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Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

3/5. Early Pratchett about the Discworld doing Hollywood, at least until an ancient evil from the dungeon dimensions awakes. This has its moments, but it's from that long stretch where a lot of the funny is supposed to be from characters being taken over by some random force that makes them blurt out things from our world. It's not particularly funny, but I also disliked it more the more I thought about it in general. It's doing something weird in a book which, like many of his, is about how stories are supposed to go, like how of course our heroes will get there just in time, not too late, but that doesn't mean they can pause for a rest, that's cheating. In that frame, the way our earth systems have this narrative gravity makes them seem like the "right" systems, the "right" stories. Which is not what he meant, but it came across that way.

A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

3/5. What it sounds like. The first two-thirds are mostly light-hearted columns and speeches, a few biographical, largely jokey (and proving that no, he definitely didn't really grock all of what he was doing with the witches from a feminist perspective, and in fact actively rejected that perspective at some points). The last third is furious. Furious at dying, and the manner of it. There's some very good writing in that last third. I have the strong impression that he was far more real and available as a person in his writing towards the end, but that it wasn't that slow dying changed him, it's that he gave less of a fuck about telling you who he was.

The Shepherd's Crown (Tiffany Aching)

3/5. The last Discworld book.

Well, that's that, then.

It's not a particularly inspired book, but nor is it the dire mess of some of the recent offerings. Not too surprising, I guess – it's basically the same book he'd written four or five times previously, so clearly the steps were familiar: threat from outside, faeries, how the progress of technology and particularly the railroad changes the face of the world, coming into power as a function of coming into self-knowledge.

No, all that, *handwave*. Been there, done that, and much better than this version.

No, this book is made by the first quarter, which is all about the death of a witch. And as constant Discworld readers will know, a witch is aware of her impending death, and is able – required, even – to prepare for it. Dig her own grave, do the final washing up, scrub the place until it shines. And then lie down and wait.

The first quarter of this, the last Discworld book, is about that. And, um. Ouch.

Maskerade by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This was great, until I metaphorically threw it across the room. I love the witches books; they are wry and a little grim around the edges and about women's power and agency. And this one – about the Discworld opera – is calibrated to my taste and humor.

But if anyone can come up with a reading of the ending of this book which avoids either concluding that (1) mental disability is, in fact, all in the mind and if only he really wanted to he could be normal, or (2) mental disability should be erased by a magical cure . . . I'd love to here it. 'Cause I've looked at this from five different directions now, and nope, not a one of them comes out the least bit okay.




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Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Sorry, we're gonna be all 'me me me me' here for a minute.

July was terrible. Terrible. So terrible that my entire reaction to what was, quite possibly, an ocular stroke was a slow blink and to keep quiet about it for a week. By rights, it should have had me post traumatic stressing so hard, you'd need a trowel to scrape me off the ceiling, but it turns out I'd used up all of that and then some on the fun episode of 'is the cancer metastasizing?' the universe helpfully scheduled for my single vacation this year. (Answer: no. But it turns out that, to certain portions of my brain, the actual outcome was irrelevant.)

So then of course I got sick. I don't get sick much, so on those occasions I do, I really do it up right. Coughing up strange substances, full-body trembling for days, you know, the fun stuff. And somewhere in there, when I was lying on my office floor for five minutes because it just looked so amazingly comfy, I decided I was going to read some godamn Discworld.

My point is, people say it's difficult to read this book when it's not Christmas time, or if you are a person who doesn't have strong Christmas feelings. It was July, and I do not have the sort of Christmas feelings they mean. Christmas is a thing I endure, let's put it that way. So actually, it turned out, reading this book at the end of terrible, terrible July was brilliant. Everything was awful, so it was just like Christmas!

So anyway, you can see how this book's opening three-quarters of froth and vaguely plot-related nonsense was soothing, and then how the sudden tautening in the last quarter caught me by surprise, and drew me in, and held me, and talked to me about how if you milled the universe down to its component atoms and inspected all of them, not a one would be an atom of justice or mercy, but how we can make them anyway, with the component parts of belief. And you can see how Susan holding a poker and saying it kills only monsters made my chest seize up a little, because oh, what I wouldn't do with one of those.

Thanks, Terry Pratchett. This book needed at least two more drafts, but you haven't gotten me like that in a while.

It's August now. August will be better.




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The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Exploration out into the wild, uncharted transdimensional earths, where something is stirring.

I wish I could blame Baxter for this, since I came into this already thinking he's a hack. But Pratchett's name is up there too, and even though I'd bet you Baxter was in the driver's seat from about the 20% mark on, when you put your name on the cover of a book, it's yours and you gotta own it.

