Tag Archives: Terry Pratchett

Book review

Pyramids, (Discworld 7) by Terry Pratchett, 1989

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

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.

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Book review

Wyrd Sisters (Discworld 6) by Terry Pratchett, 1988

‘Wyrd Sisters’ sees the return of Terry Pratchett’s magnificent three, Granny Weatherwax; Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick, Discworld’s most chaotic coven. The opening of the novel is closely modelled on Pratchett’s source text, Macbeth: King Verence I of Lancre, a small mountainous kingdom high in the Ramtops, is murdered by his cousin, Duke Felmet, and the duke’s homicidal wife. So far so Shakespeare, but from this point the novel WSdeviates somewhat from its source. (For the avoidance of any doubt, this is of course a joke – Macbeth is a source for ‘Wyrd Sisters’ in the same way that Hamlet is a source for the Lion King, i.e. barely).

The king’s son and his crown are smuggled out of the castle and handed to the witches for safekeeping. They foster the child with a troupe of travelling actors, hide the crown in plain sight in a box of props, and settle back to watch destiny take its course. Their confident expectation is that the prince, Tomjon, will grow up, defeat Duke Felmet and take his rightful place as king.

However, this is Discworld, so of course things don’t work out as easily as that. Lancre is a highly magical and very slightly sentient kingdom, and is angry about the way the new King mistreats the land. Reluctantly, the coven casts a spell over the kingdom, freezing it in time for 15 years and allowing Tomjon to grow into a young man and therefore (in theory at least) able to challenge his er…second cousin (uncle would have been better) for the throne. Tomjon is also, as it happens, a highly talented actor…. Continue reading →

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Book review

Sourcery, (Discworld 5) by Terry Pratchett, 1988

‘Sourcery’ is book five in Terry Pratchett’s magisterial Discworld series. It features the return of Rincewind, the world’s worst wizard of whom it was said that when he “dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction”.Sourcery

In the Discworld we have seen thus far, (i.e. in books 1-4) the wizarding community is generally held in low regard. Wizards have their uses but are not particularly respected or valued. The fact that Rincewind is their most travelled representative does not help that situation of course. But all this changes in ‘Sourcery’, when the eighth son of an eighth son goes on to have an eighth son, the result being that rarest of magical phenomenon, a wizard squared, a Sourcerer, the most powerful wizard on the disc. Continue reading →

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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.

Equal rites.jpg

‘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, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic, (Discworld 2) by Terry Pratchett, 1986

TLF_cover

‘The Light Fantastic’ concludes the adventures of Rincewind, the failed wizard, and Twoflower, the curious tourist from the Agatean Empire, who were left at the end of ‘The Colour of Magic’ falling in some style off the edge of the world (the world being, of course, disc-shaped, said disc being on the back of four giant elephants who in turn are perching on the shell of the Great A’Tuin, a celestial turtle). Hope you got that.

Reading back over my review of ‘The Colour of Magic’ I think on reflection I may have not clearly conveyed my awe at the wonder that was Terry Pratchett. He was a creative and comic genius, and my admiration of his body of work is tinged with sadness that he will no longer be adding to it. As comic writers go I would put him almost on a par with Douglas Adams – I can think of no higher praise.

Of course this isn’t just a fan-blog, these are intended as above all things honest reviews, so there’s no point in self-censoring observations that are less than adulatory – what would be the point? But there’s equally no point in just listing the minor flaws in a novel, and ignoring the gems. So if I got the balance wrong with ‘The Colour..’ then apologies, not least to TP. Continue reading →

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Book review, Discworld, humour, Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic

The Colour of Magic (Discworld 1) by Terry Pratchett, 1983

Colour of magic

So this is where it all began. I returned to the original Discworld novel as a change of pace from Dickens and with one question at the front of my mind – would it stand the test of time? How well would it have aged, and how fully formed was Pratchett’s early vision of Discworld? Would the detail and complexity all be there, or would, as I assumed, the detail have developed and accrued over time, book by book? Which is a lot more than one question of course.

