Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

[lightreads]

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Discworld. Unseen University gets a football team, a university cook gets a chance to be repeatedly awesome, and an abused child just gets a chance.

I was looking forward to this book because hi, Discworld. And it was a pleasure to read, sure. But it's sort of like he took all the bits of a really great Discworld book – an extremely smart heroine, an absurd cultural artifact, people with something to prove – and assembled the whole thing, but then forgot to, I don't know, strike the match. There are a number of hilarious or wonderful or sad moments here, but there's no real unifying spark. It's still a very good book by generalized standards of 'things I want to read,' but judging against Pratchett himself . . . no, just not quite.

That, and okay, I just don't give a damn about football. I give an anti-damn, actually.

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Comments

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

The climax of the story didn't, in my opinion. I think the scene where Glenda confront the Patrician was supposed to be it, but it fizzled for me.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Yes. And Vetinari in general, he seemed not quite his proper self all the way through.