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| 0062067753
| 9780062067753
| 0062067753
| 3.78
| 59,903
| Jun 21, 2012
| Jun 19, 2012
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liked it
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The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter It is said that the population of the whole world, if packed together into a city of the same dens The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter It is said that the population of the whole world, if packed together into a city of the same density as New York City, would fit into the current boundaries of Texas. This Texan mega-city wouldn't be a pleasant place to live, and there's the challenge of infrastructure and living space and waste management, but the point is clear: there's a lot more space on Earth than we think there is. True, a lot of it is unfriendly to us - ocean, desert, ice, mountains, New Jersey - but still, despite our habit of packing ourselves into tightly-bound metropoli, there's a lot of room on this earth to spread out. Now imagine there was another Earth just a step away. A simple exertion of will, perhaps aided by a small device that anyone could make at home with a potato and some spare parts, and you're in a new world, untouched by human hands. You'd be standing in the same place you left from, but on another Earth. And if you don't like that one, well, there's another Earth just a step away. And another. And another. An infinity of Earths, each one so very slightly different from the one you left, each with its own story to tell. With the potential for an entire planet per person, what would that do to the world? Who would go and who would stay? What would happen to the "original" Earth, or Datum Earth as it's called in this book? The ramifications of the Long Earth are far-reaching and unsettling indeed, as is the quest to map it. Of the people on Datum Earth, most are able to step with the aid of a Stepper, a small box that they can build from freely available parts using plans that were posted to the internet by a mysterious engineer named Willis Linsay. As long as you follow the instructions properly and to the letter, you should be able to step from Earth to Earth with ease and only a minimum of discomfort. The first wave of devices were built by kids, prompting an initial missing-children panic as kids popped out of this universe with hastily-built Steppers, completely unprepared for what they were getting into. Soon, though, more and more people were stepping out, eager to explore these strange new worlds. At the forefront of this wave of colonization were the rare few who could step from world to world without a Stepper. One of these is Joshua Valienté, who was propelled to fame when he rescued children from their first journeys on Step Day. Joshua is hired by the Black Corporation to explore the Long Earth. With the support of Lobsang - formerly of Tibet and now an artificial intelligence - Joshua is going to step as far as he can go and see what there is to see at the distant ends of the Long Earth. This is a genus of book that I really enjoy - one that takes a simple, straightforward idea and tries to find all the angles of it. To that end, Pratchett and Baxter look at how the people, governments, and businesses of Datum Earth adjust to this new reality. And some of the questions are decidedly thorny. Is America still America on all Earths? If someone commits a crime in an alternate New York, could they be prosecuted by the NYPD? What happens to the value of commodities such as wood or gold when you have a nigh-infinite supply of it? And what happens to a nation when its people start stepping out en masse? There is a sub-plot in the book, following police Lieutenant Monica Jansson, who becomes the law's expert on stepping, with all the challenges that come with it. For example, what can you do to stop someone from stepping one world over, taking a few steps to where a bank vault should be, and then stepping back? How do you make a space step-proof against intruders? And what do you do with the increasingly disgruntled percent of people who can't step at all? That's to say nothing of the scam artists, the escapees, and the people who just abandon their lives to walk the Long Earth. It's a concept rife with possibilities. Each Earth is slightly different, representing an Earth that could have been. Some are steaming jungle, others arid wasteland and still others are lush and perfect for agriculture. There are animals that claim descent from the megafauna of North America, from our own ape-like ancestors, and from dinosaurs, and others still that are unlike anything on the Earth we know. On none of them, however, are there humans - only the Datum Earth has those. As great as the concept is, though, I found myself disappointed by the end of it. It seemed like Pratchett and Baxter missed a lot of good opportunities for the story, failed to fire at least one of Chekhov's guns, and let the Datum Earth plot line with Monica Jansson go woefully under-explored. Furthermore, while the Big Bad at the end was certainly big, it wasn't that bad, and it was dealt with in a rather perfunctory and, in my opinion, unfulfilling manner. The ending was flat, with a bunch of loose ends that really should have been tied up, and there was even one question that came to mind that seemed so painfully obvious that I was shocked none of the characters thought of it: the Stepper boxes refer to the alternate Earths as being "west" or "east" of Datum Earth, and are built with a three-point toggle switch. If there's a west and an east, how about a north and south? What if you had four choices from any given Earth instead of two? I can understand leaving that option out for reasons of narrative simplicity, but it seems like such an obvious question that I'm surprised it wasn't even raised. Overall, I think the book fell under the same curse as so many of Neal Stephenson's works: an amazing idea, done really well until the authors had to figure out how to end the book. There's no real climax to it, no sense of fulfillment and achievement. Just a feeling like they had to stop somewhere, so they did. That said, if they're clever, they'll make this a shared world project. I would love to see lots of different authors take a crack at some Tales of the Long Earth, precisely because it's such a useful idea. There are so many stories that can be told, including the ones that got short shrift in this novel. Let's hope we get to see that. ---------- [Jansson] opined, 'Oh.' This response seemed inadequate in itself. After some consideration, she added, 'My.' And she concluded, although in the process she was denying a lifelong belief system of agnosticism shading to outright atheism, 'God.' - from The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter ...more |
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Jul 09, 2012
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Jul 09, 2012
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| 0061051586
| 9780061051586
| 0061051586
| 4.18
| 64,212
| 1998
| Sep 08, 1999
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liked it
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In this book, we return to the small Ramtop country of Lancre, home to Granny Weatherwax, Gytha Ogg and Magrat Garlick. Picking up from where we left
In this book, we return to the small Ramtop country of Lancre, home to Granny Weatherwax, Gytha Ogg and Magrat Garlick. Picking up from where we left off, which is actually in Maskerade, which I haven’t reviewed here yet, Magrat is Queen now, with no time for witching. So the new Third Witch is Agnes Nitt (also known as Perdita, but only by her), a girl who is sensible, levelheaded and thinks quickly in a crisis. She is also a rather, shall we say, substantial girl (and lest you think I’m trying not to be mean, believe me – Agnes is meaner about her self than I can be), and as we all know there is inside every fat girl a thin girl and lots of chocolate. Well, Perdita is the thin girl, and Agnes is the chocolate. But that’s not the main point of this tale. The main point is that vampyres have come to Lancre, invited by King Verence to attend the naming of his and Magrat’s daughter, Esmerelda Note Spelling of Lancre (well, when your grandmother managed to name your mother “Magrat” due to an uncertainty in consonant placement, one doesn’t take chances.) But what’s done is done. No doubt we will see little Spelly in future Discworld books. Once you have invited a vampire in, you are subject to its power. Of course, vampires know this. There are a lot of things that vampires know… These vampyres have studied, they have prepared. They do not intend to make the mistakes their forefathers did – keeping lots of knick-knacks about that could be turned into holy symbols, leaving up flimsy, easily pulled-aside drapes, that sort of thing. These are modern vampyres, ones who know their place in the food chain – on top of it. They’re ready, and they have every intention of taking over Lancre. They don’t want a killing floor, though. Indeed not, they simply want a herd. An… arrangement. But there are the witches to contend with, especially Esme Weatherwax. And everyone knows about Granny Weatherwax…. If you read Lords and Ladies, or even my review of it, you can see there are some similarities. Evil, inhuman force comes to Lancre, wants to subjugate its subjects, and in the end are foiled by the indomitable Granny Weatherwax. And yes, there are similarities. But the differences are worth reading it for. First of all, we get a better look at Perdita / Agnes Nitt. Yes, she’s the Third Witch, but she’s more at home being a witch than Magrat ever was. Perdita is two witches in one, and they don’t like each other very much – a volatile combination. And as the newcomer, Agnes has the unenviable role of being the stand-in for the reader. She gets a lot of explanation that seems redundant to loyal followers of the Discworld series, but I guess new readers have to come in somewhere. Secondly, we get to play around inside Granny Weatherwax’s head again, which is always fun. We see a reference to her sister, Lily Weatherwax whom we last saw in Witches Abroad, and her grandmother, Alison. It is implied that the Weatherwaxes have a definite dark streak to them, against which Granny must contend constantly. What bugged me about this book is that Granny isn’t quite herself – though I suppose it can be argued that she wasn’t meant to be. Confronted with immensely powerful vampyres in her country, and insulted by seeming not to have been invited to the young princess’ naming ceremony, Granny Weatherwax just… gives up. She believes she can’t beat them, and she doesn’t think anyone wants her around. This is a side of Granny that we haven’t really seen before, and it’s not a nice one. She does recover, of course – that’s what Granny Weatherwax does. There’s no point in being a witch, really, if you can’t make the grand entrance and pop up just when everyone thinks you’re down. Another really neat thing about this book is that we finally get to revisit the Omnians, who were introduced as a fanatical theocratic people in Small Gods. Time has tempered the Omnians, who are now the Discworld equivalent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. An Omnian missionary has come to Lancre, and he gets caught up in the battle against the vampires as well, and it turns out that, well, the Omnians aren’t that bad anymore. Since the Prophet Brutha gave them permission to think for themselves, the Church has schismed so many times that it finally comes down to a schism in one member, Brother Oats. Like Agnes, he’s of two minds about the world, and neither of them really get along. So yes, there’s not a whole lot that’s really new in this book, but since I’m a hard-core Pratchett addict, I have to recommend it. ———————————————— “There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” - Granny Weatherwax, Carpe Jugulum ...more |
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not set
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Apr 18, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 038561926X
| 9780385619264
| 4.18
| 59,579
| 2011
| Oct 13, 2011
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liked it
