back to Uberwald. Anticipating attempts to prevent him from returning to court, the Low King sets off in disguise, decoy carriages are sent to throw the grags off his scent, and half the Watch accompany the party to provide an extended bodyguard. Moist goes along for the ride, to make sure the train arrives on time. As expected the train comes under attack almost straight away, and they face a increasingly serious series of ambushes and attempts at sabotage along the way, requiring Moist to carry off one of his trademark feats of showmanship before finally arriving in Uberwald.

Raising Steam map | humanitysdarkerside

There’s a large supporting cast of characters in Raising Steam. Perhaps this was some kind of farewell? Most of the Watch appear, including of course Commander Vimes who plays an important part in defending the train from the grags and restoring the Low King to his throne. Vimes fans are treated to the wonderful image of him fighting dwarves on the top of the train as it speeds along:

“The commander went, as they say in Ankh-Morpork, totally Librarian on them.”

Adora Belle is suitably acerbic, although the reader is assured that her marriage to Moist is supremely happy. Lu-tze walks on and off-stage briefly. The Patrician is the Patrician, feeling slightly rattled by the increasing difficulty of his crossword, while his clerk, Drumnott, indulges his obsession with all things rail-related. Death returns to remind people what to do when they die. Even Rincewind makes the briefest of appearances in a couple of footnotes – Pratchett could never quite say goodbye to his first wizzard.

You can’t reduce forty-one novels to a single message, of course not, but inclusion has always been at its heart, and that idea remains central to the series even at the end. The message perhaps becomes even more insistent as the series comes to a close. Social change is speeding up in Discworld – we see goblins going from vermin and prey in Snuff to valuable members of society in a few short years. The Watch continues to recruit non-humans to its ranks and spread good policing practice across the hub. There is also time in the novel to find a non-didactic resolution (of a kind) to the long-running discussion of dwarven gender identity, as the Low King is revealed to be the Low Queen.

When I come back to the novels of Sir Terry it won’t be for the jokes or the plots. It will be for his characters and his kindness and understanding. He know that technology can change society profoundly and shows us how it can be exciting and transformative rather than harmful:

“Here is the new thing and here it is. And yesterday you never thought about it and after today you don’t know what you would do without it. That was what the technology was doing. It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round.”

This will be the final time I say this, having said it far too many times already, but please do read some Terry Pratchett. It is all quite wonderful.

*little nod to Pulp Fiction there if you hadn’t spotted it.

Standard
Book review

Snuff (Discworld 39) by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2011

When published in 2011, Snuff was the third-fastest-ever selling novel in the UK. Of course at the time we didn’t know it was going to be the ante-penultimate Discworld novel, but enough was known about Sir Terry’s condition to make people aware that this well of wonderfulness was one day going to run dry, and perhaps that knowledge played its part in the novel’s popularity – that and of course that by this point the series had earned a huge and entirely justified reputation and an international fanbase.

Image result for snuff terry pratchett

Set around three years after the events of Thud, which left their mark on Commander Vimes and which are referenced several times here, this is the final novel in the Watch series. Sam is persuaded against his better judgment to take a family holiday out at the Ramkin country estate. Young Sam is now six, and has graduated from Where’s My Cow and is now, like many six-year olds, obsessed with every possible variety of poo. Much amusement is also derived from the fish-out-of-water experience for Ankh-Morpork born-and-bred copper Sam getting used to the many bizarre country traditions and practices.

Inevitably and in accordance with strict convention Sam encounters suspicious behaviour by the locals almost from the moment he arrives, and stumbles into an investigation, at least in part to stave off the boredom of the countryside. Family time, particularly showing Young Sam around the countryside and its strange practices, has to be fitted into those moments when he is not following up on clues or fighting surly locals. His butler Willikins, a formidable assassin and street-fighter in his own right, comes in very handy as a side-kick in the absence of the usual Watch supporting cast.

In the course of what are obviously unwelcome investigations Vimes is arrested by the local constable, Feeney Upshot, on suspicion of murder. This allows Vimes to mentor Feeney in some of the tricks of the policing trade. Together they visit the local goblin cave, where they find evidence of an even more serious crime – a crime against humanity, after a fashion. Back in Ankh-Morpork some important clues relevant to this investigation are found, and it is not long before the dots are joined up and the chase is afoot.

Snuff is mis-titled – the tobacco product is barely mentioned, and the other meanings of the word don’t really play any part – and is a frustrating combination of absolutely wonderful touches of Pratchett (and Sam Vimes) magic, combined with the occasional off-note. Not least of these is the central goblin-storyline. Previous Discworld novels have followed the integration of other races into Ankh-Morpork society, (most recently the orcs in Unseen Academicals) which is often symbolised by the appointment of a representative of the race into the City Watch. Trolls, zombies, vampires and werewolves all go from being a feared ‘other’ to being recognised as valuable members of society. Goblins are the last known species to be outside that family of sentient species – in the countryside especially they are considered vermin, and the severed head of a goblin is displayed alongside other ‘animals’ on the wall of a local pub. To be fair the goblins don’t help change perceptions, not least by their practice (in desperation) of cannibalistic infanticide (as I have said many times, Pratchett will go to the dark places other authors would back away from) and their unusual religion of unggue, in which everything that is expelled from their bodies – snot, saliva, etc – is treated with reverence and stored in pots for final disposal with their bodies.

