As you've guessed by now, I'm a big fan of mysteries and thrillers. I don't mountain bike, don't sky dive, don't scuba dive, and don't even like spicy food. Novels are where I get my thrills. I also like funny novels--I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, P.G. Wodehouse, and the third name in the triumvirate of The Funniest Englishmen Ever: Terry Pratchett.
Pratchett's a polarizing force in literature. Many people dislike his writing because they dislike the fantasy world in which he sets his Discworld novels. I have a very low dragon/leather/quest/wizard threshold and yet I love his books--why? I can only assume it's because I love his humour. It's about life and what's good, bad, and silly about it. He takes sharp pokes at religion, science, politics and love, all by turning the tropes of fantasy fiction back on themselves.
His characters are very rooted in rural English life, so the people in his books are what everyday English folks would be if they were thrust into this bizarre world fuelled by magic. All Pratchett fans have their favourite character: is it Rincewind, the hapless would-be magician; of the Witches who overcome obstacles more through understanding how people work than through magic; or is it (like me) Captain Vimes, the archetypical world-weary good cop? All the Vimes novels are thrillers/mysteries, and this is no exception.
I've followed Vimes through several books now, and each just gets better than the last. He keeps getting promoted, which takes him further from the streets and the hands-on policing he likes. This book sees him thrust back in time to mentor a younger Vimes during an upheaval in the city's rulers. There are a lot of very pointed observations on the difference between a police force, secret police, and an army, and Vimes's wisdom, clarity of thought, and determination to do the right thing in a complicated world is a pleasure to behold. If you read between the lines (or sometimes even on the lines) you'll find some very relevant observations on the War on Terror.
This is as good an introduction to Pratchett's Discworld universe as any, although it features very few of his other staple characters. Newbies to the Discworld might want to read this with an eye to then reading all the novels in sequential order. If you are already a Discworld fan, then all you need to know is that this book is out and you should order it immediately :-)
Rating: 10/10.[*]
--Nat
[*] Might be biased in that I think Pratchett's one of the top three
authors writing today. Period.
Death
Re:The best character is
gnat on 2003-01-14T01:18:05
Have I read them? Ho ho. They're okay, but not great. His non-Discworld books didn't do as much for me as the Discworld ones. The exception was the Johnny pair of young adult books--I can see myself giving them to William in a few years.Death is easy. Vetinari is my second-favourite character
:-) --Nat
Re:The best character is
hfb on 2003-01-14T03:11:28
I haven't read them which is why I asked
:) I've heard mixed reviews and they're a bit of a challenge to find in the states. You might also consider the 'amazing maurice' as well as 'the last hero' book for William too as the illustrations are impressive. :) Re:The best character is
gnat on 2003-01-14T15:46:38
William and I read "The Last Hero" around Christmas time, and we're reading "The Amazing Maurice" now. Was it just me, or was "The Last Hero" not well edited? I found a lot of cases of repeated words that made it really clumsy to read out loud. William's a bit too young for the complexity of "The Amazing Maurice", but I'm reading it to him anyway just to get him used to complex stories and sentences. He could take "The Last Hero" more easily because that book had lots of pictures:-) Hard to find? Amazon has it.
I'll look around in New Zealand. I think I have "Truckers", "Diggers", and "Wings" somewhere in the house there, but after reports from houseguests of leaking showers and water trickling into the games room/library in the basement, I'm unsure that I can promise anything. They're also interesting non-Discworldian Pratchett.
--Nat
BTW. I think that the Carpet People is quite good - not as good as the Gnome series, but almost. We read it in 3 or 4 evenings - I was quite hoarse, but the boys loved it.
Re:...reading all the novels in sequential order..
gnat on 2003-01-14T16:02:21
Honestly, everyone has a different favouriate. The classics you should read are: "Equal Rites" (which introduced the witches), "Mort" (which really fleshed out Death's character, so to speak), "Guards! Guards!" (which introduced Vimes), and "Small Gods" (which was Pratchett's first foray into the very weighty topic of religion). "The Color of Magic" started it all, and is well worth reading (the contrast between early Discworld and late Discworld is very interesting to observe), and it's a good introduction to Rincewind.I didn't enjoy "Moving Pictures", and I felt that "Interesting Times" was a bit of a low point that the series didn't recover from until "Jingo". In general the early books in a particular thread (wizard books, watch books, witch books,
...) are better than the later ones, just because the obvious jokes are the easiest to laugh at. The exception there is the Watch series which (in my highly biased opinion) is gold from start to end. This reading list is very good.
Good luck!
--Nat
Re:...reading all the novels in sequential order..
bart on 2003-01-15T01:35:35
The only book so far I have a hard time finishing, is "The Truth", an allegory on the newspapers as "Moving Pictures" was to the movies. The latter wasn't too great, the former isn't even that good.
And Death was never one of my favourite characters.
Re:Are you real?
gnat on 2003-01-15T20:53:12
If I'm not real, I'm a good enough AI that I'm fooling myself:-) If you like all three of those, you might like another very funny English author: Tom Sharpe. I don't know that you can get his novels in America, but his four best are: "Wilt", "The Wilt Alternative", "Wilt on High", and "The Throwback". The latter isn't part of the Wilt series, but is just as funny. All my mental images of Comet (Ajax) in condoms come from that book. --Nat