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Sam Vimes really can never steer you wrong. If you take anything else away from this book, take that. Vimes has always been one of my favorite characte Sam Vimes really can never steer you wrong. If you take anything else away from this book, take that. Vimes has always been one of my favorite characters mainly because he embodies a lot of the qualities that I really love. From the beginning, way back in Guards! Guards! he shows that redemption is possible. He starts as a washed-up copper who's lost his will to be what he was meant to be. The night watch is a laughable institution, without the respect of anyone in the city. Over the course of the book, he begins to remember what it is that made him want to be a copper in the first place, and his long road to becoming a better person begins. In subsequent books, Vines is constantly tested, and that's one very important constant to his character – he's always struggling not to become the bad man that he could be. He knows that there is a bully, a blackguard, a murderer hidden deep down inside him, and it's a struggle not to let that person out. He uses the Law as a touchstone to remind himself of why he can't let that part of himself show, but it's hard sometimes. It's very hard indeed. It's harder still when he's in a place where the law is more… fluid than it is in his city of Ankh-Morpork. Where he is not immediately respected and obeyed by the high and the low. And when the crime he's investigating isn't technically a crime, but really should be. Vimes' wife, Sybil, has insisted that the family take a vacation out to her ancestral estates. It would be good for Vimes' health, she thinks, and she could be right. He has a high-pressure job, and while Sybil is an outstandingly supportive spouse in every respect, she also worries for her husband. What's more, they have a young son to take care of, and he does need to see his daddy as often as he can. So it's off to the countryside, a place where they do things differently. It's a place where there's always someone watching you, even if you don't know they're there. It's a place where things are done in black and white, where the differences between the high class and the low stand out in sharp relief. It's a place where the law is whatever a self-appointed group of magistrates say it is, and that law all too often bends to serve their whim. It would be hard enough with the retired old lords, the lippy pub proprietor, the arrogant blacksmith, and the lady who writes wildly popular children's books about poo – when goblins get involved, the whole thing gets worse. Goblins, of course, are considered one step below vermin. They're ugly, they stink, they steal, and they're good for nothing at all. Even the goblins know that they're no good, so it'll be hard to convince anyone to care about them. The problem is, someone kills a goblin in order to frame Vimes for another murder entirely. When Vimes starts to look into the goblin's death, the thread he pulls eventually leads to a long and sordid history of slaughter, theft, and terror that only he can untangle. If he survives, of course. Let me get the good parts out of the way first. I enjoyed this book, but by now that's not really a surprise. It has a good mystery, some fun action sequences, and covers some interesting topics that are good for heavy thinking. For example, Vimes – ever the egalitarian – has a hard time believing that he is more valuable than, say, a housemaid. The maids at the Ramkin estates are exceedingly deferential to him, as are all the servants, and that sets his teeth on edge, and I can understand that. But if something happens to a chambermaid, few people will shed a tear. If something happens to Vimes, it's very possible that nations will go to war. It's hard to deal with people thinking that you're somehow above them. I had a hard time with it when I started teaching – students treated me like I was someone important, and I wanted to say, "No, really I'm not!" But to them, I am. I'm the Guy Who Knows Things. I'm the Guy Who Grades Them. I judge them and I am part of the class of people who holds their future in its hands. They've been taught from their first day of kindergarten that teachers are to be treated with respect, regardless of whether that respect has been earned. The reverse of that is also addressed. What causes us to treat others with contempt, and what can it lead us to do? In this book, the goblins are pests, and not considered "people" in the same way that Dwarves and Trolls and Humans are. But the goblins sing and make music; they have a complex language and religion. They marry and have children and mourn their dead. Objectively, they're as sapient as any human. But "everyone knows" they're worthless. So, a lot of this book is about value, and what it means to be "worth" something to others. It deals with issues of class and law, and presents an interesting parable. The problem I have with it is that I didn't particularly like how it was written. And I feel really, really horrible for saying that. As you probably know, Pratchett is faced with Alzheimer's disease, and it's already taking its toll on him. This book was written with speech recognition software, and the difference in style is highly noticeable. There never used to be a whole lot of long speeches in Discworld novels. Much of the real side-splitting humor was provided from the narration [1] or from the razor-sharp dialogue between characters. Speeches were usually reserved for key moments in the story, giving them a much greater impact. This book, however, is full of speeches. Vimes makes speeches that go on for nearly two pages, his wife makes speeches, Willikins makes speeches – even the Patrician, one of the most laconic characters in the series, makes these long, drawn-out speeches, and it feels just wrong. Like Pratchett is writing new characters who are similar, but not identical to the ones we've come to love after so long. I suspect – but cannot confirm – that this is due to the way he's writing. Using speech recognition to write a novel means that the writer is, in effect, dictating his novel, and writing is very different from dictating. We can speak in ways that sound great when they're coming out of our mouth, but the same thing pasted to a page falls flat, especially when the speech is given to a character not known for making speeches. What's more, the speeches are rarely punctuated with any kind of narrative description of what anyone is doing during the speech. The result is that there's no picture in your head during the speech – it's just Vimes standing there talking for a couple of pages, and it feels different. It feels… wrong. Like I said, I feel terrible picking on that, because if my choice is Terry not writing any more books or Terry using speaking software, I would happily choose the latter. And I understand why he can't just sit down at his computer anymore and type the way he used to. Certain facts are unavoidable, no matter how terrible they are, and one of those unavoidable facts is that Terry can't write the way he used to. The new way will inevitably result in a change in style, much as if a master of the acoustic guitar picked up an electric and started playing. They're two different instruments, and one cannot be made to sound like the other. Terry's working with a new instrument now, and I suppose it'll take me a while before I can get used to it. Also, it's entirely probable that the entire story was written to set up a pun in the last line. Again, I can't prove anything… That aside, though, it's a good story, and it has a great deal to say about the inherent worth of people, which is something we all ought to give thought to from time to time. ------------------- "That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know, I suspect we'll never know." - Sam Vimes, Snuff --- [1] And the footnotes, of course. ...more |
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not set
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Dec 16, 2011
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Dec 16, 2011
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Hardcover
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| 0061161705
| 9780061161704
| 0061161705
| 4.01
| 55,813
| 2009
| Oct 06, 2009
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it was ok
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Contrary to popular belief, I don't hate sports. I know this may come as a surprise, since I studiously avoid all but the most cursory acknowledgment o Contrary to popular belief, I don't hate sports. I know this may come as a surprise, since I studiously avoid all but the most cursory acknowledgment of current sporting events. I finish the paper when I hit the sports section, and the sport report on the news is, for me, time to wash the dishes. I have no favorite teams of any kind, no players I look up to, and no interest in following play-offs, bowl games, championships or derbys. Hell, even with the Olympics my interest plummets after the opening ceremonies. But I don't hate sports. You see, in order to hate something, you have to actually care about it. And that's the thing about sports - I just don't care. I wasn't always like this, of course. When I was a kid, I tried all kinds of sports. I tried (deep breath) baseball, basketball, skiing, swimming, sailing, soccer, tennis, golf and judo. And those were after school. In PE class we had all the usual PE things - volleyball, softball, track and field, running, archery, field hockey, dodgeball.... What it came down to was that I had no natural talent for sports [1:] and, more importantly, I never had fun. I never saw the point of the whole thing, so I pretty much said "Bugger this," and turned to other areas of entertainment, thereby sealing off the sporting world from my interest forever. A lot of my friends do love their sports, though, so I try to keep a cursory understanding of things - you know, how many touchdowns there are in an inning, that kind of thing. I mean, there's nothing more disappointing than trying to talk about something you love, something for which you have great passion and enthusiasm and having someone just ignore you, right? RIGHT?? Anyway, I'm telling you all this so that you can correct for it when I tell you about Unseen Academicals, the latest of the Discworld books. If my attitude seems kind of lackluster or disinterested, keep in mind that it's probably not Sir Terry's fault. The book, you see, is about football. Not the sissy-pants American kind where the guys are so afraid of grievous bodily harm that they wear protective armor all the time, but the good, old-fashioned British kind, wherein people get their heads cracked open by cobblestones and die on the streets. You know, fun for the whole family. In the great and exciting city of Ankh-Morpork, footy is a tradition. It's a lifestyle, in fact. Where you live determines who your team is, and who your team is tells you with whom you can associate and mingle. A supporter of one team wandering into the territory of another is a person asking to be beaten to death by enthusiastic and drunk hooligans. "Suicide," I believe the police refer to it as. It's a game that goes beyond the simple description of "rough and tumble." It's a substitute for war in a time where war is neither profitable nor productive. It's a channel for long-standing feuds and grudges and aggressions, and is practiced religiously in the streets of the city every weekend. So obviously what this grand, injurious tradition needs, then, is the introduction of wizardry. The wizards of the Unseen University are forced, through a clause in a long-forgotten honorarium, to put together a football team and play a match. Despite most wizards having the athletic ability of an overstuffed beanbag chair, it's either play the game or lose so much money that they'll have to cut down to only three meals a day. So, with the help of the son of one of the greatest footballers in the city's history, two cooks from the Night Kitchen and a young Orc who is trying to find value in his life, they put together a team and oh gods, I'm bored already. Seriously, I couldn't care less about football. The book's not really even about football, to be honest. It's about identity and self-image, two things that are inextricably tied up in sports and sports fandom. The book is a lot less subtle than usual, pretty much hitting you over the head with a mallet and saying, "You are who you choose to be!!" over and over again. Actually, what gets said over and over again is a variation on "A leopard can't change its shorts," a kind of humorous eggcorn that loses its humorous value after about the fifth time it gets used in the book. But it's pretty much the theme of the book - what is identity, and can it be changed? To explore this, we have, for example, Trevor Likely, the son of a famous (dead) footballer who has sworn to his (also dead) mother that he will never play football again after what happened to his father. He's introduced as a young layabout, a lazy grifter who works very hard at not having to work, and desperately doesn't want to live up to his responsibilities. Unfortunately for him , he falls in love with young Juliet, a beautiful - if somewhat dim - young woman who works in the Night Kitchen. Standing in the way of their love, however, is the fact that they support opposing teams, and her family would never allow her to see the young man if they knew. Hmmm. Trev and Juliet. Doesn't have the same ring, does it? Also mixed up in this is Glenda, the head of the Night Kitchen, whose identity as a below-the-stairs cook is so ingrained into her head that trying to become something else is almost unthinkable. The wizards themselves face an identity crisis as well - the Dean has gone off and accepted the Archchancellor's position at another university, and has now come back to try and stand as an equal to Ridcully, the head of the Unseen University. At the center of the book is Nutt, a strange young person who possesses a mysterious past. He looks a little odd, has an enormous intelligence, and harbors an unshakable desire to acquire self-worth, even if he's not entirely sure what that means. All of these people are trying to figure out the same thing - who they are. Some of them are surprised by what they find, others dismayed. Nutt discovers that he is an Orc, a race of creatures so hated and reviled that he could be killed on sight. Juliet discovers that her beauty is her path out of the kitchens, Glenda that her desire to control others can be focused into something productive, and Trevor that the destiny he has avoided for so long is what he always should have been. Threaded throughout all this is the love of the game, the dedication of these people to their football. Indeed, the identity of the game itself comes into play here as well - will it remain a violent street game, wherein the only rule is that there are no rules, or will it gain a sense of purpose and order? How will the old-school, bare-knuckle footy fans deal with the changes imposed upon their game by Lord Vetinari and the Wizards? It's hard for me to filter through the sports aspect of this book, which is disappointing because it's something that a lot of people will probably enjoy. There's something about the devotion to a sport or to a team that is very important to most people that I just don't get, and so my general lack of interest in this book is entirely my fault, and not Terry's. I enjoyed the identity theme, of course - that's always a rich seam of storytelling material. Watching Nutt come to grips with his identity as an Orc, or Glenda realize that her entire sense of self has been culturally imposed upon her, well, that was fascinating. It's just that there was a whole thematic element to the book that I couldn't identify with and didn't care about. It's kind of like listening to Mozart and wishing someone would just shut all those bloody violins up. So, if you're a fan of Discworld, pick this up. If you like sports, pick this up. If you don't like sports, well, you take your chances. As a Pratchett completist, there was no question about reading this book. But I don't think it'll be one that I come back to very often. It's not you, Terry. It's me. [1:] I think I made it to first base once in my Little League career, and actually got hit on the head by a fly ball - which, I am given to understand, are the easiest to catch. I nearly drowned myself repeatedly trying to learn how to sail. I used to knock myself over trying to kick goals in soccer, my trick ankles pretty much meant that tennis and basketball and any other activity involving quick stops and starts were out, and I got tired of being thrown to the ground real fast in judo. If there was ever such thing as an anti-athlete, I was it. I feared to shake hands with the jocks because I thought we'd both vanish in a cloud of photons. ...more |
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Apr 26, 2010
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May 01, 2010
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Hardcover
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| 057506689X
| 9780575066892
| 057506689X
| 4.06
| 81,270
| 1994
| 1999
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really liked it
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"Music is my life." How many times have you heard that? From bona fide rock stars to teenage wannabes, there's something about music that occupies us, "Music is my life." How many times have you heard that? From bona fide rock stars to teenage wannabes, there's something about music that occupies us, that possesses us and just won't let go. Even if you're not a big music lover, there are probably songs which can ease your mind, pull you out of a dark mood, or set your heart to racing. There's music that'll lift your heart and make you think the world is a better place than it really is, and songs that will convince you that the dark heart of the world is just as decayed and corrupt as you always thought it was. Music has a kind of magic in it that can reach to the very core of who we are as thinking - and more importantly, feeling - beings. That magic is dangerous enough on our world, where magic doesn't actually exist. Imagine how powerful it would be on one where magic really was real. Like, say, to pick one out of thin air, the Discworld. Of course, the Discworld has had its share of trouble with popular entertainment before. Acting troupes brought about an Elf invasion in Lords and Ladies and the Horrible Betentacled Things of the Dungeon Dimension nearly escaped thanks to the Disc's proto-cinema in Moving Pictures. There's just something about the arts in Discworld that leads to trouble - usually the world-ending kind. In this case, though, the introduction of rock and roll - better known in Ankh-Morpork as "Music with Rocks In" - is only really dangerous to one person, the young Imp y Celyn. Just eighteen years old and already one of the best bards of Llamados, he wants to make something of his life. He wants to be more than just another bard, and in a mysterious shop that has only recently always been where it was, he finds his chance. Or rather, his chance finds him. A guitar-like instrument that does what no guitar should do - it whines, it growls, it sends out noises that run straight down your spine and make your nerves run with fire. It's clearly not of this world, and it wants nothing more than to live. For that, it needs to change Imp's fate, and by extension the fate of hundreds in Ankh-Morpork. Soon, Imp and his band - The Band With Rocks In - are the most famous thing in the city, and the strange magic of this music is being felt everywhere. Even the wizards are helpless against it. Normally this would result in the aforementioned Horrible Betentacled Things, but in this case it's more of a reversion to teenage years that never were. Still, Archchancellor Ridcully knows that there's some force acting on people that shouldn't be there, and nothing good ever comes of that. As if that weren't enough, Death has decided to get existential and tries to figure out how he can make himself forget for a while. Why he decides to do this is not clearly explored, but it results in him leaving his duty. In his place comes his young Granddaughter, Susan, who would be great for the job if she didn't think the whole idea of personifying a force of nature was just romantic woolly thinking. And it would be even better if she knew what her connection was to the doomed musician Imp y Celyn. This book can be seen as a companion to the earlier Moving Pictures as an examination of and homage to popular culture. By transplanting it to the Discworld, Pratchett is able to look at rock music from the point of view of people who've never even thought about such a thing before, and who can more easily see the magic of it. And of course, it's his big chance to make as many music jokes, puns and references as humanly possible, from the translation of Imp's name ("Imp" meaning "small bud" and "Celyn" meaning 'of the holly") to some proto-heavy metal musicians trying to make leopard skin pants from a cat that has some severe hearing difficulties. It's a sort of love letter to rock and roll and all that it has brought us. From teenyboppers to punk to the horrible misuses of leather and spandex, it holds a mirror up to the way that rock music has influenced our modern culture. But it does not mock, oh no. It shws great attention to and reverence for this young art form that has done so much to change the world. To list all the references made in this book would be nearly impossible, but the amount of work and thought that went into making it is quite clear. More importantly, though, the book addresses some questions that are a little deeper than the simple rock and roll jokes. Like Death's question: "WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? SERIOUSLY? WHEN YOU GET RIGHT DOWN TO IT?" Probably since the beginning of music, people have tried to find meaning in it. People have connected to music and to musicians in ways that they could never connect to other people, even family and friends. People find meaning in music, which then gives meaning to their lives, and the more you give your life to something, the harder the crash when that thing goes away. Imp discovers this in a very literal sense, but out here in the real world that is just as true. People mourned for Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain and other superstars as if they knew them. And in a way, I'm sure they thought they did. Like so much else in the world, though, music doesn't have any meaning but what we give to it. The truly great musicians, the ones we always lose too soon, give everything they have. They manage to say to us what we've been saying to ourselves, but could never really figure out how to put into words. Music is the voice our emotions could use if our brains didn't get in the way so often, and the best people lucky enough to be able to create it gain a kind of immortality. Not the literal kind, unfortunately. If you love music - especially rock music - then this is a book you should pick up and read. Even if you're not a Discworld fan, you'll probably enjoy it. ...more |
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Hardcover
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| 0552152943
| 9780552152945
| 0552152943
| 3.97
| 83,076
| 1990
| Jul 04, 2005
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liked it
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Given a choice between books and movies, many people - myself included - will say that books are always better than movies. "You can use your imaginat
Given a choice between books and movies, many people - myself included - will say that books are always better than movies. "You can use your imagination," we'll say, "drawing on the powers of the human mind to create things that manifestly are not real. You can decide for yourself what the scenes look like and how the characters appear, rather than have some director feed his or her vision over yours." Despite that, however, we all still love the movies. If you gave me a novelization of Casablanca, for example, I would be hard-pressed to say honestly that it's better than the movie. There's just something about movies, how they take images and ideas and just pour them into your head whole. Ideas and emotions flood your mind, evading the more analytical parts of your brain (if it's a really good movie) and heading straight for the unconscious. Oh sure, you might analyze it later - take it apart for meaning and symbolism, dissecting the casting choices or praising the story arc. But for those couple of hours, when you're staring at the screen, there's magic happening. We're lucky that we know what to do with it. On the Discworld, though, movie magic is something new, and something very, very dangerous. You see, one of the flaws of the Discworld is that it's not horribly real. Not as real as our world, certainly, but just about as real as you can be, if you're a flat world being carried on the backs of four elephants, who are in turn standing on a turtle that swims through the stars. It has been shown in many other volumes that reality on the Disc is negotiable and variable. And if something should come along to make the Disc slightly less real, then that could be a danger to everyone. In a dry and sunny place far from Ankh-Morpork, something stirs. Long held at bay by ancient rituals and safeguards, something primal has finally been allowed out into the world, and it seeks the minds of those who dream. It is the dream of a place called Holy Wood, and it is where reality itself may be torn asunder. It calls many people to create thse dreams. It calls young Victor Tugelbend, the best bad Wizard student in the Unseen University. He wants nothing more than to live a life of leisure, without actually having to work. It calls Silverfish, an alchemist who has very nearly mastered the art of making octo-cellulose. With it, he hopes to change the world. It calls Rock, a troll down from the mountains who dreams of doing more with his life than just hitting things. And it calls C.M.O.T. Dibbler, the greatest opportunist and worst entrepreneur in Ankh-Morpork. Without really knowing why, they all head to Holy Wood, where the sun always shines and the clicks can be made on the cheap. A strange city springs up, made not of solid brick and mortar buildings, but shacks with false fronts, a city that is completely modular and impermanent. There they build worlds and lives and, yes, dreams. Through them, the people of Ankh-Morpork can dream as well. All those dreams, though, are a shining beacon for Things that live beyond the boundaries of our universe. They seek the warmth and light of our world, and will exploit any opportunity to break through. By bringing dreams to life, the people of Holy Wood risk dooming the world to nightmares. I could, if I wanted, just start to catalog all the movie references that Pratchett makes in this book, but that would be ridiculous. Besides, someone has already done that for me, over at L-Space, and even they say it's impossible to list them all. Suffice it to say, if enough people remember it from classic cinema, then it's in this book in one way or another. If it's a story told about Hollywood and they heyday of the studio system, then it's in here too. Whether you're an avid fan of the cinema or you just watch whatever your friends are watching, you should be able to get a lot of enjoyment out of this. The themes that Pratchett explores in this book are interesting, too. One of these is the nature of fame. In one scene, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, a man who holds the life of the city in his hands, is seated next to Vincent and Ginger, the Disc's first movie superstars. Even though the Patrician has worked hard to become the ruler of the city, even though he is responsible for the lives and well-being of everyone in it, he is still far less famous and beloved than these two people who are famous just for standing in front of a camera and saying things. And even though he knows this, he still feels an odd thrill that he's actually sitting next to them. In our own world, we hold celebrities to be almost apart from the rest of us - although that may erode slowly as social media such as Twitter and Facebook open up more and more of their mundane lives to their fans. Still, if we see someone famous in the grocery store or on the bus, we think, "Oh my god! That's [famous person:]! He's buying broccoli here, just like me!!" Even though they are made of the same flesh and blood that we are, we perceive them as something Other, often even confusing them with the characters they play. In our world that's merely annoying, but on the Discworld, it's downright dangerous. The power of belief, coupled with Holy Wood's need to make dreams into reality, are a potent and disastrous mix. As he does so often, Pratchett is using his world to comment on our own, and in doing so is taking note of the immense power that Hollywood has. I heard someone say once that America's greatest export is unlike that of any other country. Our greatest export is Dreams. And dreams can be wonderful or they can be horrible. But their power to affect the world should never be underestimated. ...more |