When not being slaughtered, goblins are enslaved and made to work on tobacco plantations (hence the tenuous link with the novel’s title), and while not illegal Vimes deems this practice unacceptable, and goes about arresting those involved. He also shows how society’s views on such issues can be transformed; by the end of the novel the way people think of goblins is beginning to change. It’s so easy to forget how profoundly political a writer Pratchett was – here goblins can be symbols for ethnic or racial minorities, other oppressed groups, or possibly even our behaviour towards the animal kingdom.

Wonderful though it is, Snuff has its faults. The river chase scene feels like it was lifted from the Ankh-Morpork archives and dropped wholesale into the novel. The idea of the river being of a scale sufficient to support a luxury paddleboat cruiser and at the same time fast-flowing and dangerous enough for a boat to have to swerve around corners just didn’t feel plausible. I recognise this – implausibility – is a strange criticism of a novel about goblins, but the consistency of Pratchett’s world-building is usually one of the strongest features of the series. Vimes’s plot armour is now ten-foot thick, so something else was needed to inject some sense of peril into the novel, but it’s missing. There’s never any question that the bad guys are going to be caught and justice served to the living and the dead. Lots of familiar characters have brief walk-on parts, although as is often the case with this series is the new characters, local copper Feeney Upshot and children’s author Miss Felicity Beedle, world’s greatest authority on poo, who are the most interesting. The dad jokes are an acquired taste, and of course some work better than others –

“Vimes thought for a moment and said, ‘Well, dear, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a lot of wood must be in want of a wife who can handle a great big–”

or this obviously quite personal quip:

“How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be ‘and,’ ‘the,’ and ‘I,’ and ‘it,’ and so on, and there’s a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.”

Pratchett wrote some quite exceptional police procedural/detective novels, but this isn’t one – the mystery is very straightforward and doesn’t detain us long, and all Vimes really has to do is follow his nose. He almost literally trips over the clues. But this is Vimes’ swan-song. where the murder-mystery elements are largely incidental beside the bigger picture in which Vimes, happily and contentedly married, a father, indispensable to the Patrician and with an international reputation in policing, gets his happily ever after. Not a bad way for him to bow out.

I savoured every line of Snuff, knowing how close we were coming to the end. It is full of wisdom, humour, kindness, and love. It is a wonderful addition to the series, and the flaws I have mentioned are like the lines on the face of an old friend, which don’t detract in the slightest from the novel overall. I loved it.

Standard
Book review

I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld 38), by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2010

I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth in the series of Discworld novels that focus on the earlier years of witch in training Tiffany Aching. The wonderfully poetic title of the novel is Tiffany’s defiant statement that she will be her own witch, not conforming to the convention that witches of all ages wear black (i.e. ‘midnight’) and is first referenced in Tiffany’s story at the end of A Hat Full of Sky, when she says “When I’m old I shall wear midnight”.

It is fair to say that each of Tiffany’s novels follow roughly the same pattern, albeit in each new book she is progressively a little older, a little more mature, and a more proficient witch. Here she is almost fully qualified (insofar as witches are ever qualified) and is working on her own as the Chalk’s witch, the Chalk being a sheep-farming area of Discworld somewhere between Lancre and Ankh-Morpork, which is admittedly a very large area. The novel opens at the Scouring Fair, a traditional Chalk celebration which includes maintenance of the massive hillside chalk carving which bears a striking resemblance to the Cerne Abbas giant. If you haven’t heard of the Cerne Abbas giant then a few minutes on Google will be instructive in terms of country folk’s attitudes to fertility and related issues…

But the celebration doesn’t last long because the second chapter opens with one of the most vivid and distressing scenes I can recall in the Discworld series. Thirteen year old Amber Petty has been beaten so badly by her drunken father that she has miscarried. Word has reached drinkers at the local pub, and a group of villagers is coming to exact ‘justice’ on Mr Petty. Here Pratchett references the rural tradition of “rough music” in which a community takes the law into its own hands.

“Rough Music…
o one controls the music, Mr. Pretty – you know that. It just turns up when people have had enough. No one knows where it starts. People look around, and catch on another’s eye, and give each other a little nod, and other people see that. Other people catch their eye and so, very slowly, the music starts and somebody picks up a spoon and bangs it on a plate, and then somebody else bangs a jug on the table and boots starts to stamp on the floor, louder and louder. It is the sound of anger, it is the sound of people who have had enough. Do you want to face the music?

