A few words before moving
on with the next batch of Discworld
books. By this stage in the series, Pratchett has well fallen into a pattern
for his flagship series, of repeating cycles of novels based around a recurring
subset of characters. For instance, with this batch of books we have stories
centred around Rincewind, then another for Granny Weatherwax and the witches,
and another one for Sam Vimes and the Night-Watch, and one more for Death (or
his human stand-in, by this stage his grand-daughter Susan). Though this order
is not fixed, it does demonstrate that from roughly this point on to the latest
Discworld instalments we have these various
sub-series’ taking it in turns to have the next publication.
Terry Pratchett’s favourite series is by now filled with
familiarity – familiar characters, familiar settings, familiar themes – so one
can be forgiven in thinking that perhaps he has taken to churning them out in
industrial terms. To me it looks like Pratchett enjoyed certain characters, or
felt them to be sufficiently interesting to reuse, that he wanted to see what
he could do when he had a longer canvas to work with (rather than the admittedly
short length of the average Discworld
book). These sub-series’ do evolve over time, with the Night Watch increasing
in size and importance, with Rincewind’s travels taking him to exotic new
locations across the Disc, and Death’s character being augmented by an
unfamiliar new associate, and each book is nicely self-contained enough and
still witty enough to keep the series ticking-over nicely. Certain
characters/settings have their particular favourites among Pratchett’s readers,
and the assurance that characters such as Sam Vimes or Nanny Ogg will return
again is something of a comfort.
Whatever your preference, be it the streets of
Ankh-Morpork, the tiny rural kingdom of Lancre, or some fantastic new location
offered up by the possibilities of the Disc, there is something here especially
for you during this period of Pratchett’s writing.
16.
Soul Music
Soul
Music is yet another Death-based book, and picks up where Mort left off. Death has had enough, and
leaves his job as the Grim Reaper to get away from it all – to forget. This
leaves the family business to fall to his only relative, his estranged teenage
granddaughter, Susan. Having gone through a modern education which instilled in
her a firm belief in the rational, Susan now finds that the world is more
peculiar than she believed – with a skeletal grandfather, a family home of
infinite proportions, and a new career which involves a scythe. Meanwhile in
Ankh-Morpork, a country-born musician ends up channelling a dangerous new force
that’s set to take over the world. It’s called Music With Rocks In.
So this book can best be described as Mort meets Moving Pictures.
It retreads ground we’ve already gone through, with little new thought other
than a few humorous song or band references scattered about. To say Soul Music is bad is not wholly
accurate; it’s amusing, and the characters are as good as ever, but it doesn’t
feel quite like the departure the series needed. Pratchett is acting as though
he’s not trying to give us Mort 2,
presenting us with a new protagonist to supplement Death and his world, but it
doesn’t feel any more fresh than it could be. This is the third time in the
series that Death has gone off on some tryst, and it’s by far the least
interesting yet. Susan herself, whilst a relatively strong-minded protagonist,
is not really that engaging as Pratchett characters go, and this is nothing to
say of the major problem with this book; how do you present music in a written
format? It’s difficult, and one can only do it in vague abstractions and
metaphors. Despite his making a fairly good attempt, I don’t think Pratchett
quite pulls it off. Then again, I’m not sure anyone could. Music is music, and
it can only really stand as itself. It can’t be described or presented in mere
written language, and Pratchett is not the first nor the last to have failed in
this respect. It’s the same problem with trying to review music. I myself have
trouble enough trying to review books, things actually built out of words; but
attempting to write about something that can only be written about in a
severely specialised vocabulary or nonsensical pseudo-poetry is an incredible
challenge. I doubt that there’s actually any real way to do this.
Soul Music... my
advice is to leave it be. Well, the wizards are as good as always, and I
particularly enjoyed the casual swipes they took against students. And the
beggars of Ankh-Morpork were a good new collective character. But overall Soul Music was one of the weaker entries
in the series.
17.
Interesting Times
Another Rincewind book,
rather than parodying fantasy or Doctor
Faustus this instalment instead plonks Rincewind on the other side of the
Disc, in the fabled Agatean Empire of the Counterweight Continent. Here he
finds an evil, authoritarian and totalitarian regime ruled by a mad old dying
emperor and the sinister Lord Hong, where the downtrodden masses would not dare
to challenge the unfair state their country is in. But for a new rebel movement
who seek to overthrow the regime, inspired by the radical composition of the
Disc’s first ever Tourist Twoflower, named What
I Did On My Holidays.