And this is a pretty bad book to have to own. Oddly paced, anti-climactic, sociologically far-fetched. This particular iteration of multidimensional earths is such a fertile concept, though, that I would have cut it a lot of slack if it hadn't gone for a spectacular ten-seconds-to-buzzer three point shot at ablism on nearly the last page. Like, my jaw actually dropped.

The context – two characters are discussing an unusual community many dimensions away from earth. It is held up as idyllic, the sort of magical place where people who need to seem to collect. And in the context of theorizing that it represents the next stage in sociological evolution, a better kind of world, it is noted with significance that you know who never seems to end up in that community? Violent criminals, and people with disabilities.

Yep. Those dirty awful broken disabled people, gotta leave those behind right next to your rapists in order to make a better world.

Baxter I would expect this from. But Terry Pratchett, what the actual fuck?




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Dodger by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Plucky orphan is lifted out of the literal sewers of poverty in early Victorian London by accident and bravery and Charlie Dickens.

Fun but forgettable. I was honestly confused why this wasn’t a Discworld book. It’s not like that’s ever stopped him from introducing historical personages or anything, and this felt like Sam Vimes was just around any given corner. He kind of was, actually, only he was called Sir Robert Peel.

Then we got to the end, and there was an afterword about how Pratchett wanted to write a story about the nearly unimaginable poverty of the time. Which was pretty interesting, considering that usually when he wants to write about a thing from our world he tosses it in a martini shaker with some dwarves, some puns, and a pinch of Death, and then serves it chilled over some Granny Weatherwax wisdom. It’s not like writing from the remove of fantasy stops him from digging into something real he wants to talk about, is the thing.

I don’t have a point here, I just think it’s interesting is all. Why this book? Why this way? I am the last person to believe that severe illness touches every corner of someone’s life, down to how he conceives of a story. But there is a temptation to speculate, I will admit.




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Snuff by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Yeah, so I’m always excited to get a new Discworld, and particularly a new Vimes. But…



So it’s about Vimes going on vacation, which for him means foiling a goblin trafficking ring. And I think I like Pratchett better when he’s making fun of systems and institutions – the Death books, Making Money etc. Because sometimes he winds up and he pitches at some great evil, and I have to cover my eyes for a little bit. I had a lot of problems with this one, most of which boil down to how the book wasn’t actually all that sure that the people being enslaved deserved consideration and compassion. It thought it was sure, and Vimes carried the banner pretty damn well. But the shape of it, the rhetorical flourishes . . . like, just one thing, we had to have a goblin musical prodigy, you see, because if a goblin can play the most complex of human classical music, well then, goblins might actually be people. And the book sort of knew it was playing with the ways we define who gets – let’s call them sentient rights – and who doesn’t. There’s this great scene at the end where Vimes and Vetinari talk at each other about trafficking, one from a natural law stance and one from a positivist stance, and it’s painful and sharp, because Vetinari is saying ‘no, no it was not a crime, and it can’t be until we pass this law making it a crime,’ and Vimes is saying helplessly, ‘no, but, it’s just wrong.’ But there are many many big and small ways that this book was . . . participating in the rhetorical game playing over who goes into what category, and how, and why. It didn't own its own shit, not nearly enough. And it was uncomfortable.



Anyway. Still a really good book, and Sam Vimes still basically owns me. And his kid is awesome. But. Uncomfortable.





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Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Discworld. Early enough so I was a bit worried going in, but far enough along to feel like it’s arrived at some kind of essential Discworldiness. I don’t have anything big to say here – this is Pratchett taking one of his many swings at institutional power. It’s got this whole Pratchetty Macbeth thing going on, and at one point Granny Weatherwax thinks to herself that art is holding a mirror up to life: that’s why everything’s the wrong way round. Ha. There’s Discworld explained, yeah.



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Pyramids by Terry Pratchett


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Discworld. A young man comes home from assassin school to rule his tiny, backward desert kingdom, with an agenda that starts with building his father's pyramid and then goes on to a few novel ideas like plumbing.

Others have said this book marks the point in the series where Pratchett stopped writing parody and started writing richer, more layered satire. I can see that, but I can also see it took a few books to get there. This book is almost -- almost as funny as later books, almost as richly charactered, almost as well-plotted. Pratchett does take aim at some pretty hefty themes here – tradition and religious dogma – but I just recently read his fantastic Monstrous Regiment, so I happen to know he does a better job of it later.

Still, you know, Discworld. Yay.

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