Tiffany drags Mr Petty out of bed and tries to persuade him to run for his life and then takes Amber to be cared by Jeannie, the Kelda (queen) of the Nac Mac Feegles.

The fly-leaf of the hardback edition describes I Shall Wear Midnight as a Discworld book for “young readers”. It is not, not by any measure. It is not even a novel for younger readers, if I have understood the distinction correctly. I reject the meaningfulness of the classification, but any novel that deals so directly with domestic abuse in this honest and open way is not just for young readers. Young readers are perfectly capable of reading about these issues, of course they are, but there’s no sugar coating here, no turning away or euphemisms, unless you count Tiffany’s description of Amber being beaten so hard “that she bled from places where no-one should bleed”.

Shortly later, the local Baron, for whom Tiffany has been caring, dies after a long and painful unspecified illness. Tiff travels by broomstick (accompanied by her bodyguard of Feegles) to Ankh-Morpork to tells his son, Roland. Tiffany and Roland had previously been ‘walking out’ together, and everyone assumes that she is upset that he is now engaged to someone else, but she is actually taking the disappointment in her stride. On the way to the city she has her first encounter with the novel’s protagonist, the Cunning Man, a foul-smelling figure of nightmares who has holes for eyes. The Cunning Man is able to turn people’s minds against witches, which explains why Tiffany’s normally supportive community has started suspecting her of abducting Amber and killing the Baron and stealing from him.

The Feegles cause chaos in the city, but help her find Roland, to whom she breaks her sad news. With the help of Mrs Proust, a local witch who runs the Boffo Novelty and Joke shop, in Tenth Egg Street, ‘the spiritual home for all those who consider that fart powder is the last word in humour’, Tiffany looks for answers as to what the Cunning Man is, and how to defeat him. She meets Eskarina Smith, Discworld’s first and apparently only female wizard, not seen since the events of the third Discworld novel, Equal Rites, who tells her the Cunning Man’s origin story. After a walk-on appearance by some of the Watch’s regulars and an overnight stay in the police cells, Tiffany hurries back to the Chalk to confront the Cunning Man and restore some balance to her community. In doing so she meets two important new allies – Letitia, Roland’s fiancé, who is without realising it a powerful witch, and the charming Preston, one of the Baron’s guards. Back at the Chalk there is time for the Baron’s funeral and the new Baron’s wedding, guest appearances by Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax (the highlight of any Discworld novel!) before the inevitable climatic showdown with the Cunning Man.

This is an important book. As with all Pratchett’s work it is suffused with good sense, compassion and kindness. Tiffany is a good person working tirelessly to make the world just a little bit better. She doesn’t do it for personal gain or glory, just because it needs doing. In a world where there are too many people doing the exact opposite, we could all be a bit more like Tiffany. But that’s not all Pratchett has to say. This is a novel about how people are prepared to believe bad things about outsiders, about ‘others’. The key quote (and it is rare that Discworld novels have just one key quote, but I think this one does) is “Poison goes where poison’s welcome.” In other words the lies told about Tiffany and other witches would not be believed unless people wanted to believe them. In a world in which outsiders and immigrants are demonised we need to realise that the poisonous words spread about them by newspapers, websites and politicians cannot harm us if we do not welcome them in. The people of the Chalk are Tiffany’s friends and relatives, normal hard-working folk, but they are not immune to the harsh words and thoughts spoken about witches or wise-women:

“everybody knew, in some mysterious way, that witches ran away with babies and blighted crops, and all the other nonsense. And at the same time, they would come running to the witch when they needed help.”

Standard
Book review

Unseen Academicals, (Discworld 37) by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2009

Unseen Academicals - Wikipedia

Yes, Unseen Academicals is ‘the one with the football’ but it is so much more than that. Pratchett’s extraordinary ability to find new heights and depths to his universe was not dimmed by the fact that he was at this point 37 books into the series and that he was using very familiar characters and settings. His power to reinvent Discworld, and Ankh-Morpork in particular, here rests not on his principal theme, football, but on his exploration of the servant underclass that previously has been largely silent. Almost all the characters we have met thus far have been either fairly high-status – lords, ladies, wizards, guild leaders, etc, – or from the criminal underworld (sometimes both of course), but rarely ordinary working people.

The wizards of the Unseen University face disaster – they will lose a significant endowment unless (for reasons that are somewhat contrived) they play a game of football. The loss of income will restrict them to only three meals a day, an unthinkable deprivation, so the game is afoot. Flimsy though this reason is for introducing sport to that most unsporting of environments, the further complication is that Ankh-Morpork football is nothing like the sport we know today, and much closer in spirit to the medieval village game where everyone takes part, the ball is a wooden block covered in rags, and violence is a key part of any match. It becomes clear that the rules will need to be updated to make this more a gentleman’s sport, where the risk of decapitation and death are reduced and where a winner can eventually be determined.

