Terry Pratchett
Another in my slow exploration of the Discworld. A cut bellow average, from what I’ve seen. Overall it’s creative and funny, and some particularly clever setups in the beginning and very end of the novel. As usual it has good energy and an impressive array of details used to build a sense of credibility even amongst the manifest silliness that the book revels in.
However I didn't connect with the new characters very much, 'Cut me own Throat''s shtick went on a bit too long, and I continue to find the Wizard scenes generally unengaging. As well, I was never wholly sold on the 'movie as Lovecraftian horror' and found it didn't work as well as a lot of the x in Discworld formulas. The may be some potential for really great and pointed satire lurking in the premise, but as it was expressed here the results are a bit lukewarm.
Worse than: Eric by Terry Pratchett
Better than: The Future of Work by Scott Adams
Showing posts with label pratchett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pratchett. Show all posts
Monday, June 28, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Eric
Eric by Terry Pratchett
Highly amusing, and the first book where I've really enjoyed Rincewind. Also it's fun to branch out more than is normal for the Discworld, lots of different places including the afterlife. Getting away from Ankh-Morpork is a worthwhile change in pace. The take on hell and demons works particularly well--bringing up a number of implications and afterthought to the traditional monotheist cosmology, while at the same time dealing at it without the overly bitter edge common to a lot of religious deconstructions have. It never achieves the level of quality or sheer enjoyability of Good Omens, but in its somewhat meandering comedic way this book works effectively.
Unfortunately, by the same token, the plot of 'wander around to different places while satirizing Faust' wears a bit thin, and none of the characters beyond Rincewind feel truly real. Ultimately the piece feels lacking in internal relevance--the characters and the universe aren't substantially altered from where they started the book, and the main focal points of the story feel rather disconnected from the main Discworld. That's not a fatal problem in itself, but looking back it does serve to weaken the force of the story a bit. It could be a case of expecting more from the story than the whole setup aimed at, but for all the amusement and sense of energy there also look like a number of missed opportunities.
Worse than: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
Better than: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
Highly amusing, and the first book where I've really enjoyed Rincewind. Also it's fun to branch out more than is normal for the Discworld, lots of different places including the afterlife. Getting away from Ankh-Morpork is a worthwhile change in pace. The take on hell and demons works particularly well--bringing up a number of implications and afterthought to the traditional monotheist cosmology, while at the same time dealing at it without the overly bitter edge common to a lot of religious deconstructions have. It never achieves the level of quality or sheer enjoyability of Good Omens, but in its somewhat meandering comedic way this book works effectively.
Unfortunately, by the same token, the plot of 'wander around to different places while satirizing Faust' wears a bit thin, and none of the characters beyond Rincewind feel truly real. Ultimately the piece feels lacking in internal relevance--the characters and the universe aren't substantially altered from where they started the book, and the main focal points of the story feel rather disconnected from the main Discworld. That's not a fatal problem in itself, but looking back it does serve to weaken the force of the story a bit. It could be a case of expecting more from the story than the whole setup aimed at, but for all the amusement and sense of energy there also look like a number of missed opportunities.
Worse than: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
Better than: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
Monday, March 22, 2010
Good Omens
Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett.
Highly effective, an amusing, fast-past and very engaging book. Plays to both writers strengths, and offers a good deconstruction of basic Christian mythology. Deconstruction not just in the sense of taking apart, satirizing, reworking and altering, but also in putting them together again, so that in the story measures like a prophesied apocalypse and omniscient benevolent God are meaningful and interesting. All told that's quite an accomplishment, and the textual-bending nature of the work makes it even more fun.
All told it feels a lot more like Pratchett than Gaiman, but a Pratchett that's in top form of control over language and character detail, and Gaiman's influence in the reconceptualized norms of heavenly theology is pretty clear. Overall a productive collaboration, a good working of the wonderful premise: the Antichrist is raised wrong, and doesn't want to bring about the apocalypse. Shines through effectively because of strong characters, and a very good depiction of friendship across the isle.
Similar to and better than: Terry Pratchett's Small Gods
Similar to and worse than: Mike Carey's Lucifer
As well, in the two-for-the-price-of-one category, Gaiman's Coraline. Much of my thoughts on this have already been expressed--that Gaiman is incapable of writing a bad story, but at time he aims rather lower than he's capable of, particularly with his YA material. Coraline is better than most of this pack, being incredibly creative and highly creepy. Where much of the time he offers a kind of brilliant narrative midrash to existing mythologies, poly and monotheist alike, here he builds his own set of magics and supernatural forces, making an intimate exploration of one home and the whole world that folds into it. Certainly it's an accomplishment few authors would be capable of, but it also seems peculiarly pointless in some ways--after a certain point it's the pilling of weird and creepy details for their own sake. If characterization had been a bit more complex maybe that would have carried the distance, but as is this is a very talented work that still doesn't rank anywhere close to what the author is capable of.