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Jan 31, 2010
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Paperback
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| 0552154180
| 9780552154185
| 0552154180
| 4.00
| 58,866
| 1998
| Feb 12, 2006
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Quick - what do you know about Australia? I reckon if you live in Australia, you probably know quite a lot. If you've known someone from Australia or p Quick - what do you know about Australia? I reckon if you live in Australia, you probably know quite a lot. If you've known someone from Australia or perhaps have visited there, you might know a few things. If your experience is limited to a few "Crocodile Dundee" movies and the Crocodile Hunter, then you could probably stand to know a little more. No matter what your level of Australiana is, though, you probably know at least enough to get a lot of enjoyment out of this book, Terry Pratchett's homage to the strangest continent on Earth. Now keep in mind, Pratchett does state quite clearly that this is not a book about Australia. "It's about somewhere entirely different which happens to be, here and there, a bit... Australian." So that's okay then. Really, this is Pratchett's homage to Australia, a country that he clearly likes a lot. In reality, Australia is a pretty strange place. It's a giant island, most of which is barren desert. It's been disconnected from the other continents for so long that evolution has given us species unlike any others on Earth. Pretty much anything that you come across, from the lowliest spider to the cutest jellyfish to the weirdest platypus, is deadly. The country is a tribute to Nature, both in its beauty and its danger, and really deserves more attention than it gets. In one memorable scene, Death asks his Library for a complete list of dangerous animals on the continent known as XXXX, aka Fourecks. He is immediately buried under books, including Dangerous Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Jellyfish, Insects, Spiders, Crustaceans, Grasses, Trees, Mosses and Lichens of Terror Incognita, volume 29c, part three. A slight exaggeration? Perhaps. He then asks for a complete list of species that are not deadly, and gets a small leaflet on which is written, "Some of the sheep." This book isn't about Death, though, as much fun as that may be. This is about the worst wizard on the Disc. The classic inadvertent hero, who had seen so much of the world but only as a blur while he ran from danger. The hero who truly just wants to be left alone, perhaps with a potato - Rincewind. What you most need to know about Rincewind is that he absolutely does not want to be a hero. He craves a boring life, one in which the most he has to worry about is whether to have his potatoes baked, mashed, or deep fried. He does not want to be chased by mad highwaymen, put in prison for sheep theft, or required to completely change the climate of an entire continent. He doesn't want to time travel, be guided by strange, otherworldly kangaroos or fall in with a troupe of suspiciously masculine female performers. He just wants peace and quiet. The universe, of course, has other ideas. And so it is up to Rincewind to once again save the day. The continent of Fourecks has never seen rain - in fact, they think the very idea of water that falls from the sky is ludicrous. But there are legends of what they call The Wet - the day when water will be found on the surface of the ground, rather than hundreds of feet below it. And while they don't know how it will happen exactly, they do know it will happen. Lucky for Rincewind, the universe has chosen him to make sure that it does. I really can't list all of the Australia references because there are just too many. From drop bears to Vegemite, Mad Max to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, they're pretty much all there. This book is, like so many other Discworld, books, a lot of fun to read. One of the more interesting sections in the book is one that's not strictly necessary. Exploring a strange window in the University which, for some reason, leads to a beach, the Wizards of the Unseen University find themselves marooned thousands of miles away and thousands of years back in time. On this weird little island, they meet one of the most unusual gods on the Disc - the god of evolution. This god isn't interested in the normal godly things - lolling about and being worshiped, occasionally smiting a few followers here and there. As Pratchett puts it, "It is a general test of the omnipotence of a god that they can see the fall of a tiny bird. But only one god makes notes, and a few adjustments, so that next time it can fall further and faster." This god of evolution is devoted to making life forms better, often one at a time, and lives on a strange little island where there's only one of everything, but everything yearns to be useful. With him, the wizards are able to explore evolution and natural selection and figure out why sex is just so darn useful. I say that this section isn't strictly necessary because it just isn't. It's certainly interesting, and I suppose the god's island is a nice echo of the real Australia, where evolution has had a long time to tinker and come up with some really weird stuff, but in terms of the story, it's not all that important a plot point. In fact, the wizards in general don't contribute much to the story other than to make it longer and funnier. Their exploration of evolution and Rincewind's unwilling quest to bring rain to the barren land of Fourecks are almost wholly unrelated to each other, up until the very end. This isn't to say that they're unwelcome - I love watching the wizards explore the world. The combination of personalities whenever all the wizards get together is one that offers endless hours of reading fun, and I think that without them, the book would have been less enjoyable. They're just not essential to the plot, is all, and if that kind of thing is important to you, then you might not enjoy this book so much. Me, I love science and I love Discworld. While the actual Science of Discworld series was kind of dry and boring in the end, I love it when Pratchett explores real-world science through the eyes of his Discworld characters. By looking at science from another perspective, he is able to make it perhaps a little more understandable to people who otherwise might write science off as "too hard." This book is a trip through time and space and Australia. It's a long, strange trip, to be sure, but an entertaining one. ...more |
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Jan 24, 2010
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Jan 30, 2010
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Paperback
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| 0552146730
| 9780552146739
| 0552146730
| 4.02
| 6,755
| 1999
| Nov 01, 2001
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Sometimes you just have to lighten things up, y'know? As if the jokes-as-philosophy book wasn't light enough. There have been quite a few spin-off book Sometimes you just have to lighten things up, y'know? As if the jokes-as-philosophy book wasn't light enough. There have been quite a few spin-off books from Pratchett's Discworld series in the years that he's been doing them. Various maps, the Science of Discworld books, plays, films and now this. And I think we can all agree that spin-offs are never quite as good as the original. Oh sure, there are laughs to be had - it is Nanny Ogg, after all. If you don't know who she is, then you need to go through a few of the books in the Witches track of the Discworld series. If you don't have time for that, then let me sum it up for you. In the mountaintop village of Lancre, people still do things in the old ways. They have no real need for modern contrivances or newfangled ideas or, well, change. So in that way, they still see the need for witches where the rest of the world has decided that they're really nothing but interfering old biddies. Of course, they would never say so to their faces.... Lancre is the home to three witches. At least, there used to be three. One of them decided to trade it in to be a queen, leaving the elder witches to look after Lancre on their own. Granny Weatherwax is the elder of the two witches, and she is everything you expect in a witch. She's hard as nails, brooks no nonsense, and is the scariest thing in the mountains. She lives alone in her isolated shack, and takes great pride in people knowing that she was one of those people who didn't care what people thought. At her side is the more amiable, but no less powerful, Nanny Ogg. She's usually described as having a face like an apple left in the sun for too long. Unlike Granny, she's a matriarch, the head of a vast family of Oggs, and lives among the people. She has an infectious laugh, chats on and on, and is always ready to try new things. So, of the two, Nanny Ogg is the one who would naturally want to write a book. It's a cookbook, certainly, and contains a great many recipes. I may try some of them sometime, actually, as they are real recipes. The fictitious publishers take great pains to remind us that many of the original ingredients are either inedible or offensive, so while the dishes contained therein many not be authentic, they at least will probably not cause you any discomfort. The recipe I am most eager to try out is Mrs. Whitlow's Artery-Hardening Hogswatch Pie, although the Patrician's recipe for bread and water is tempting, as is Leonard of Quirm's method of making a cheese sandwich. There is a back half of the book as well, dealing mostly in the realm of etiquette and proper behavior. It's very amusing, and covers every situation from weddings to birth to death to visitations by semi-sentient scarecrows. What you really take away from it is that you should certainly be polite to everyone, and you should be especially polite to any witches you might come across. If you know what's good for you, anyway. I will be the first to admit that I'm a huge fan of Pratchett and his Discworld, but there are bigger fans than myself, and it is really for those people that this book was written. For some readers, the original books will never be enough, and they will clamor for any additional content to make the world they love more real. Thus things like the Harry Potter spin-off books, the Dark Tower companion books, and the various additional Discworld texts. If the original books were deficient in some way, if they added extra depth and substance to the characters, then I would collect them all. But this book doesn't really add anything to the Discworld because that world is already vivid and deep, a living world that the novels have brought to life over the last 25 years. I don't need a recipe book to tell me more about Nanny Ogg, and this recipe book doesn't tell me anything about Nanny Ogg - or any other Discworld characters - that I didn't already know. This book is an entertaining gimmick, and I hope that the rabid fans who love this kind of thing have found it to be the kind of thing that they like, to paraphrase Lincoln. But it doesn't inspire me to buy any more non-novel Discworld books. But that's just me. ...more |
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Jan 15, 2009
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Paperback
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| 0061020672
| 9780061020674
| 0061020672
| 3.91
| 102,494
| 1988
| Apr 2008
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liked it
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The Discworld, being a flat world that is carried through space on the backs of four elephants, who in turn are standing - rather patiently, I think -