Previously we have been introduced to a few of the higher status servants that keep the Unseen University running, but here for what I think is the first time we actually go into the kitchens and cellars where all the work is done, and are introduced to the people who do it. A key part of keeping the lights on is, well, keeping the lights on, and at the Unseen University all candles must be expertly dribbled for the right medieval aesthetic effect. The university’s master dribbler is Mr Nutt. Mr Nutt, we are told, is a goblin recently arrived from Uberwald. Parts of the story are told through Mr Nutt’s internal narration, and it becomes clear that he has a secret, hidden to even himself. He is extremely intelligent, physically hugely powerful, and constantly suppressing what seems dangerous instincts and dark, violent impulses. At first he is hidden away in the cellars, but the Arch- Chancellor is aware of his presence there, as is Lord Vetenari.

Mr Nutt starts to explore the working class culture of his friend and colleague Trev Likely. Trev has only one obsession – football. They go to a game and see up close the dangers of the rampant football hooliganism which appears to lead to Mr Nutt being killed, only for him to spring back alive before treatment can even begin at the Lady Sybil hospital. (Of the many things I loved about this novel, the way Sam Vimes and his good lady wife have become part of the language and culture of Ankh-Morpork was both touching and wonderful). At the same time we are also introduced to two of the staff who work in the University’s night-kitchens. Glenda Sugarbean bakes the best pies in Ankh-Morpork and is observant and intelligent. Her kitchen-maid friend Juliet yearns for more than can be found in the boring life below stairs.

Like many stories of working class life, the main theme here is escape. Juliet’s transcendent beauty allow her to go on to become a catwalk model of the new dwarven material, micromail; Trev’s skills with a tin can, a substitute football, win the Unseen Academicals a key game, and Nutt – well Nutt comes to terms with his dark secret, which is that he is an orc. This is the first time orcs have been mentioned in the Discworld series. They are fabled creatures, thought long-extinct, and utterly terrifying. While they are recognisably the creatures of Tolkien’s creation, there is a Discworld twist – they were bred by men as creatures of war, and their inner nature is peaceful and artistic. Mr Nutt writes love poetry, and yearns to be a valuable member of society. His relationship with Glenda blossoms into the most unlikely of romances, until finally he is asked to try to discover any surviving members of his species and re-introduce them to society. If trolls and vampires can live amongst men, why not orcs?

“Many bad things were done under the Evil Empire” she said. “The best we can do now is undo them. Will you assist in this endeavor?”
“In every way that I can” said Nutt.
“I would like you to teach them civilized behavior,” said Ladyship coldly.
He appeared to consider this. “Yes, of course, I think, that would be quite possible,” he said. “And who would you send to teach the humans?”
There was a brief outburst of laughter from Vetinari, who immediately cupped his hand over his mouth. “Oh I do beg your pardon,” he said.”

Unseen Academicals is a joy. Pratchett’s trademark silly jokes still abound – one of the wizards is on exchange from a distant university and is called Bengo Macarona – unsurprisingly he is brilliant at football. As always, the game of spot the reference is rewarding. Pratchett wears his learning lightly, and some lines are almost thrown away. One example is a version of the couplet from Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress , (summarised (if not dismissed) earlier in the novel along with all other love poetry as “as a means to an end, to wit, getting a young lady to take all her clothes off.”)

“The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”

Which comes out as:

“The crypt’s a handsome place to be, But none, I think leave after tea”

Most obviously Trev and Juliet’s whole storyline is a Ankh-Morpork version of Romeo and Juliet, lovers from two bitterly divided families, fanatical supporters of opposing football teams, but at the same time and rather brilliantly Juliet’s story is also that of both Pygmalion and A Star is Born, a beautiful young woman transformed into a supermodel. Mr Nutt’s unusual training techniques – he takes his team to the ballet, and has them practicising blindfold – also reminded me of How Steeple Sinderby Wanders Won the FA Cup. Someone has done a fantastic job of collecting all these references in one spot at https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Book:Unseen_Academicals/Annotations but don’t spoil the fun and look them up first. The references are often easy to miss but there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from spotting them unassisted.

Ankh-Morpork is changing. Technology is threatening old ways, and in a most striking illustration of the new times one of the wizards of the Unseen University, the Dean, has taken a job in another university as their Vice-Chancellor, an unheard of move that Ridcully sees as a betrayal. It is probably just because I know that the series was to end after four more novels, but I saw a slight sadness in this event, a recognition that all good things must end. Like this review,

Standard
Book review

Making Money (Discworld 36) by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2007

Making Money is the sequel to the transcendent Going Postal. It is the story of the further adventures of Moist von Lipwig as he takes on his next challenge – reforming the Ankh-Morpork banking system. For a choice of topic Pratchett couldn’t have been more prescient, coming as it did just a few months before the international banking crisis which precipitated a decade of economic misery.

Anyone who has read this blog before will know that I rate Pratchett as one of our finest writers, so it pains me to concede that Making Money doesn’t quite meet his usual high standards. Just to be completely clear I don’t think for one second this had anything to do with his diagnosis in the same year – his illness was a form of dementia that left him lucid to the end – this article he wrote about his condition explains it far better than I could. Perhaps it is more a case that Going Postal set such a high watermark that any attempt at a sequel would always struggle to compare.

Banks in Ankh-Morpork are failing, and who better to give them a shot in the arm than an admitted thief and smooth-talking showman? “The city bleeds, Mr Lipwig,” says Vetinari, “and you are the clot.” (It has taken me a very long to realise this, but there is a strong case for Vetinari being Pratchett’s greatest creation.) Lipwig is bored running the Post Office, which no longer needs his buccaneering approach to management. So he takes over the running of the city bank and mint. As you would expect there is a cast of comic characters involved. The bank’s chairman is a fussy little dog, the chief clerk, a mathematical savant, obviously harbours a dark secret, which sadly disappoints when it is finally revealed, and a sinister opponent has ambitions to replace Vetenari. In the basement of the bank (is it a bank, or a mint, or both – I was never really clear, so the powerful sense of place which dominates Going Postal, that extraordinarily evoked abandoned Post Office, stuffed to the rafters with undelivered post, is not recaptured) someone has built the Glooper, a model of the city’s economy that develops a life of its own.

There’s not enough of chain-smoking Adora Belle Dearheart in this novel. She is away finding more buried golems, who eventually appear in large numbers only to walk back off stage almost immediately, consenting to be buried in a most improbable fashion. Would Adora, who has dedicated her life to liberating golems, really be happy with this resolution of the ‘what to do with the golden golems conundrum?

Money is an elusive concept, so I am aware of the irony when I say that Pratchett never quite pins it down. It’s not intrinsically good or bad, so the novel is deprived of a cause (compared to say, its predecessor in which privatisation and modernisation are firmly skewered). Pratchett asks the right questions – of course – such as why we trust banks or what the “tacit understanding that we will honour our promise to exchange a dollar for a dollar’s worth of gold provided we are not, in point of fact, asked to” actually means, but never really gets to grips with the topic, skirting around it before moving on to other more tangible, plot-related issues.

My other disappointment with this novel, however slight, centres on Pratchett’s prose. usually his ability to craft a sentence is unparalleled, but here many of the lines fall flat.

“I wouldn’t trust you with a bucket of water if my knickers were on fire!”

“The only really sane person in there is Igor, and possibly the turnip. And I’m not sure about the turnip.”

“I’m an Igor, thur. We don’t athk quethtionth.”
“Really? Why not?”
“I don’t know, thur. I didn’t athk.”

That’s not always the case of course – I loved this image:

“It seemed to Igor that trouble hit Mr. Lipwig like a big wave hitting a flotilla of ducks. Afterward, there was no wave but there was still a lot of duck.”

Making Money is a fun story featuring many of the Discworld characters that by this stage in the series need to do little more than walk on, say their lines, and move on. Moist and Adora really deserved more than a light retread of Going Postal, but that’s essentially what they got.

Standard
Book review

Wintersmith, (Discworld 35) by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2006

Wintersmith (Discworld Novels) by Sir Terry Pratchett - Paperback - from World of Books Ltd (SKU: GOR001210366)

The Tiffany Aching series of novels gave Discworld a wonderful burst of new life – almost half of the last dozen novels in the series were Tiffany stories. We have followed Tiffany’s story since she was nine, and her training as a witch now sees her placed with Miss Treason, a 113-year old witch renowned for her dark and mysterious powers (which Tiff quickly works out are simply “boffo”, or as Granny Weatherwax would put it, headology. )

Unusually for Pratchett the novel opens with the novel’s climax, and then takes the reader back to the story’s origins. This structure isn’t a problem – it allows the reader to navigate the plot more easily when we know the destination, and is one of the more telling signs that this is a story for younger readers. Tiffany’s problems begin when she goes to observe the traditional “dark morris” dance which welcomes in the winter, Tiffany spontaneously joins the dance, interrupting the passage of the seasons between the two elementals, the Wintersmith and the Summer Lady—the personification of summer. The Wintersmith has never met anyone like Tiffany before, and once the dance is over determines to become a mortal and seek her out, using their spiritual connection forged over Tiff’s silver horse pendant.

This disruption of the natural order of things isn’t going to go well. With the help of the Feegles, and the loving support of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, Tiffany has to put things right. It’s not easy when you are being wooed by someone who can make all snowflakes in your image – and icebergs as well! At first Tiff takes refuge in Lancre, and the warm embrace of Nanny Ogg’s cottage, but the elemental Wintersmith is going to track her down.

Like most young adult novels, Wintersmith is really about growing up. Teenage Tiffany has to work through many of the problems and issues young teenagers face. Her fledgling romance with Roland, the Baron’s son (who she rescued in the first novel in the series, The Wee Free Men) is coming along nicely, but she has to battle to keep it private from the feegles and the witches. Speaking of battles, maintaining any sense of privacy from feegles (who take their geas to protect their ‘big wee hag’ very seriously) and witches who can see through her eyes isn’t easy. Later she has to come to terms with the death of an older character. Her place in her peer group is delicately balanced, and she manages to do the right thing and find her place in that hierarchy despite being aware of the subtle manipulations of Granny Weatherwax. Finally, she takes responsibility for her own actions when the temptation to shift the blame or hide behind others is overwhelming. While she may be flawed we are never in any doubt that Tiff will do the right thing and that will bring its own reward:

“It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn’t do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care because it didn’t know what “fair” meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.”

I love it when Pratchett has the confidence to make such epic characters as Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg minor players in Tiffany’s story. The feegles are an endless delight, and there are some interesting new characters, not least 113 year-old Miss Treason, who wonderfully calls Granny “the girl Weatherwax”. Arguably the novel’s only weak spot is its fairly innocuous ending, but as I always say whoever reads Pratchett for his plots is really missing the point. I don’t think I read these novels with any particular care when they were first published, unwisely seeing them as books for younger readers, (which of course they are) but wrongly concluding there would be little in them for older readers. I am so glad to have got that wrong.

Standard
Book review

Thud! (Discworld 34) by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2005

I read Thud! when it was first published, and can still remember the slightly puzzling feeling of disappointment. Pratchett’s recent novels – Going Postal and Monstrous Regiment for example – had been imperious, but this was a slight mis-fire. Or so I remembered. But memory can be misleading – would the novel have the same impact some fifteen years on?

Yes and no. On the one hand this is a Watch novel, featuring Sam Vimes and his team. It’s also in many ways an exceptionally well-constructed detective novel, albeit in a fantasy setting featuring dwarves, trolls, vampires and werewolves. Some critics have found the pastiche of The Da Vinci Code a little heavy-handed, but I thought the references were just right, not such that you knew what was coming next, but that you could see the parallels. So what’s not to like? I think partly the problem is that Pratchett had set such high standards in his recent work that something that doesn’t quite reach those levels is likely to disappoint. Because I don’t think Thud! ever quite comes to the boil; there is a lot of time spent setting up a climax that never really arrives.

The plot is more complex than most Discworld stories. A dwarf, Grag Hamcrusher, has been murdered, and a troll is the prime suspect. The radicalisation of the dwarven community that had been suggested in earlier novels has accelerated, and all-out conflict with their eternal enemies, the trolls is imminent. Hamcrusher was a deep-downer, someone who believes dwarves should remain underground and avoid contact with other races. His murder couldn’t come at a worse time for Sam Vimes and the Watch, because it stokes tensions between Ankh-Morpork’s troll and dwarf communities just as the anniversary of the Battle Of Koom Valley approaches. This battle (or series of battles) happened centuries ago, but is still a cause for resentment between trolls and dwarfs, who now come into close daily contact on the streets of Ankh-Morpork. At first it looks like the deep-downers will obstruct the Watch’s enquiries, preferring to deal with it themselves, but Vimes persuades them to accept an investigation by Captain Carrot, human by birth, dwarf by upbringing. Carrot is assisted by the new recruit, Lance-Constable Sally von Humpeding, the Watch’s first vampire, as well as his werewolf partner, Sergeant Angua. Vampires and werewolves are traditionally the fiercest of rivals leading to tension between Angua and Sally.

Elsewhere in the city a painting has been stolen. This is a job for Corporal Nobbs and Sergeant Colon, Ankh-Morpork’s finest. The fifty-foot painting, The Battle of Koom Valley by Methodia Rascal, is believed to hold a clue to the treasure of Koom Valley. (Because as well as being the site of many battles between trolls and dwarves, Koom Valley also hides some lost treasure). Vetinari could not have chosen a worse time to send an auditor, A.E. Pessimal, into the Watch. This is one of the novel’s misfires – Vetenari has shown every evidence previously of having confidence in Vimes and being willing to let him get on with his job, but now with Vimes at the head of a massively expanded Watch he sends in a book-keeper? Vetenari would already know everything he needed to know about the Watch and sending in an auditor would be an admission of failure. Vimes would almost certainly have sent him packing instead of, as he does, meekly accepting his presence. The same applies for Vetenari and Vimes’s acceptance of someone who is obviously a spy into the Watch – they just wouldn’t have done that in previous novels.

And so it goes on – people not behaving quite like the characters Pratchett has spent years developing. Carrot goes missing from the text, with his investigation largely happening off-screen. Angua behaves like a spoiled child and Vimes manages to completely ignore a summons from Vetenari, something that would have been unthinkable previously. There is a supernatural element to the novel – the Summoning Dark – which has strong echoes of the hiver in A Hat Full of Sky but which here seemed superfluous. The novel’s finale falls flat – the happy ever after resolution manages to be both predictable and unconvincing.