Remarkably the Discworld universe is almost completely fully developed in this first portrait. The cosmology or Astrozoology – with the Great A’tuin and his accompanying elephants – is all there, and Pratchett had obviously given a lot of thought to the practicalities of a flat world with its hub and the Rim. Ankh-Morpork is complete in virtually every detail (quote) with the pre-Sam Vimes Watch, the Patrician (not yet identified as Vetenari) and the Thieves and Assassins’ Guilds. The Unseen University with its complex hierarchy of wizards and ArchWizards is there, as is magic as a practical working concept. I really enjoyed the way Pratchett plays with the idea of science being a modern equivalent of magic – not a new idea of course, but one he has fun with, for example when Rincewind is trying to work out how Twoflower’s camera works.

“This is all wrong. When Twoflower said they’d got a better kind of magic in the Empire I thought – I thought…

The imp looked at him expectantly. Rincewind cursed to himself. “Well if you must know, I thought he didn’t mean magic. Not as such”

“What else is there, then?”

Rincewind began to feel really wretched. “I don’t know” he said. “A better way of doing things, I suppose. Something with a bit of sense in it. Harnessing – harnessing the lightening, or something”.

‘The Colour of Magic’ also features two of Pratchett’s most-loved ‘characters’ – Twoflower’s sapient pearwood Luggage, and Death. The Luggage is an indefatigable multi-legged terminator, while Death already speaks in his distinctive capitalised tone, and already has his habit of appearing when least expected, such as here when the landlord of the Broken Drum is trying to set fire to his cellar to claim on his recently agreed inn-sewer-ants polly sea:

“At the top of the cellar steps Broadman knelt down and fumbled in his tinderbox. It turned out to be damp.
‘I’ll kill that bloody cat,’ he muttered, and groped for the spare box that was normally on the ledge by the door. It was missing. Broadman said a bad word. A lighted taper appeared in mid-air, right beside him.
HERE, TAKE THIS.
‘Thanks,’ said Broadman.
DON’T MENTION IT.”

The other thing that struck me, and which may be controversial, is that over time Pratchett became a much better and funnier writer. That’s not to say ‘The Colour of Magic’ isn’t funny – it is – but I think his comic style matured and improved. His love of groanworthy puns is already evident here, but some of the jokes go beyond being bad dad jokes, and are just plain bad, for example:

“My name is immaterial,’ she said.
That’s a pretty name,’ said Rincewind”

There is a thin dividing line between using clever references to other writers and genres, and just being derivative. Pratchett tiptoes close to the line sometimes in this novel, and in particular I have always thought that his debt to Fritz Lieber, author of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series has been acknowledged but never fully appreciated. In later novels there is a lot more Pratchett and far fewer borrowings – references of course, but done in a way in which the original source is acknowledged without being simply reproduced.

Almost lastly, a bit of a moan about this edition. It is the Corgi edition shown above, with the original Josh Kirby illustration (which I always felt were a bit over the top tbh), published this year with a mention of Pratchett’s death in the frontispiece. The blurb includes a quote from the independent calling Pratchett “one of the funniest English authors alive”. Was this just a case of laziness by the publishers not bothering to update their copy, or just a bad joke?

Finally, a quiz question for you, which should be easy given the subject of this blog entry – who are Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen?

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Book review

Goods Omen by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 1990

Why haven’t I read “Good Omens” before now? That’s not a rhetorical question – tell me why no-one has thrust this book into my hands and said “You love Terry Pratchett and you think Neil Gaiman is pretty good as well, so read this, now”? As you can tell I feel slightly narked at the fact that this wonderful book has not made it onto my reading list until now. Good omens

One reason might be that collaborations, especially on novels, have at best a patchy record. Name me a novel written by two people that is as good as any of the novels written by either of the co-authors? That one is a rhetorical question btw. “Good Omens” is the only co-authored novel on the BBC Big Read list of 100 best novels, if you needed any evidence on that point. But something about the way these two worked together, across different continents and time zones, just worked, producing something as good as if not better than their best solo work. It could easily have been written by Douglas Adams, and if you have been paying any attention to anything I have written in the last 5 years or so you will know that there is no higher compliment.