Highly effective, an amusing, fast-past and very engaging book. Plays to both writers strengths, and offers a good deconstruction of basic Christian mythology. Deconstruction not just in the sense of taking apart, satirizing, reworking and altering, but also in putting them together again, so that in the story measures like a prophesied apocalypse and omniscient benevolent God are meaningful and interesting. All told that's quite an accomplishment, and the textual-bending nature of the work makes it even more fun.
All told it feels a lot more like Pratchett than Gaiman, but a Pratchett that's in top form of control over language and character detail, and Gaiman's influence in the reconceptualized norms of heavenly theology is pretty clear. Overall a productive collaboration, a good working of the wonderful premise: the Antichrist is raised wrong, and doesn't want to bring about the apocalypse. Shines through effectively because of strong characters, and a very good depiction of friendship across the isle.
Similar to and better than: Terry Pratchett's Small Gods
Similar to and worse than: Mike Carey's Lucifer
As well, in the two-for-the-price-of-one category, Gaiman's Coraline. Much of my thoughts on this have already been expressed--that Gaiman is incapable of writing a bad story, but at time he aims rather lower than he's capable of, particularly with his YA material. Coraline is better than most of this pack, being incredibly creative and highly creepy. Where much of the time he offers a kind of brilliant narrative midrash to existing mythologies, poly and monotheist alike, here he builds his own set of magics and supernatural forces, making an intimate exploration of one home and the whole world that folds into it. Certainly it's an accomplishment few authors would be capable of, but it also seems peculiarly pointless in some ways--after a certain point it's the pilling of weird and creepy details for their own sake. If characterization had been a bit more complex maybe that would have carried the distance, but as is this is a very talented work that still doesn't rank anywhere close to what the author is capable of.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Night Watch: Dystopia as Prologue
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, 2002.
Interesting. Certainly one of the stronger Discworld books, and plays with some stronger emotions than usual. As well, the whole device of using the city past as dystopia was interesting, quite different from the norm for genre writers showing an oppressive setting. There's a lot to like scene to scene, with atmosphere and direct moments. The book also benefits from one of Pratchett's epiphanies (Vimes's recognition of Ankh-Morpork as a process, and then later ensuring Carcer would get a fair trial in the same spirit) and, in Carcer himself, one of the series' more creepy and plausible villains.
One implicit strand on this novel is that while earlier versions of most of the usual Ankh-Morpork cast show up as younger versions--Vimges, Colon, Nobbs, Vetinari--Carrot is completely absent. This makes sense, after all he arrived at the city in Guards! Guards! and this work obviously needed to be set before that, but it also fits with the general atmosphere of the piece. This is an environment where naive optimism gets hammered out more than it changes the world, where political change derives from back stage political decisions that doesn't alter essentials.
Still, for the hype I've heard of this book I was left a bit disappointed, and it perhaps indicates some of the aesthetic limits of the Discworld, that for all of Pratchett's good comedy and neatly rendered ideas he's not on the level of writers like Mieville, Valente or Kiernan. It seems Pratchett holds back at crucial points, and will go for the bit of satire or historical parallel over full emotional commitment to his invented situation. Specific things that bugged in Night Watch:
-It seems Pratchett gave in too much to the temptation to make cute continuity references. Was it really necessary for Vimes to encounter younger versions of as many people as he did?
-Vimes himself has grown to be a bit tedious, post Men at Arms. Too self-assured and self-righteous for it to be great fun spending a few hundred pages in his head, and his struggle with his urge to rage is rendered over-simplistically ('the monster inside him stirred')
-Vetinari's presence was largely a wasted opportunity, making a lot of jokes on invisibility and rendering him as unexplainedly helpful rather than showing him developing towards the political thinker seen in other books. Given the most looming contrast between the Night Watch era and "modern" Ankh-Morpork is Vetinari's role as Patrician, that seems to leave a bit of a void at the heart of the politics in this work.
Still, overall quite enjoyable and interesting, and I found it far more satisfactory than Unseen Academicals.
Similar to and better than: Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time
Similar to and worse than: Yevgeny Zamyatin's We
Interesting. Certainly one of the stronger Discworld books, and plays with some stronger emotions than usual. As well, the whole device of using the city past as dystopia was interesting, quite different from the norm for genre writers showing an oppressive setting. There's a lot to like scene to scene, with atmosphere and direct moments. The book also benefits from one of Pratchett's epiphanies (Vimes's recognition of Ankh-Morpork as a process, and then later ensuring Carcer would get a fair trial in the same spirit) and, in Carcer himself, one of the series' more creepy and plausible villains.
One implicit strand on this novel is that while earlier versions of most of the usual Ankh-Morpork cast show up as younger versions--Vimges, Colon, Nobbs, Vetinari--Carrot is completely absent. This makes sense, after all he arrived at the city in Guards! