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29.07.04     From my brother's book shelf.

Well... this was one of my three All-time favorite Authors. Now though... it's one of my Favorite two. No, wait; Douglas Addams can never fall out of my favor that much.

Anyhow, yet another ingenious work in the Disk-World series. I wonder if this was intended for a slightly younger audience though. (Or have I finally grown up a little? -Which gives me a little broader perspective to judge his work from.) As is standard with his works, there is a serious social commentary which underscores the enjoyable ride that the tale-proper takes you on.

At the beginning, I thought that there would be a big commentary about Utopia, and the principles it must run on. This facet was not developed though; it was only introduced, for the reader to understand what the rats are working towards. The social issue was more about social values; what people must do to form any sort of society. I suppose though, that there may have been more about Utopia than I realized: I need to better examine the life the Rats had made for themselves at the end. Was it a sort of ideal that they had achieved? Was there perhaps a hint that we must stop looking for ideals, which are basically impracticable, and learn how to do the best we can; The Rats have a good situation in the end, and have found a "Good" life, although it is not the Paradise Island that was their original dream. I must reread the end of this book, and see if the Author intended this theme.

I feel that the Narativium element (The substance that stories are made out of,) plays a lesser role here than in "Witches Abroad." The Story-telling which occurs within the book was not so compelling, and didn't feel... so well integrated I guess. (To really understand what I mean, it is probably necessary to read Witches Abroad, where the action of telling a story, and the abstract concept of "The Story" plays such an important role.) This was also true of "Masquerade," where the Acting, and Playing of a story is important. There I also felt it was better utilized than here. In Maurice (for short,) it was used in a very amateur way. Yes: That was completely fitting, as the "story" was being put forward by a young girl without Story-telling ability, but... I think it would have been good if there had been more contrast by having the narrating voice telling of how stories Really go.

Well... in the end, no I don't think that. Perhaps it is true, but I loved this book quite well how it is, so I wouldn't change anything in it for fear of making it worse.

This is another typical work by this great author, and I encourage every one to read something by him. (Even if they are severely opposed to the SF Genre, there are surely some of Pratchett's books that would intrigue them, and which they could enjoy.)

23.01.05     Impulsive self-gift in the Magdeburg Train Station.

Ah, yummy yummy yummy. Another book by my favourite author, (one of my three favourite.) If you're not familiar with his style... well, it's Fantasy, of the highest form. -For me, this means that it's imaginative, with ... elements of the fantastic in it, but enormously about Humans, or human nature, or, well, reality. And that just sort of works: that by having a Troll in the story, and a Vampire, it becomes... clearer, what is being pointed out about us, contemporary humans, who read these books.

The particular theme of this book is War, or the Military, -And the relationship of women with it. Specifically, it's about females in the military. This means that it's also about human stupidity, and violence, as well as the double-standards faced by girls, in societies in general. (Sexually based social inequalities, would it be called?) There's also a little of religion, and morals, and what-not there as well.

For me, I guess that there's only so far that I could have gotten caught up in this book. This is because of my upbringing: I have a deep, deep rooted belief in the equality of the sexes. And have no prejudices at all... (well, that's a lie. I still have my few ideas that men are not well able to perform some things, and that women should be more... intelligent in practical matters, and various other miniscule half-fermented thoughts at the back of my head. But no great ideas that "This Could only be done by That gender.") So, this means that I agree with all the points made, and feel... that the stating of them is a bit redundant, as they're all so self-evident anyhow. The other thing, is that I'm a proud and heart-felt pacifist, who abhors violence. So, when War is painted as an undesirable thing, The only thing that really goes through my head is, again, "Yeah. Obviously so."

This small complaint being made, I shall pass onto the good sides of this book. -No, I lie: I have one more criticism to make: I felt that, more than my just being too much in accordance with this book, it was also... not so engaging as others Pratchett has written. He seems to have told more of a... straight story here; He goes off on less tangents, and seems to have fewer parallel stories, with different meanings, (although complimentary,) going on. This felt... more average, and less than the usual Inspired Creation.

Now though, the good things about it, (Besides the writing style, world, characters, the weaving of different stories together, the switching from one viewpoint to another, the well developed people, the realistic, -on occasion disturbingly realistic, characters.) As it was about gender roles, there had to be some mention of sex. And... I appreciate the way this was done. It was neither avoided entirely, nor gone into sensually; it was put in as a simple fact of life. I guess you could say that it was underplayed, or downplayed, but then, that's the way that I feel it should be more often treated: as something that happens, but is not a focus of lives. There's a slight bit of the embarrassment of the girls in the story, but I feel that this has it's place, more or less. And then they just... have to stuff the socks where they need to be stuffed, and let it be so.

I don't seem to be able to describe it all effectively, so I guess you will have to read it. Anyhow though: I liked the way it's all dealt with by Pratchett.

There was also the... nobility of soul in some of the characters, but not in an abstract, unattainable, idealistic way. It was of flawed people, who just believe in something, and do all they can to make that part of their life True, and Right. (If THAT makes any sense.)

Well, there's nothing else I can think of to say about it. So, I go.

September 2006     Online.

Well, Pratchett has always been one of my favorite writers. So my standards and expectations were high. -In the end, too high for this book. Has it been too much of the same thing? Am I now too old? Does reading it from a computer monitor take so much away? Or was this book simply not up to snuff? These are the questions I now intend to address. But first...

I explain that this book is set on the Disk world, like many of pratchett's other tales. It's a Fantasy world, which is used to amuse us, delight us, and reveal things to us about our own world, -and the people that inhabit it. This particular story has less to do with the fantastical, (very little in the way of Magic, and Adventures;) It's set in the large City, and is roughly about the advent of newspapers, and reporting.

It's not a bad setup. And it places the characters in a good position to reveal aspects of human nature. But it just... didn't do it for me.

Has it been too much of the same thing? Some puns, clever foot notes, a talking dog, who wants to stay inconspicuous, the role of a werewolf in modern society, a look at the colorful dwarf culture, and the clever and collected governor of the city. All of these things have been firmly established in earlier books. And this time... they felt like repetition, rather than... re-exposure, or revisiting.

Perhaps though, many of the Disk world books are like that, and it's just that I'm slowly, (but surely,) getting older. Before then, I didn't mind, if I even noticed at all. And now, I... want something more. I want it to go further. I would like it to mature, by the same degree that I have.

I'm not saying that I feel that is the case, but it's a possibility. Another possibility is that the Way I read it is the problem; I've gotten it off of the Internet, and I've read it from my computer screen. Most people I've told such things to are somewhat horrified by the idea of reading a whole book from a monitor. (Is it still called a monitor on a lap-top?) I've read at least three other books on my computer though, and still... got into them, and enjoyed them. So although this could be one factor contributing to my dissatisfaction, I feel that it must be only a minor one.

And that brings us to my last possible reason for not enjoying this book fully: it simply wasn't as good as Pratchett's other works. Perhaps that's true, but I can't pinpoint an example, or state that with certainty. There were anyhow still parts of it that I couldn't stop reading, and nights when I was up somewhat past my bedtime, telling myself that I should STOP NOW... -and then deciding "Now" would best mean in half an hour or more. It wasn't a bad book. I enjoyed it more than other books I've read recently. But it just didn't seem as good as other works by him.

October 2006     Online.

Now this one was more like it, (compared to The Truth.) I enjoyed it greatly, massively, and without end. -until I got to the end, which was all too soon. It didn't have a lot to say about humanity, and human nature, which is one of the things I like best about this series of books. But it still had a little of that, such as people's desires; their wish fulfilment. (At least as far as chocolate goes.) There was also a bit of analyses of what it is to be a human, from an outside point of view. (Explored by having a bodyless being decide to materialise, and take on human form. -And then through this, we see how many things there are about ourselves, which are mad, unbelievable, and illogical, which we never even think about.)

I guess that this incarnating actually does have a fair amount to say about the human species; particular emphasis was put on how our bodies control our minds, and not always the other way around. Not even often the other way around. One example is that we smell good food, and the stomach starts churning, and the mouth salivates, and the body is drawn towards that food, the whole body aches for that food, and the body Makes the mind think about it too. -regardless of if the mind knows it's just eaten, or that it's dieting, or that the food belongs to a very strong guy with a big, pointy stick.