The Discworld, being a flat world that is carried through space on the backs of four elephants, who in turn are standing - rather patiently, I think - on the back of a great turtle, is, understandably, a world awash in magic. There are magical creatures on the Disc - trolls and dwarfs and elves - and people who know how to use the magic that infuses the world. People like wizards. If you want to be a wizard, there are ways to get there. The best thing you can do is to be the eighth son of an eighth son - that type is almost certainly destined for the more arcane arts. Once you've become a wizard, you dedicate yourself to one thing: magic. And late lunches, comfortable robes and your pointy hat, but mainly to magic. Wizards don't marry. Wizards certainly don't have children. Except for one wizard. Ipsalore the Red, the eighth son of an eighth son, broke this law of wizardry. He fell in love, ran away from the University, and had sons of his own. Eight of them. His youngest son, Coin, was the carrier of a great power. He was the eighth son of the eighth son of an eighth son. Wizardry squared. A Sourcerer. Back in the old days, when the magic on the disc was much wilder, there were sourcerers everywhere. They built great castles and fought horrible wars of magic, the effects of which still scar the Disc to this day. Modern wizardry is a pale reflection of those days, and for good reason. If wizards continued to battle as the sourcerers did, the disc would be broken beyond recognition. Every wizard knows this. And yet, when young Coin comes to the Unseen University of Ankh-Morpork, bristling with power and holding a staff possessed by the ghost of his father, the wizards are more interested in the power he can give them than the responsibility they have. A sourcerer has arisen, and a new age of magic has come, with all of the terror that implies. Coin reminds them of what wizards used to be, and the power they used to have. Through him, old men who could barely manage a simple illusion are now able to re-shape the world with their wills. With a sourcerer behind them, there is nothing these wizards cannot accomplish. Only one man can stop them. His name is Rincewind, and he really, really doesn't want to get involved. Rincewind is a wizard (or, if you go by his pointy hat, a "Wizzard"), although he is so deficient in magical talent that it is believed that the average magical ability of the human population will actually goup once he dies. He wants nothing more than to be left alone to live a boring, mundane life. The universe, it seems, has different ideas. Together with Conina - the daughter of Cohen the Barbarian - and Nijel the Destroyer, Rincewind has to figure out how to stop a sourcerer from destroying the world. This book is one of the early volumes of the Discworld series, and so it doesn't quite have the depth that later books do. Oh, there's certainly a message to be found in it - mainly on the subject of identity. Rincewind identifies himself as a wizard, despite having all the magical talent of a lump of silly putty, and cannot conceive of being anything else. The sourcerer Coin, on the other hand, has been told who he is to become, mainly by the spirit of his dead (and rather monomaniacal) father. Conina has the blood of heroes in her veins, but her dream is to wield nothing sharper than a pair of beautician's scissors. And Nijel the Destroyer - who looks almost exactly the way his name sounds - desperately wants to be a barbarian hero, despite being about as muscular as a wet noodle. Despite all of this, however, the characters succeed when they decide for themselves who they want to be. The ones who suffer the most are the other wizards - the ones who allow Coin to tell them who they are. They invest their entire sense of self in the inflated image fed to them by the sourcerer - an image of power and strength - and when it all comes crashing down around them, they are only left with shame and disappointment. In the end, the remain who they always were, and that is the tragedy of their downfall. So if there's a lesson to be had in this book, that's it: know who you are and be it, as hard and as loud as you can. Other than that, it's a rollicking little adventure. Enjoy. --------------------------------------------------- "It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong." -Rincewind, Sourcery --------------------------------------------------- ...more |
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Nov 29, 2008
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Nov 29, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0061161640
| 9780061161643
| 0061161640
| 4.26
| 73,010
| Sep 20, 2007
| Sep 18, 2007
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really liked it
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This is the follow-up to Going Postal, in which the former con-man Moist von Lipwig sets up the new Ankh-Morpork post office and thwarts the evil corp
This is the follow-up to Going Postal, in which the former con-man Moist von Lipwig sets up the new Ankh-Morpork post office and thwarts the evil corporate wiles of the Clacks. When my co-workers asked me what I was reading, I told them, "It's a fantasy about.... About banking." I know, I know, it sounds like a bizarre topic for a fantasy novel, even for a Discworld novel, but gods bless Terry Pratchett, he can even make basic economic theory interesting. Why is it not that bad that a penny costs more than a penny to make? Why don't we need gold to back our currency anymore? Why do these little pieces of paper in our wallets actually mean anything? It could be implied, from reading this, that modern economics are a result of a grand, elaborate con. You see, money is only worth something because we say it is. Oh, we can pretend it's based on gold, which we think is valuable because it's rare, or shiny. We can pretend it's based on the integrity of our nation, and hope that our nation's integrity never falters. We can base it on anything we want, but the key is this - the paper in your wallet only has value because we all agree that it does. Now the reason this book isn't an economic treatise, of course, is because it has a plot. Golems, assassins, and madmen conspire to rule the economic future of the city, and all of them want Moist von Lipwig out of the way.... ...more |
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Feb 04, 2008
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Feb 09, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0060890312
| 9780060890315
| 0060890312
| 4.25
| 64,014
| Sep 21, 2006
| Oct 01, 2006
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really liked it
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I walked into my local bookstore, saw this on the shelf and snapped it right up. I think Terry is now the only author I'll do that for. As much as I l
I walked into my local bookstore, saw this on the shelf and snapped it right up. I think Terry is now the only author I'll do that for. As much as I love Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, Robert Jordan, they're not automatic buys. Pratchett is. Anyway, this is the third of the Tiffany Aching books, stories about the young witch of the chalk. She's the granddaughter of a great witch, Granny Aching, and studies under some of the most powerful witches of Lancre. In addition, she has the undivided devotion of the Nac Mac Feagle, the Wee Free Men, who are determined to help her. Even if she doesn't want them to. The Nac Mac Feagle? Imagine.... Imagine the Smurfs crossed with mad Scottish Picts. They're a blast. In this story, Tiffany has come to the attention of Wintersmith, the spirit of winter, by interrupting the Black Morris Dance. By doing so, she finds herself the obsessive target of an elemental force of nature. The frost on the window spells her name, and the flakes that fall from the sky have her shape. Over-attentive boyfriends have never been quite this bad, and this one is threatening to plunge the world into eternal ice. In addition, Tiffany is learning the darkest arts of witchery, its hidden secrets and greatest power. Her teacher, the 113-year old Miss Treason is one of the most feared witches in the mountains, but not long for this world. It will be Tiffany's responsibility to see to it that the great power of witchcraft remains strong. As always, it's a fun book. It's Pratchett. And I understand he has a new one out now, too. Man, anyone who can write as many books as he does and be consistently good is my hero.... ...more |
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Sep 20, 2007
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Feb 01, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0060815221
| 9780060815226
| 0060815221
| 4.35
| 74,743
| Jan 01, 2005
| Sep 13, 2005
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really liked it
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I love Discworld. I knew that already, but I really realized it when I tried to explain it to people who hadn't read any of it. Here's what I came up
I love Discworld. I knew that already, but I really realized it when I tried to explain it to people who hadn't read any of it. Here's what I came up with: Pratchett started out making fun of established fantasy, and his earliest books are pretty much parody. But he very quickly found the heart of his flat little world, and realized that it has limitless possibilities - I think this one is number 35 or so. And in those 35, from The Colour of Magic back in 1983, there are no bad books. None. Oh, sure, there are less good books, and the quality of the Discworld books forms a neat little bell curve, with, say Eric at one end and Small Gods on the other. The average Discworld books are still a lot better than a lot of the other fantasy out there. And at a pace of a book a year or more, that's very damned impressive. This one, THUD!, is one of the Vimes Books, which puts it very high in my estimation. Of all the characters he's written, I like Vimes the best. Granny Weatherwax comes a close second. Basically I really like the old, cynical, take-no-nonsense characters that take the world into their own hands to do the Right Thing, no matter the cost to themselves. The reason why Vimes tops Weatherwax is that, of all the characters on the Disc, Vimes has had the most growth. In his first book, Guards! Guards!, he was a drunk and a failure, the nominal chief of the shadow of a night watch. Enter Carrot Ironfoundersson and a dragon, and Vimes' path was set. Now he's a Duke, Commander of the Guard, married to one of the richest women in the city and the proud father of a toddler. He has everything. In fiction, this is never a good place to be.... It's coming up on Koom Valley Day in Ankh-Morpork, the day in which trolls and dwarfs remember the only battle in the multiverse where, if you listen to the stories, both sides ambushed each other. Add fundamentalist Deep Dwarfs who are looking for a terrible secret, a murder accompanied by a troll's club, and the mysterious Mister Shine, and you have a recipe for chaos. Not in Vimes' city, though. A murder has been committed, and if he has to tear through thousands of years of history to catch the killers, he will. If you're already a Discworld fan, you don't need my urging to pick this one up. Most likely you already have it. Just remember to get the companion book, Where's My Cow? You'll understand why. If you're not a Discworld fan, and you're reading this, then you are a slacker. Get yourself to a bookstore. We close with Troll philosophy: Him who mountain crush him no Him who sun him stop him no Him who hammer him break him no Him who fire him fear him no Him who raise him head above him heart Him diamond. ...more |
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Jan 26, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0060013133
| 9780060013134
| 0060013133
| 4.41
| 126,928
| 2004
| Sep 28, 2004
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really liked it
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I actually started reading the most recent Discworld book, Making Money, and within about twenty pages I realized that I had no memory of what had hap
I actually started reading the most recent Discworld book, Making Money, and within about twenty pages I realized that I had no memory of what had happened in the book that preceded it. This is really unusual for Pratchett, whose books can usually be read without much prior knowledge of what came before. They're usually very self-contained, but this one was, I could tell, very dependent on your having read Going Postal. So I did, again. So, let us meet the slippery mister Moist Von Lipwig - the greatest fraud, scammer and con-man on the Disc. He's sold glass for diamonds, broken banks and run away rich. Until, as such people eventually do, he got caught. If not for the timely intervention of his angel, Moist most certainly would have died a criminal's death. His angel - the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. The city needed its post office open again. There was competition from the Clacks, to be sure, but the Patrician saw a need, and he in turn needed someone to take the project. So he offered Von Lipwig a second life, one in which he was the Postmaster - a job only a man with a mind as twisted as his could survive. Since all of the Discworld books can be started with a baseline of "really good," you can safely bet that the story is going to be a fun read. Having the main character be an out-and-out criminal is fun, especially finding out how he is eventually bent to using his powers for good. It's also a nice indictment of the modern corporate state and its utter disregard for the workers that make it possible, and I always enjoy that. So, I'm all caught up. Time to get to Making Money.... ...more |
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not set
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Feb 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0552148997
| 9780552148993
| 0552148997
| 4.50
| 112,579
| 2002
| Jan 01, 2003
|
really liked it
|
Pratchett books are like potato chips - can't read just one. The Discworld books are broadly arranged into four groups. The Death books look at what it Pratchett books are like potato chips - can't read just one. The Discworld books are broadly arranged into four groups. The Death books look at what it means to be a human being, the Wizard books are about how we deal with the universe at large, the Witches books are about how the individual fits into the rest of society, and the Watch books are about how we deal with being part of a system. Having been a poli-sci major, I tend to enjoy the latter group the most. The main character of the Watch books is Sam Vimes, once a captain of the night watch, now a Duke and the Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. He's got a wonderful wife who's expecting their first son. He has everything to lose, and, thanks to a bolt of lightning on the roof of the Unseen University library, he nearly loses it all. He's sent back in time 30 years to when the Night Watch was an ineffective organization, the city's leader was a paranoid madman, and the citizenry was ready for revolution. Into all of this comes Sam Vimes, who has to take the role of the sergeant who played a pivotal role in the unrest, John Keel. And part of John Keel's job is to be to make sure the young lance-constable Sam Vimes grows up to be a good copper. Under normal circumstances, this would be hard enough, but with the city about ready to explode and the government run by corruption, this is an even harder job. I always enjoy reading the Sam Vimes stories, mostly because, of all the main characters that Pratchett uses, he's the one that has the most growth. He goes from being a drunken captain in Guards! Guards! to a Leading Member of Society and ambassador in Thud!. In this book, he's fighting for a great many things at once - his wife and child, his city, his fellow officers and, literally, himself. He also has some of the best scenes - at one point, he barges into the headquarters of the city's Secret Police and finds the torture chambers. After blackjacking the torturer, he runs into the adjacent room, grabs the little man he finds there, and roars, "And what does daddy do at work all day, mister?" What with all the recent arguments about the U.S. torturing terrorist subjects, about whether it's warranted or not, or even actually happens, I think that phrase should be hung up in every office at Gitmo and should be memorized by every intelligence officer in the CIA. Politics is always important, and occasionally funny. With Terry Pratchett, they're both. ...more |
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Mar 03, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 4.18
| 68,120
| 1997
| Nov 01, 1998
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it was amazing
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A strange foreign country across the sea, a moneyed aristocracy eager to send young men off to war, political operatives using a flimsy pretext to inc
A strange foreign country across the sea, a moneyed aristocracy eager to send young men off to war, political operatives using a flimsy pretext to incite nationalist and racist fervor to encourage said war.... Sounds unpleasantly familiar, which is probably why I was drawn to reading this book. This is one of the Watch books in the Discworld series, and like so many of those books deals with the intersection between law and politics. In this case, a mysterious island surfaces halfway between the great city-state of Ankh-Morpork and the desert empire of Klatch. Naturally, both nations claim the island as their own, and tempers flare. Next thing you know, there's armies being built, speeches being made and there's war in the air. And Sir Samuel Vimes, the commander of the Watch, is certain that someone is up to something, that there's a crime being committed. It might be a crime on the scale of nations, but it is a crime nonetheless. It's a great book, and timely, like so many of the more recent Discworld books. Pratchett has a deft pen and a great eye for the way the world truly works. And when seen through the jaded and cynical lens that is Sam Vimes, the hypocrisy and double-dealing become all that clearer. One line popped out at me: "It had all sounded straightforward in Ankh-Morpork, he thought. We were going to sail into Klatch and be in al-Khali by teatime, drinking sherbet with pliant young women in the Rhoxie. The Klatchians would take one look at our weapons and run away...." This was published back in 1997, by the way, well before we launched our own poorly thought-out, baseless invasion of a land and a people we didn't understand. Go Terry. ...more |
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Feb 28, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 4.15
| 55,855
| 1994
| 1995
|
really liked it
|
There is a saying, often attributed to the Chinese - "May you live in interesting times." Usually when this is invoked, it's done so as a curse, the i
There is a saying, often attributed to the Chinese - "May you live in interesting times." Usually when this is invoked, it's done so as a curse, the idea being that interesting times are more likely to cause you trouble than nice boring times, and perhaps that's true. The folks in Baghdad, for example, are certainly living in interesting times right now. The trouble is that not everybody is able to stay alive to enjoy them. That's one of the problems with life as we know it - we long for things to be interesting, exciting and thrilling, like what happens to Bruce Willis every time he's on the screen. When those times come, however, we realize that it's the boring, predictable times we really want. In other words, we want whatever we don't have at the moment, which just goes to prove that we, as a species, are messed up in the head. If we had been assembled by any rational Supreme Being, it would have made us a little more accepting of the lives we lead. This mind-set may not lead us to the advanced society we have now, but it certainly would lead us to something approaching world peace. This book is about wanting what you don't have, and what happens when you get it. The central character is the wizard - or Wizzard - Rincewind, one of the oldest of the Discworld characters. He's been with the series since the first book, The Colour of Magic, and he's grown to be a favorite for many readers. What Rincewind wants, really wants, is to be left alone. No quests, no challenges, no one trying to kill him or otherwise ruin his day. If the world forgot that Rincewind existed, he'd be the happiest man alive. Unfortunately for Rincewind, the world hasn't forgotten him. He has to be sent to the far-off Agatean Empire, a place so remote that few, if any, people know anything about it. A message came, asking for the Great Wizzard, and Rincewind is the only one who fits the bill. The fact that he can't do magic is not important, really. When he gets there, he meets Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde - seven incredibly old barbarian heroes. Seven men who don't know the meaning of the word "defeat," though you'd probably have to repeat it very loudly before they heard what you'd said. Together, the Horde are headed to the capital city of the Empire, looking to make the biggest heist in their long, long, long barbarian careers. Together, Rincewind, Cohen and the Horde find the Empire in the throes of a people's revolution, borne of righteous peasant rage and the skillful manipulations of the Grand Vizier, Lord Hong. Like so many Discworld books, this is a lot of fun to read. The Agatean Empire is a blend of ancient China and Japan, giving us ninja and samurai alongside blue and white Ming ceramics and an exam-based bureaucracy. And like most of the other Discworld books, this one gives you something to think about - what do you want to be? Rincewind wants to be left alone, because he thinks he'll be safer that way. Cohen wants to settle down, because he worries that his life as a barbarian hero might be catching up to him. Lord Hong wants to be a gentleman of Ankh-Morpork, or at least the ruler of such men. And the people of the Empire, who call themselves the Red Army, want to be free, even though they have no idea what being free means. The only character who seems to change his life for the better is Mister Saveloy, the youngest member of the Silver Horde and the one they call "Teach." He realized that what he thought he wanted - a life of educating young people - wasn't what he really wanted after all. What he wanted was the certainty and simplicity of Cohen's barbarian lifestyle, and found it rather agreed with him. So what's the lesson here? Perhaps this: Be happy with what you have, but don't be afraid to change. Just remember that not all change is for the better. ...more |
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not set
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Aug 23, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0552140287
| 9780552140287
| 0552140287
| 4.41
| 103,959
| 1993
| 1994
|
it was amazing
|
When last we left our intrepid Ankh-Morpork Night Watch, things were looking up. This is a nice change from the gutter's-eye-view we had at the beginn
When last we left our intrepid Ankh-Morpork Night Watch, things were looking up. This is a nice change from the gutter's-eye-view we had at the beginning of Guards! Guards!. Things have changed in the time between books. The Watch has a new headquarters, much nicer than its old one, thanks to Lady Sibyl Ramkin, the fiance of Captain Sam Vimes. She comes from an ancient and respectable family, has more money than anyone else in the city, and loves Vimes despite his deep-seated curmudgeonliness, if that is a word. What's more, the Watch is taking on new recruits, as ordered by the Patrician. Ankh-Morpork is a city with a very diverse population, and the Patrician believes that the Watch should reflect that diversity. Now we have a Watch open to anyone - trolls, dwarfs, the undead, apes, women - who wants to join, or who doesn't want to get their heads beaten in. Carrot Ironfoundersson has become a beloved figure in the city - he knows everyone and everyone knows him. All in all, things are looking up. But there are those who are of a mind that things would be better if only Ankh-Morpork had a king.... This is a recurring theme in the early Watch books - the irrational need for royalty. Although, that's not entirely accurate. Pratchett is a British writer, of course, and he's got the Queen to look up to, but she doesn't have all that much real power. Certain people in Ankh-Morpork are looking for a sovereign - not to wave at them and make a Hogswatch speech, but to actually take over their city. They hope, in their hearts, that a king will solve everything. In that way, this recurring theme is not so much about royalty versus populism, but rather the ability to control one's own life versus allowing someone else to control it for you. The idea that one has responsibility for one's own actions and well-being is dominant in the Guards books, no more so than in this one. There is a man named Edward d'Eath, and he has a vision. He is the last of an aristocratic line whose power has declined in this age of guilds and merchants. He looks to the past and sees it as better, brighter than the future. He knows that, if he can just do one little thing, Ankh-Morpork - and he - will be restored to glory. That one little thing, of course, is to put a king on the throne. Not just any king, of course. The fools who thought to use a dragon to set up a puppet king showed how ineffectual that would be. No, this would only work with a real king, a descendant of the ancient kings of Ankh-Morpork. Find him, put him on the throne, and everything will finally be set straight. Of course, that doesn't work out nearly as well as Edward hopes. He steals a mysterious artifact to set his plan in motion - the Gonne. It is a weapon created by one of the most brilliant minds on the Disc, a man kept peacefully imprisoned by Ankh-Morpork's Patrician. It is a device that should have been destroyed, but was instead put on display so that the Assassins, the bringers of death, could look at it and say "Beware this thing." Like I said, this book is all about making choices in life. Vimes is engaged to be married to Sybil Ramkin, and thus his days as the Captain of the Watch are numbered. He may be in a better position than he was in the last book - having someone try to kill you is always refreshing, after all - but he knows that the life he's giving up, with all of its pain and trouble and heartache, is the life that he needs to live. Corporal Carrot needs to choose how best to serve the city of Ankh-Morpork. He is an excellent policeman, probably the only man on the Disc who could get in the middle of an incipient troll/dwarf race riot and shame them out of killing each other. People do what he says - he is, in his own words, "good at being obeyed." If he wanted to, he could run the city and the city would be glad to let him do it. But is that the best thing for the city? The troll Detritus and the dwarf Cuddy both have choices - will they conform to the ancient animosity that stands between their two races, or will they overcome it for the common good? And then there's the Gonne itself. As a weapon, it is frighteningly powerful - much more so than the standard-issue crossbow - and as a firearm, however primitive, it represents a vast escalation in the way violence is done. What's more, since this is a fantasy novel, the Gonne has something of a mind of its own. Its wielders hear it talking to them, convincing them that the only thing standing between them and what they want are a few simple deaths - something the Gonne can easily provide. It even uses the old NRA saw verbatim - Gonnes don't kill people. People kill people. But people have a choice, perhaps more of a choice than the characters of these books do. The Gonne controls them, the trigger practically pulls itself, and when you're holding it, you can easily understand how a simple shot, one simple thing, could change the world. For the better, of course - always for the better. Pratchett's views on guns and their efficacy aside, it's a very gripping book. There's the mystery of it, of course - who has the Gonne, and why are they using it - but it's also a story about characters and the choices they make for themselves. My absolute favorites in this are Detritus and Cuddy. Trolls and dwarfs have a famous antagonism, stretching back to the ancient battle of Koom Valley (the only battle in the multiverse where both sides ambushed each other) and it would be very easy for them to fall into simple, culturally conditioned roles. While it may be a cliche to say that they found common ground, learned to look past their own prejudices and learned to respect - nay, to like one another, that's exactly what they did. It is due to Pratchett's skill as a writer and as a creator of characters that we come to deeply care for this relationship, investing a lot of hope in it. We know that if Cuddy and Detritus can become friends, then maybe there's hope for everyone. This emotional investment pays off, and Pratchett reaches deep into our hearts at the end, showing that just because you start with a cliche, it doesn't mean it can't have depth. Of course, if you're not quite as analytical as I am, you can still enjoy it as a good murder mystery. Watching Vimes and company piece together the crime is always fun, because there's always a twist somewhere that you never saw coming. And Vimes really is one of my favorite Discworld characters - he's cynical and world-weary, but he still has enough idealism within him to carry him through those times that look like they're trying to kill him. All in all, a great book and one that's highly recommended. The earlier Discworld books are largely stand-alone, so if you've never read any of the series before, don't worry - you can pick this one up and you won't really miss anything. You may, however, find yourself driving back to the bookstore to get as many other Discworld books as you can. I'm just saying.... ...more |
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Oct 14, 2009
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0061056928
| 9780061056925
| 0061056928
| 4.20
| 81,030
| 1992
| Aug 23, 1996
|
really liked it
| Elves. When you think of elves, what do you think of? The tall, fair-skinned beings of Tolkien's Middle Earth? The ebony warriors from Dungeons & Drago Elves. When you think of elves, what do you think of? The tall, fair-skinned beings of Tolkien's Middle Earth? The ebony warriors from Dungeons & Dragons? Delicious cookies? Not on Discworld. On Discworld, the Elves are folk of legend, and dark legend at that. People there remember the elves, although not very well. They remember through old wives' tales, about leaving milk for the fairies and not going near the standing stones. Ask someone in the kingdom of Lancre, and they'll think of elves as you and I think of elves - pretty, wonderful, magical... Ask Granny Weatherwax and she'll tell you the truth - that the Elves are not of this world, and don't belong here either. She'll tell you that when the barriers of the worlds grow thin, when the crop circles start to show up, the elves will be waiting, readying themselves to come back. For theirs is a parasite universe, a land of ice, and they desire ours for their... entertainment. Such is the setup for Lords and Ladies, another one of Pratchett's darker Discworld books. There is still his customary humor, of course, which would be sorely missed were it absent. But it's also got a philosophical edge to it, as many of his books of this period do. It's about faith in stories, and knowing the difference between what is true and what you wish were true. It's circle time again, where crop circles are appearing everywhere, and the parallel and parasite universes are coming into closer contact, and Granny Weatherwax knows that she is going to die. Or is she? She can't be sure.... Esme Weatherwax is the consummate witch. Tall, thin and bony, she's the kind of woman who can wear the pointy black hat of a witch and dare you to think she's anything else. She's strong of mind, never afraid to speak the truth, the best witch in Lancre and not slow in admitting it. But many years ago, she was a headstrong young girl who was offered power by a mysterious woman in red who stood in the center of a stone circle. The woman promised power and freedom, but could not leave the circle. Rather than take the easy way to witchcraft, Granny worked, learned, and grew old. Which is always for the best. As is the case with many Pratchett books, there are multiple plots that all center around the Elves and their newest attempt to gain the Discworld as their own world. Magrat Garlick, the third witch (because there must always be three) is going to marry Verence, the king of Lancre and a former Fool. Mustrum Ridcully, the Archchancellor of the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, is attending the wedding and at the same time remembering his days in Lancre chasing after the headstrong young girl who grew up to become Esme Weatherwax. And Granny herself is remembering things that happened to all possible Esme Weatherwaxes, and for someone as sure of herself as she is, is having a serious identity problem. Something needs to be said here about the three witches of Lancre, recurring characters as they are in all of the Witches books of the series. Normally this would be done chronologically, upon reviewing the first book in which they appeared, but I want to do it now. Besides, I haven't read Equal Rites in a long time, but it's on my list. Granny is as I have said - the unofficial chief witch of the region, who has attained the status of being almost mythical in the village of Bad Ass. She is feared and revered, but only because she is always who she is. Nanny (Gytha) Ogg is Esme's polar opposite. She has a face like an apple left in the sun too long, her youth is filled with enough tawdry encounters to make a fraternity lose its breath, and her fondness for bawdy tunes (such as the ever-immortal Hedgehog song) has made her a figure of legend. But like any witch, Gytha is not to be underestimated. She can think faster than most anyone, and do so around corners. She's the grounding influence for Esme when Esme gets too high on herself, and while being fearsome in her own right, she is one of the more approachable witches Lancre has to offer. And then there is Magrat Garlick, the third witch. She is the soppy one, the romantic one, the one with the collection of occult jewelry and a library in her cottage. She's the youngest, the least experienced, but not without potential. And while the other two witches may treat her like an ignorant stripling, they only do so because that's how you become a witch - by learning things, not by being told things. But now Magrat is going to be Queen, and there are only the two witches. And the elves are coming.... This is, as I have said, a darker book. We get an interesting look into Granny Weatherwax's psyche - who she is, what she fears - and it's a little chilling. The reader is used to the utterly unflappable Granny Weatherwax, so to see her, well, flapped is kind of disturbing. At the same time, though, it makes her more human than before, which she needs to be if she is to defeat the elves. This book also offers a good look into the human need for fantasy. The elves anchor themselves to the Discworld by belief - if enough people want the elves to come, then they will. But the longer they stay away, the more time we get without them, the more they become what we think they are. Stories. Myths. Cute magical critters who are to be watched, but not necessarily feared. We need our stories to get us through the "iron times." Yes, we need elves, to help us escape from our lives from time to time, just as we need witches and wizards and gods. But we don't need them here. Here, in the real world, we have only ourselves to count on, and we need to be strong enough to do that. Stories are good, in their place. But never mistake a story for the real thing. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Nov 20, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.32
| 124,365
| 1992
| 1993
|
it was amazing
|
This was the first Pratchett book I read, and I'm glad of it. While it has the humor and satire that is inherent in all of the Discworld books, it als
This was the first Pratchett book I read, and I'm glad of it. While it has the humor and satire that is inherent in all of the Discworld books, it also has something else - something to say. It was evident, even from the first time I read this book, that Pratchett had put some real heavy thinking into it. This book is, as the title suggests, about gods. Where do they come from? Where do they go? What keeps them moving? Ordinarily, gods don't like this sort of question. People who think are not what gods look for in followers. Gods want people who believe. That's where their power comes from. Gods with many believers are stong, great gods. Armies of priests and worshipers attend to their every needs, the sacrifices are plentiful and their dominion is vast. A great God wants for nothing. A god with no believers, however, is a small god, a mindless thought blistering through the firmament, searching with single-minded fervor for one thing: a believer. What happens, then, when a Great God finds out that, while he wasn't looking, he lost all of his believers? That's the thrust of this tale, the story of the Great God Om and how he became a tortoise for three years. It's about the difference between what is real and what is believed in, and how much difference that can make at times. It's about fundamental and trivial truths, and how to tell them apart. It's about eagles and tortoises and how much they need each other. Above all, it's something of, in my opinion, a statement of faith. Many people ask me if I am religious, and I tell them no. That's partly due to this book and the thinking that it made me do. Spiritual? Sure. Religious? No. This is, as I said, the story of the Great God Om, who discovered, about 300 feet above the ground, that he had been a tortoise for the last three years. Before this mid-air revelation he had been just chewing at melons and wondering where the next lettuce patch was. Suddenly, all the self-awareness of a Great God was put into his head, as well as the knowledge that he was probably about to die. Om had intended to manifest as a bull or a pillar of fire - something much more majestic and Godly - but for some reason, that hadn't worked. He had become a tortoise. Now, in the presence of Brutha, a novice in the Church of the Great God Om, the god remembers who he was, and discovers that he's in a lot of trouble. The Church of the Great God Om. There's something to talk about. Many people believe, upon reading it, that it's an allegory for the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The Omnian Church permits no heresy. It permits no sin, no disbelief. Violating the precepts of Om and His Prophets can lead to death, in a lingering and painful manner. The Quisition cannot be wrong, for was it not Om Himself who put suspicion into their minds? It's a tactic that has been used by many religions over the years, often to justify acts that they know their god would not approve of. I don't believe that Pratchett was trying to take a stab at the Catholics in this book. It's just an unfortunate coincidence that the Omnians and the Catholics bear a few points of similarity. A rigid hierarchy, for example. A penchant at one point or another for extracting confessions by any means necessary is another. It's all very efficient and effective. There's a problem, though, as is pointed out by Brutha late in the book: if you beat a donkey with a stick long enough, the stick becomes all that the donkey believes in. At that point, neither