“Good Omens” started life as a Just William parody, and if I were to find a fault with the novel, the extended sections of the prepubescent schoolboys and schoolgirl getting up to no good in an essentially well behaved way are some of the weaker parts of the novel. But that doesn’t really matter, because the cornucopia of ideas and characters that fizz from every page of the rest of the novel more than compensate. Quite how a schoolboy story became a parable about the end of the world I am not sure, but it tells you something about Pratchett and Gaiman’s imaginations. There so much to enjoy here – utterly believable eccentric characters, such as the angel and demon working together to avoid Armageddon, Witchfinder General Shadwell and his assistant Newton Pulsifer, the witch Anathema Device (was/is there any author better at producing fantastic names for his characters than Terry Pratchett was – I give you Cut My Own Throat Dibbler in evidence), a breathless plotline that genuinely leaves it open to doubt whether the world is going to end or not, and on every page some of the best and at the same time wisest jokes you will find in any modern novel.

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

“An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.”
“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”
This is Pratchett at his very best, and whatever Neil Gaiman contributed to the process and outcome – the appendix at the end of this edition contains interviews with the authors that are frustratingly vague on this point, including the possibility that some of the text was written by neither of them – the combination just worked. I suspect it made Terry a better author in the long run, although I don’t think he ever wrote anything better.
Finally some good news – the novel is being adapted for television by the BBC, with two of Britain’s best actors, Michael Sheen and David Tennant, in the lead roles, and with a wonderful supporting cast. Should be (the light) fantastic.
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Book review

Night Watch, (Discworld 29) by Terry Pratchett, 2002

Night Watch was the 29th novel in Terry Pratchett’s extraordinary life’s work, the Discworld series. nigthwatch

The regular publication of Pratchett’s novels formed part of the background pulse of my life (and I am sure of many others), a predictable and reliable event that one looks forward to, like birthdays or Christmas. Although like all the novels in the series it can be read as a stand alone text, it is not a good entry point for those new to Discworld. This is later Pratchett, more serious, and it assumes a level of knowledge of the characters and their traditions without which  some of the jokes won’t work. An example of this happens when Sam Vimes meets Cut My Own Throat Dibbler. Dibbler is one of the numerous well realised characters who people Discworld and bring it to life. Travelling back in time, Sam meets CMOT when he is just starting out in the pie trade, and accidentally gives him his nickname. This joke doesn’t work if the reader isn’t already familiar with CMOT and his infamous ‘pies with personality.’

‘Night Watch’ is one of the darker novels in the series (although in interviews Pratchett disputed that label). Sam Vimes, commander of the Ankh-Morpork police (the Watch) is pursuing a serial killer, when he is caught in an accidental time warp, and travels back to thirty years earlier when he first joined the Watch. He mentors his younger self, teaching him all the tricks of the trade. The time travelling aspects of the story are handled adeptly, and although as with all time travel stories it won’t stand up to much scrutiny, it is cleverer than most. It is written with love for the characters and the world they live in, not least Sam Vimes the world weary copper, trying to keep the peace and do the job in front of him, struggling with the moral complexities that sometimes presents him with.

Vimes’s time travelling accident happens on the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May, a small scale over by lunchtime affair in which seven watchmen lost their lives. Each year the battle of Heroes Street is commemorated by those who were there by wearing lilac sprigs in their lapels, and visiting the graves of the fallen. This poignant memory echoes through the novel, as the inevitability of history reasserts itself, despite Sam’s interference with the events of the past. We also meet a much younger Vetinari, an apprentice of the Assassin’s Guild, who goes on to command the City. As a cleverly constructed prequel the novel is really mostly aimed at Discworld fans, rather than new readers. I have huge affection for the whole series, and pretty much everything Pratchett wrote, and his tragic death in 2015 deprived us of one of our great comic writers. But his characters are so vivid and well realised that they live on in our imaginations. In the unlikely event you haven’t discovered Discworld before now, and I know there are huge numbers of fans in the blogging community, then I can’t recommend these novels highly enough. Start at the beginning with ‘The Colour of Magic’, and just enjoy!