A mis-firing Pratchett is still head and shoulders above most novelists, and there is plenty to enjoy here. Sam Vimes’s character development is almost complete – he is now father to young Sam and takes his story-reading duties just a little too seriously. Minor characters, such as Willikins, Sam’s dead-pan butler, are a joy (“‘My gods, man, you’re covered in blood!’ Sybil burst out. ‘Yes, your ladyship,’ said Willikins smoothly.  ‘May I say in mitigation that it is not, in fact, mine.’) and A E Pessimal the auditor turned blood-thirsty Watch recruit shows promise. Other more familiar characters seem to be on auto-pilot or go missing in action completely, and Tawnee, Nobby’s pole-dancing girlfriend is a mis-judged caricature.

Thud! is much loved by the vast majority of Discworld fans. It’s the only book I have ever seen with 0% one star ratings on both Goodreads and Amazon, which shows how well it is regarded. So who knows, I am probably missing some of the wonders of this novel, one of which is jokes like this variation on the Monty Python “What have the Romans ever given us?” sketch:

“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?”
“Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol-well okay.”
“Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?”
“All right, I’ll grant you that, but-“
“Saving civilization from a horde of-“
“It doesn’t do any good in the long run is what I’m saying Nobby, if you’d listen for five seconds together.”

Standard
Book review

A Hat Full of Sky, (Discworld 32) by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2004

Books can help us navigate our way through life. People who don’t read can get on well of course, but having books with you along the way can help hugely. I can’t think of a greater challenge in life than the transition to adolescence, and I equally can’t imagine how amazing it would have been to have made that journey with the Tiffany Aching novels by my side. Because this series is about growing up, not in a self-conscious ‘so here’s how to deal with bullies’ way, but by sharing Tiffany’s story.

A Hat Full of Sky is the sequel to the Wee Free Men. Tiffany, now eleven, is leaving family and home to train as an apprentice witch. Leaving her beloved Chalk, the land of her childhood, is hard for her, leaving behind everything that is comfortable and familiar. She goes to live with Miss Level, a witch who has two bodies ( a nice twist on the split personality idea) and a poltergeist named Oswald who cleans the house (another clever inversion).

Tiffany’s powers are such that unknown to her she is being hunted by a dangerous magical creature, a hiver, an ancient parasitical paranormal entity. She is particularly vulnerable when she uses her powers to step outside her body, which she does innocently to look at herself.

Settling in to her new home she meets a group of apprentice witches – far from dying out, witchcraft in this part of the world seems to be thriving. As the new girl she faces the usual struggles of fitting in. The patronising and rude self-appointed leader of the group, Annagramma could be found in any playground in the world. Tiffany represents a potential challenger to her top-dog status, having already met Discworld’s greatest witch, Granny Weatherwax, and been given a hat by her, albeit an invisible one (hence the novel’s title). The other girls don’t believe her, and are mean. Upset by this encounter, Tiffany is vulnerable and is taken over by the hiver. Being possessed by the hiver makes her feel powerful but dangerous, almost like taking drugs?

You can read Tiffany’s struggles with the hiver as a metaphor for depression, anorexia, or any other mental health problem. Young women in particular are vulnerable to doubts about their value, even their identity. That vulnerability can leave them open to ideas or other things that are superficially empowering but nonetheless harmful. Pratchett doesn’t overwork this concept – Tiffany doesn’t self harm for example – but she does struggle internally with the hiver, trying to assert her identity. Her small cries for help aren’t heard by her friends, although the Feegles quickly work out what has happened. Without ever being patronising or spelling things out, I think Pratchett gives his readers some practical ideas on how to deal with these issues in a way that is probably far more helpful than the self-help books that address these issues head-on.

Fortunately, Tiffany has a trump card, the Nac Mac Feegles, wonderful, unruly pictsies, sworn under a geas to defend her from harm. I love the fact that Pratchett is happy to make the geas/geese pun (more than once), even though it is such a terrible dad-joke. Rob Anybody, fearless leader of the Feegles, magically travels into Tiffany’s mind to help her fight the hiver. He works out that smells from her past will allow her to break from the hiver’s control (the scenes where the Feegles collect the items needed – tobacco, alcohol and wool – are a wonderful diversion). Tiffany wrests back control but is left with the memories of the hiver’s previous victims, which she uses to give her strength, drawing on them for support. With the help of Granny Weatherwax, visiting for the Witch Trials, Tiffany comes to understand that the hiver is not something that she needs to defeat but to come to terms with. I think this all works really well as an extended metaphor for how to deal with mental health problems.

I’ve talked a lot about this book being a guide to growing up. But as with all Pratchett’s novels the wisdom it contains is for all ages. I found this paragraph on leaving home quite poignant:

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

And there’s also this advice, which initially appears to be quite witch-specific, but perhaps not:

“Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again”.