gods nor believers benefit. The only people benefiting are those wielding the stick. Instead of becoming a tool for inspiration, the church becomes a tool for terror. People do not obey their god out of love - they obey their church out of fear. This is the kind of church that could produce the Deacon Vorbis, head of the Exquisitors. He is one of those men who would turn the world on its back, just to see what would happen. He is everything that is wrong with the Church and, unfortunately, it seems that he is in line to be the Eighth Prophet. In other words, Omnia is not a nice place to live. Its church is vast, its god is small, and neighboring nations want to take it down a few pegs. It's up to Brutha and his God to change the course of history. As I said, there was a lot of thought put into this novel, as well as Pratchett's usual hidden research. For example, Brutha is called a "Great dumb ox" by his classmates, due to his size and apparent lack of intellect. The same epithet was thrown at Thomas Aquinas by his classmates, and he was canonized less than a century after his death. Like Aquinas, Brutha is not dumb. He is simply slow and careful in how he thinks, and his measured pace leads him far more surely to the truth than the hot-headed and passionate men who march with him. Some people read this book as an attack on religion. Others see it as a defense of personal faith. I think Terry had a story to tell, and perhaps a point to make. The beauty of books such as these is that they can be whatever you want them to be. For me, it came as a kind of defense of gods. Humans, the book suggests, need gods. Now there is a growing atheist community out there who disagree with that idea, and I can definitely see where they're coming from. As I've said many times, I'm not entirely sold on the god idea yet. But the gods that are rampant in the Discworld aren't the kinds of gods that the atheists and the true believers fight over - the omnipotent creator of Everything. They are gods who are controlled by humans, who exist with humans in a kind of co-dependent relationship. Humans need gods, and gods need humans. In its way, this kind of theology makes gods more... realistic to me. I can't say for sure whether a god or gods exist, but if they did, I think I could live with this kind of arrangement. What this book definitely is, in any case, is good. Very good. If you haven't read it, do so. If you have read it, do yourself a favor and read it again. --------------------------------------------------- "Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Laste the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed." - from the writings of the philosopher Abraxis, Small Gods --------------------------------------------------- ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 26, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0061020621
| 9780061020629
| 0061020621
| 4.28
| 104,471
| 1991
| Jul 30, 2002
|
it was amazing
|
So. What are your thoughts on death? Or rather, Death? It's a weird thing, death. I mean, you're here one minute and then you're... not. And while we al So. What are your thoughts on death? Or rather, Death? It's a weird thing, death. I mean, you're here one minute and then you're... not. And while we all know intellectually that we're going to die, there's something in us that refuses to believe that the essential Person that we are could possibly cease to exist. We have personalities, unique aggregations of memory and experience and inborn preferences that all display themselves as a Person, as far as we know unique in all the world. Each human being is an entity that will never be seen again in this universe, and as far as we know, the cessation of life brings that entity to an end, reducing the person we knew to a mere insentiate object. Is it any wonder we come up with stories for what happens... y'know, after? Just about very culture that's ever been has come up with some form of afterlife, be it an eternal feast for heroes, a paradise in which we can bask in God's glory, a place of exquisite pain and torment, or a ticket back to Earth for another go 'round. There is no way of knowing if any of those are actually what happens to us when we die. At least not until we actually do it. So since we cannot know, we make stuff up, if only to make the whole thing easier to bear. What often goes with that other world is someone to take us over. A ferryman or a guide, someone who knows the territory and knows where we need to go in what is very likely a rather confusing time. It's another piece of comfort - knowing that there's Someone out there who knows where we need to go and what we need to do. Which brings us to Death. He's been portrayed many ways over the years - my favorite is the Death from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series - a sort of older sister who's known you all your life and loves you anyway. If she shows up for me when I die, I think I'll be okay. I would be just as happy with Pratchett's Death, even though he is the more traditional robes-scythe-and-skeleton type. Fans of Discworld love Death, which I imagine was somewhat baffling for Pratchett early on. In the first few books, Death was a bit character - he showed up a couple of times to collect the recently deceased, and that was it. But his scenes were so memorable and so good that they sometimes stuck out above the rest of the book. He speaks entirely in capital letters, which lends him a voice that is probably reminiscent of James Earl Jones. He's aloof, but not uncaring, and seems to take a rather curious interest in humanity. He likes cats, has a house off on the edge of nowhere, and rides a great white steed named Binky. Death has become, in short, an interesting person. And it seems that's a problem. The Universe, you see, is a finely tuned instrument, one which needs monitoring and, occasionally, adjusting. There are... let's call them Auditors, who make sure that reality stays real - no odd deviations or anomolies such as, for example, anthropomorphic personifications of natural forces. In all honesty, they would eliminate all life if they could, but that is, as yet, beyond their capabilities. So they settle for telling Death that it's time for him to retire. He gets a little hourglass all his own, and time to kill until the new Death comes into being. In the interim, this time between Deaths, a new problem arises: nothing is dying. Or, to be more specific, things are dying, but the vital energies that empowered everything, from cabbages to clergymen, aren't being taken away. Without a Death to handle this very vital - so to speak - function, the life energy is looking for a place to go, an outlet. As a result, things that shouldn't be alive are up and moving around. In some cases this means objects running along of their own accord, and in others it means that the dead simply have nowhere to go. Such is the case with the wizard Windle Poons. After 130 years at the Unseen University, he was rather looking forward to a nice rest and then a bit of reincarnation as a woman in a far more liberal society. What he got instead was nothingness. Given that option, he went back to his body and became Undead, much to the consternation of the rest of the UU faculty. Unfortunately for them, they have bigger things to worry about - the buildup of life force is having a rather larger and more dangerous effect on the city of Ankh-Morpork itself. The lack of a Death may well doom the city in a manner that will be horribly familiar to many of Pratchett's readers. And where is Death in all this, or at least the person who used to be Death? He has found a small farm below the famous Ramtop Mountains. An old maid, Miss Flitworth, needs a hand and Death needs a way to spend his time - something he's never had to worry about before. He takes the alias Bill Door and starts to learn what it means to be alive, despite the short time he has left. The book, as you might imagine, is all about being alive. What makes life special and precious and ultimately worth living. Windle Poons let life go past while he grew old behind the university walls, and it is only in death that he finds out all that fun he'd missed. Bill Door learns that it is the fragility of life, and its most certain end, which ultimately gives it meaning. In the middle, we see that everything that can live yearns to do so, from the mayflies to the great Counting Pines to cities to ideas. While the book gives no answers to what may happen after death (the Discworld books rarely do), it does give us another way to look at life. And that, ultimately, is the goal of any great story. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 17, 2009
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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my rating |
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| 3.78
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liked it
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Jul 09, 2012
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Jul 09, 2012
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| 4.18
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liked it
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not set
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Apr 18, 2012
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| 4.18
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liked it
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Dec 16, 2011
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Dec 16, 2011
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| 4.01
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it was ok
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Apr 26, 2010
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May 01, 2010
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| 4.06
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really liked it
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Jan 30, 2010
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Feb 05, 2010
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| 3.97
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liked it
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Jan 28, 2010
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Jan 31, 2010
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| 4.00
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liked it
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Jan 24, 2010
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Jan 30, 2010
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| 4.02
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liked it
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Jan 15, 2009
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Jan 15, 2009
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| 3.91
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liked it
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Nov 29, 2008
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Nov 29, 2008
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| 4.26
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really liked it
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Feb 04, 2008
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Feb 09, 2008
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| 4.25
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really liked it
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Sep 20, 2007
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Feb 01, 2008
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| 4.35
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really liked it
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Jan 26, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.41
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really liked it
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Feb 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.50
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really liked it
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Mar 03, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.18
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it was amazing
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Feb 28, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.15
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really liked it
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Aug 23, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.41
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it was amazing
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Oct 14, 2009
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.20
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really liked it
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Nov 20, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.32
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it was amazing
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Nov 26, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.28
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it was amazing
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Oct 17, 2009
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Jan 31, 2008
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