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21st century literature, Book review, Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

The Shepherd’s Crown (Discworld 41), Terry Pratchett. 2015

Sadly, ‘The Shepherd’s Crown’ will be the last Discworld novel*. I had in my head drafted a response to the critics who claimed that the impact of Terry’s illness can be traced in the overall quality of this novel. The problem with that way of reading the novel is that once you start to look for such connections you inevitably find them. But why stop there – can you find the pages in Great Expectations where Dickens had a heavy cold in 1861 (yes, I had to look that up), or the chapters in Mrs Dalloway where Virginia Woolf was feeling particularly depressed that day. The book is what it is. However, in a well meaning but ultimately unhelpful postscript to this edition, Rob Wilkins, Terry’s assistant, wrote “The Shepherd’s Crown has a beginning, a middle and an end, and all the bits inbetween. Terry wrote all of those. But even so, it was, still, not quite as finished as he would have liked when he died. If Terry had lived longer, he would almost certainly have written more of this book”. Once you know that, you can’t un-know it, and it influences the way you read the novel. You start to look for weaker passages of descriptive writing, jokes that fall slightly flatter than usual, plot lines that dwindle away. The fact that every Discworld novel has similar features seems irrelevant. It devalues what would otherwise have been a marvellous addition to the series – and which I stubbornly think it still is.
The Tiffany Aching series of Discworld novels was always positioned as Young Adult fiction. I am not sure whether if you didn’t know that, it would affect your overall enjoyment of the novel. This series is slightly less complex than the usual DW affair, and the level of menace toned down. But not much – this novel still has some seriously nasty elves who torture babies and dismember cuddly bunnies. These scenes are balanced by the way the elves are easily dispatched by Tiffany and her ragtag army of old men in sheds, part-time witches, and the glorious Mac Nac Feegles.
I’ve made no effort to avoid spoilers in this blog thus far, but I am going to make an exception here. One of Discworld’s best loved characters dies in the opening chapters of ‘The Shepherd’s Crown’, and if you don’t want to know who it is, look away now.

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One of the reviews I read online in preparing this blog entry very insightfully observed that in describing Granny Weatherwax’s death, Pratchett was teaching us how to mourn. How right that is. These scenes are some of the best in the whole canon. Granny had fought Death tooth and nail at other points in the series, but here she accepts her fate with calm fortitude. The characters who survive her mourn her and then carry on doing the work that is in front of them, as we should.
Other things that are wonderful about this novel and the overall series:
1.     The highbrow jokes. Pratchett throws in casually some “English” jokes that might elude international readers. There is an extended reference to ‘Dad’s Army’, and at another point to Monty Python’s ‘Lumberjack’ sketch. Quotes from and allusions to Shakespeare echo throughout the series, and I even spotted a reference to Keats – one character’s reference to someone looking with “wild surmise” which is a quote from the sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”.
2.  Atypically for this genre, Discworld has many well developed female characters. Almost all of them are stronger in their own ways than the menfolk, and all are completely believable and convincing. They are flawed and often full of self doubt, which makes them all the more convincing.
3.     There’s a lack of sentimentality about the novels. People die, back guys do bad things, and while good always triumphs there is a price. ‘The Night Watch’ is a wonderful example of this.
4.     The novels fizz with ideas, some silly, some magnificent. In ‘The Shepherd’s Crown’ the world is changing, seeing the beginning of the Railway Age, and with it the beginning of the end of the world of magic. What better time and place for Terry to take his bow.
*Except of course it won’t be. The Discworld is far too vibrant not to survive the death of its author, and it will continue in fanfiction, incomplete work finished by others, and other work licensed by his estate and publishers.
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