Finally, I have written many times about Pratchett’s ability to make me laugh out loud. Once again he managed to achieve this in the scene when Death appears, and is confronted by the pugnacious and profoundly loyal Rob Anybody:

“I WAS NOT EXPECTING A NAC MAC FEEGLE TODAY, said Death. OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE WORN PROTECTIVE CLOTHING, HA HA.”

Glorious, precious, stuff. It’s easy to overlook the Tiffany Aching Discworld books as just for children, or ‘stories’ rather than novels, and I was probably guilty of this first time round, but now I am coming to appreciate them far more as fully-rounded additions to Sir Terry’s body of work.

Standard
Book review

Going Postal (Discworld 33) by Sir Terry Pratchett, 2004

I have to warn you now that this is going to be one of those posts in which I blather on about how many different types of wonderful Terry Pratchett’s novels are. Going Postal is Pratchett at the peak of his powers. Incidentally it also made by far the best television adaptation, which I think successfully captures the spirit of the novel and retains almost all the central ingredients.

Discworld Postal.jpg

Going Postal is a devastating attack on the rapacious form of asset stripping capitalism. In the novel the clacks, the Discworld telegraph system, has been taken over by an aggressive consortium of bankers interested only in squeezing profit from their new enterprise. To this end they refuse to invest in maintenance of the system, cut corners, and put the safety of their staff at risk. The chief engineer Mr Pony, who stays with the company, knows the lives of his workers are being put at risk but protects himself with copies of warning memos. He is a deeply sad figure, but all too recognisable in late-stage early 20th century capitalism. Pratchett dismantles surgically the smoke and mirrors behind high-finance:

“But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever – provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look. This is known as finance.“

So what happens? Moist von Lipwig, a consummate swindler, is hanged for his crimes. His still living body is recovered from the scaffold, resuscitated and taken before the Patrician. Vetinari presents him with a choice: become Postmaster General of the city’s postal service or death. Moist takes the job, intending to run away at the earliest possible opportunity. However, his probation officer, a golem named Mr Pump (after his former occupation), brings him back to Ankh-Morpork, where Vetinari explains escape from a golem is impossible. So the Post Office it is.

The scale of the challenge is soon revealed. The Post Office has not operated for many years, and the building is full of undelivered mail and pigeon dung. Four previous recently appointed Postmasters have died in suspicious circumstances. Of the many portraits in Going Postal one of the most relevant (although I think they are all relevant) is of Reacher Gilt, the chair of the Grand Trunk Company which runs the clacks. Gilt is a financial pirate who operates in plain sight – he even has a parrot that squawks “twelve and a half per cent” (= pieces of eight, not the worst joke in the novel). Gilt has a penthouse office in Tump Tower and has ambitions to become Patrician one day – see what Pratchett was hinting at there? It is quickly apparent that Gilt is the villain of the piece, is behind the deaths of the previous Postmasters, and plans to remove Moist as soon as possible.

This is just the beginning of an extraordinarily action-packed novel – there’s a wonderfully rich cast of junior characters such as pin-collector Stanley Howler; Sachrissa Cripslock, reporter for the Ankh-Morpork Times (first introduced in The Truth); and Anghammarad, a nineteen thousand year-old golem waiting for the end of the world. There’s a fire, a visit to the Mended Drum, a race to Genua, and guest appearances from the Watch and the wizards of the Unseen University, to mention just a few highlights. Romance is provided by another of Pratchett’s amazing strong women: golem-rights activist and chain smoker Adora Belle Dearheart. It’s all utterly wonderful. Moist is another brilliantly realised creation in all his complexity and carries the weight of the narrative effortlessly. The moment he realises his responsibility for Adora’s loss of her job (which the television adaptation made even more dramatic in a very effective edit) is extraordinary.

This is also the Discworld novel where the GNU tradition originates. John Dearheart, murdered brother of Adora, is remembered by his colleagues on the clacks by a piece of code – “GNU John Dearheart” – which echoes his name up and down the lines. “G” means that the message must be passed on, “N” means “not logged”, and “U” means the message should be turned around at the end of a line. (This is of course a tech joke: GNU is a free operating system, “GNU’s not Unix”.) The code causes John’s name to be repeated indefinitely throughout the system, because: “A man is not dead while his name is still spoken“, a phrase with so much more resonance since Sir Terry’s passing.

I know I have said this many times before, but Pratchett is a profound moral philosopher and this novel is over-flowing with insights into the human condition:

“There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.

In fact, I am giving serious consideration to starting my own minor religion based on the words of wisdom found in Going Postal alone. If you read a sentence like this in a book of philosophy you would almost certainly nod your head in agreement and appreciate the author’s wisdom and sagacity;

“all freedom is limited, artificial, and therefore illusory, a shared hallucination at best. No sane mortal is truly free, because true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes.

I used to always say Night Watch was Pratchett’s finest novel – having re-read Going Postal I am no longer quite so sure.

Standard