Besides that exploration of humanity, the thing I best enjoyed in this book was the... scientific part of it; the exploring what it would be like to be able to manipulate time. Not travel around in it, just to use it as... a river flowing by: you can't stop the water from coming, but you can make it go by slowly, or quickly, or build a huge dam, or so on and on. -And most importantly, (in the world Pratchett makes,) you can have your own body going through time at a faster or slower pace, as long as you have some natural talent, and have been properly trained.

What Pratchett does, is go beyond the easy way of writing, "Imagine if you could make your personal time slow down! You could do this, or this, or this." He even goes beyond the point of, "Now imagine a whole gang of fighting monks, who could all influence time like that! Wouldn't it be cool!" -No, Pratchett goes much further, and more satisfyingly, into the... Culture that such a group of Time Monks would have. He mentions the tricks, and the battles, and the.. "cool moves" they could do, but it's far from the main point. He shows the structure of such a monestary, and, well, the culture. He puts into it such things as "Bonsai Mountains", and other such little flights of creative genius.

One other little flight of genius, which I adored, and can't get out of my head, is... (drum roll,) the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. I can't tell you more about him , because it would ruin too much of the surprise. I just have to say that I was in ecstasy over this character.

So, it was a great book, very involving, and I liked every moment of it.

Mid December 2006     Online.

It's been four weeks since I finished reading this book, so I can't remember everything that I thought of it. What I can say first is that I think I only took two days to read through it all, so it must have been one of Pratchett's enjoyable books.

It is one of the mystery books, with Vimes the police captain solving a crime, -And lots of Uberwald politics are involved. As I'm always interested in other cultures and traditions, I had great enjoyment of his details of Dwarvish, Vampiric, and Werewolf societies. In this book it's the Dwarves that are most strongly developed, (that is to say, we are informed more about them than about others.) Every thing. Everything about the Dwarvish culture was a pleasure to read; from the Mythology, to the Opera, to the Rules of their Society, to their views of sexual equality. It was well, and originally thought out. And as so often happens when SF is well written, these well observed points of the foreign, and other worldly, made me reflect some on the real world wherein we live.

Oh. The Igor(s). They turn up in other books as well, (you know them; the stitched together servants of mad scientists. And they are always called Igor, for some reason.) But here they didn't especially please me. Perhaps this was the first time that they turned up in Diskworld literature, and Pratchett wasn't yet sure how to use them, or what their appeal would be. (I can say that the Igors in Monstrous Regiment, and in Thief of Time were more amusing, and pleasing to the mind than the Igors in this book.) So, they turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

When I look at the most basic plot, without the joys of how it's told, it has it's own worth; There are surprises, and it moves smoothly along. It neither drags slowly nor leaps too quickly from part to part. And there is always a new development, which lets you feel that you see one more piece of the picture... until the next twist of the plot comes in.

All around, a well written book, and a fine work of Pratchett art.

Jan 24 & 25, 2007     From Hamburg Airport, intended for my flight to Montreal.

Nice. Definitely a nice book. And I'm just a big softy, who can't get his mind off of children, but I shed tears once or twice, in parts dealing with the 18 month old son of the protagonist. I did indeed.

This diskworld book as a murder mystery, investigated by Samuel Vimes, (The chief of police who is the hero of a number of these books.) It has much also to do with Troll and Dwarf history... as well as the current situation of them. This means then that the Real World theme, the relevance to Earth, is life in the Multicultural/Multy Ethnical city, as well as... the ethnical or national grudge: the strife and war that has gone on for generation after generation. I read nearly all of it on the 25th, sitting on my sofa, in my coat, because "I've only stopped at home for a second, and I'm going right out again to get some things done. -I'll just read a couple of pages first." -five hours later, I had to admit that I wasn't going anywhere until the book was finished, so I took off my coat.

So it's a good book, that sucks you in, and leaves your mind prickling with questions if you try to put it down. -So you pick it up again, and read on until such questions are answered. I liked it. It was good. It was great. And he performed everything well, as he usually does. That said...

There was a partly developed idea in here. It was a primeval, insubstantial, aeons old, ethereal Presence, which manifested it's self into people's minds, and made them into violent weapons of revenge. It was a bodyless creature, which finds people, and prompts them to let their anger take over, to punish those who deserve it. The idea it's self is not so bad; Anyone who can remember feeling blinding rage and hatred can picture the idea that it wasn't them; it wasn't at all like them; it was an expression of an ancient demon of revenge speaking out through their mouth. The Idea, seems alright to me.

What didn't work was Pratchett's handling of it. It felt underdeveloped. It felt like he thought he might try writing it into the story, started playing with the idea in the early chapters, decided he'd probably leave it out, near the end, but then, instead of going back and changing what he'd written already, he made a sort of explanation of what this thing was, and wrote an end to it, and it was gone. -But what Pratchett had Meant to do, was to reveal more and more glimpses at this idea, and then reveal it in a burst of genius, leaving the reader musing on the concept, and considering how very very true it seems. (Which I think he did better in the "Reaper man" with the shopping mall, and better still in "Moving Pictures.") This strange being wasn't so well clarified. It was explained in general terms, but there were still references to it, and sentences about it... which remained strange, and didn't make sense.

The only possible reason I can think of to excuse this, is that the Action in the book, the things taking place, were so much more interesting, that when I got to a paragraph or two about this being, I didn't pay attention, but rather got through them as quickly as possible, and getting back to the story. Even then, Pratchett could have balanced it better, and found a way to make this mystery being more interesting so that I would HAVE to stop and think about it, and wonder what it was about.

Not that I'm complaining.

I can't deny my great, Great enjoyment of this book.

June to Sept 2007     Online.

I know that this is the longest I've ever taken to read a Terry Pratchett book. But it's not because this one is worse than others. I simply got too busy to enjoy it. There was also the indulgence factor. These books always have a great effect on my mood, and do no end of good to my cheerfulness. Due to that reason I try to save them up, and only Indulge in them when needed. So I started in June, and then forgot that I was reading this. It was only last week that I remembered... and quickly finished it off. (Not that I was feeling sorry for myself: I just couldn't hold out against the temptation this time.)

There were some odd things in this book. Chief among them were the Chapters. I have never seen a Pratchett book having chapters before. They've always been divided up into multiple little sections which sort of weave together, (and make the book impossible to put down! You always feel that it can't be many pages before the thread you're most interested in will be picked up again. And once that little surprise is solved you'll stop. Honestly! For Real this time!) Now that I come to think of it, this had only one... view point as well. Every chapter was told from the perspective of our little girl protagonist. It begins with her, continues with her, and the chapter ends with her. Then the next chapter starts with her again, just where we left off! It's practically... Normal. (Not a usual thing for Pratchett.) I suppose that he's made this book the way it is in an attempt to... make it accessible for younger readers; For those who would get lost if he had six facets all being developed simultaneously, with multiple asides and greatly developed humorous footnotes. (The foot notes were not lacking, but they were few, and concise. If you've read his other books, then you'd know how atypical that is.)

So yes, I'd say that the book is aimed at younger readers than most of his other works. I am glad to see that he doesn't patronise them though; The subject is Responsibility, to one's self, one's family and one's place in the world. Pratchett has watered down his severity a bit (He at times has gripped my heart, and made me ashamed of human nature,) but not too much. We see the protagonist's realistic (if filled with fantasy,) struggle to fulfil her new position and to care about her stupid brother. I found this to be one of the most interesting elements of the story; That her little, whiney, snot-nosed, spoiled, bratty, annoying brother... is the one she has to save. It shows... her values, or what she finds she has to value, nicely. (This was one of the few places where Pratchett became a bit over simplified in his writing: He repeated a little to often the protagonist's inner struggle of "Why? Why bother with him? Because he's my brother. He belongs to me, so I have to." I'm sure that this was for the purpose of being clear to the younger readers... but I wonder if he couldn't have been more subtle and creative while still making the concept clear.)

All of the fantasy elements of this were nice and perfectly up to the author's high standard; The small blue men were lovable but still with depth and complexity, the Dream Weavers (Dromes) were an interesting concept, as were the Grimhounds when in the real world. And the parasite world in general was a... good concept. (Can't I describe it better than that? Not with few words! It was an original idea which I hadn't thought of before. It was well developed. It fit well, meaning it didn't have inconsistencies. It drew upon old legends and mythology. And it was perfectly integrated into the story.)

It's a charming book, which without being as deep and thought provoking as some of his others is still a good piece of Pratchett's artwork.