Overall, this book is a fairly good example of the Discworld series as a whole. It is
amusing, appropriately cynical, pokes fun at many real-world parallels and
tells a more or less satisfying story while it does so. It is certainly the
best of Rincewind’s adventures thus far, giving the first ever Discworld protagonist a suitable field
on which to ply his unique character traits for our enjoyment, while the
welcome return of Cohen the Barbarian provides an excellent secondary plot
which complements Rincewind’s own story. Especially it is the ridiculous
situation of echoing Ghengis Khan’s invasion of China, by having the Mongol
hordes replaced by just seven old men sneaking into the empire, which is
probably the best aspect to this book; the fact that they get as far as the
throne room before any of the imperial administrators realize that they have
been invaded by a barbarian menace is a wonderful joke, turning the traditional
image of rampaging barbarian hordes on its head. Other subjects include
cynicism towards the whole idea of a ‘people’s revolution’ – i.e. does the
average buffalo farmer really care or even know if the country is being run for
his own good or not.
If one had a criticism of this book, then it might be its finding
humour through stereotyping East-Asian culture and history. A number of
traditional aspects of Chinese or Japanese culture, customs and life are mashed
together to create the world of the Agateans, but it all comes across as a
Westerner’s view of the East. It’s not especially cruel or vindictive image,
but it would certainly cause the ghost of Edward Said to rattle his chains
somewhat. Certain ideas, such as a Great Wall surrounding the empire, are
reused to great effect. The Wall for instance is not actually a defence against
‘barbarian’ invaders, but rather is tool of the empire to psychologically
reinforce their control over the general populace within. It’s a wall to keep
people in, rather than keep people out. An example of a less intelligent use of
East-Asian symbols is with the Discworld equivalent of sumo wrestlers, for here
we find a traditional aspect of Japanese culture planted in the Agatean Empire
solely for a ‘point and laugh’ type of humour. Oh, look at these funny fat men
who spend their lives eating and wrestling, the book seems to say, and leaves
it at that. Pratchett is usually a tad better than that.
So, these caveats aside, this is a good Discworld story. Rincewind is an
all-round good protagonist, perhaps not as good as the Witches or the Watch,
but still decent, while Cohen the Barbarian propels the story along with gusto.
I was hoping that a reunion between Rincewind and Twoflower would have been
used to much greater effect than we find in this book, as it was the seminal
partnership of the series, but it was not quite as special as it ought to have
been.
18.
Maskerade
The next book featuring
the Witches of Lancre, Maskerade takes
hefty inspiration from the Phantom of the
Opera. With the third member of their coven having left witchcraft to
become Queen of Lancre, the witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg find
themselves at a loose end. You really need three witches to meet at some
blasted heath, not just two. It simply doesn’t work. In order to correct this
woeful imbalance, they decide to try to recruit a promising young village girl,
Agnes Nitt, to fill the vacancy left by Magrat, only to find that Agnes has
made her way to Ankh-Morpork to find her fortune singing in the Opera House
there. Granny and Nanny set off in pursuit – especially as Nanny has recently
had her cookery book published there, and needs to extract some serious
royalties from the publishers.
Meanwhile in the city, Agnes is now going by the name of
Perdita X. Nitt because she
believes it makes her sound more mysterious and
exciting, and quickly finds herself in an Opera House in crisis. Murders are
taking place within the building, murders perpetrated by the so-called ‘Opera
Ghost’, a sinister individual who at once tries to help the Opera, or at random
try to bring the operation crashing to a bloody end. Once the witches arrive in
Ankh-Morpork, it is up to them and Agnes to get to the bottom of this mystery,
unmask the killer, and work out if they will once again be a coven of three.
Overall, the plot is basically a straight parody of The Phantom of the Opera (a 1910 French
novel, famously later adapted by Hollywood and then by Andrew Lloyd Webber). In
Maskerade, the beautiful prima donna
of the Opera, Christine, apparently can’t actually sing all that well,
prompting the management to appoint overweight and average-looking Agnes Nitt
to sing over the top of her while Christine pretends to sing the parts. The use
of the ‘Phantom’ cliché by not one, but two different characters makes things a
little more interesting, and the inclusion of Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and
a few other Discworld mainstays adds
the typically Pratchettean humorous touch, but overall the story is nothing
special. Just a case of Discworld
characters ending up in a more famous tale, somewhat like Wyrd Sisters only a little less interesting.
For those who enjoy Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg (and
why wouldn’t you? They’re amazing), Maskerade
does not disappoint, and Agnes Nitt is a welcome new addition to the ensemble
of this particular sub-series. As a stand-alone work it’s not that great,
unfortunately – a case of more of the same, with no especially interesting or
original ideas at its core. Carry on with it, if you feel like doing so, but
there’s nothing more to it than that.
19.
Feet of Clay
As we have gone through
three of the main characters of the Discworld
franchise already in this batch of novels, it was only a matter of time
before Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch would turn up once again. His
latest unstoppable crime involves massive walking clay automatons, a critically
ill Lord Vetinari, and the infamous Corporal Nobby Nobbs being implicated as a
member of the aristocracy.
So this is the latest Same Vimes book, the third to feature
Ankh-Morpork’s cynical
hard-bitten alcoholic watch captain. The Night Watch has
come a long way since the days of Guards!
Guards!, employing over thirty watchmen (although ‘men’ might be a somewhat
redundant title, as most of the Watch are either Dwarfs, Trolls, Gargoyles, or
a female werewolf). When two old men on opposite sides of the city are brutally
murdered, the finger of suspicion soon points to Ankh-Morpork’s silent cohort
of Golems, artificial clay men powered by ancient religious writings who have
naturally been shunted to the very bottom of the city’s pecking order. On top
of this mystery a larger crisis unfolds when the absolute ruler of
Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, winds up ill and bedbound after a suspected
poisoning. The city is perhaps days away from chaos and from a political
revolution, and as usual Commander Vimes has to sort the whole mess out without
any helpful Clues left at the scene of the crime. Whatever the crime actually
was.
In this book we have our usual roster of characters from Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms, with one or two interesting new additions. For comic
relief we have Constable Visit (short for: Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets),
who is a member of the Disc’s equivalent of Jehovah’s Witnesses, while Corporal
Cheery Littlebottom, the Watch’s new Dwarfish forensics ‘expert’, establishes
her character by gradually becoming the city’s first out-and-proud female Dwarf.
Amidst these tentative explorations into the subject of gender identity we have
a more direct subject addressed by the story; the notion of slavery and
oppression, as raised by the Golems. The Golems are interesting characters,
unable to speak and having to follow the dogma literally written into their
heads. Many people in Ankh-Morpork do not consider them to be alive, and do not
trust them in the slightest. It takes hard-headed and naturally mistrustful
Commander Vimes and archetypal ‘good-guy’ Captain Carrot to look at the
situation and work out when something has gone seriously wrong.
Overall, I would say Feet
of Clay is a fairly decent entry in the series as a whole. The watchmen are
entertaining characters, and the plot is fairly all right – as the Night Watch
novels usually are. Vimes himself is a good protagonist, especially his own
cynical deconstruction of the murder mystery genre which he makes during the
course of the story. As with the other entries in this period of the Discworld series, if you like this
particular character, then by all means read this book. Otherwise, as a
standalone novel, it’s not that special.
A
Brief Conclusion in Regard to these four Books
As far as the Disworld books go, this latest batch of
novels is no more complex or adventurous than any of Pratchett’s other works.
This is not a bad thing, as the Discworld
stories can either be vague and confused, or archetypal enough that the
plot plays out how you would expect. As Pratchett got over his teething
troubles many many books previously, each latest Discworld story plays the beats it’s meant to and marches
inexorably through a good and entertaining plot until it reaches its
semi-satisfying conclusion. I call them semi-satisfying because they just end
up leaving you wanting more, to quench the thirst they’ve left behind. Discworld books by this stage of the
series are certainly a more-ish type of literature, never quite filling you up,
but always entertaining you on the way.
If you’re not already a fan of the series, I’m not sure
there’s much here that I would recommend for you. You would be better off
reading one of the earlier books, such as Mort
or Guards! Guards!. If I had to pick
a favourite out of the four I’ve just reviewed, it would probably be Interesting Times, with Feet of Clay as a close second. I very
much enjoy both the Vimes books and the Witches of Lancre, but the fact that
the latest Witches book is simply a parody of Phantom of the Opera does not count in its favour. So yes.
Biblioworld 5
Pratchett, Terry. Soul Music. Corgi. (1995 [1994])
Pratchett, Terry. Interesting Times. Corgi. (1995 [1994])
Pratchett, Terry. Maskerade. Corgi. (1996 [1995])
Pratchett, Terry. Feet of Clay. Corgi. (1997 [1996])
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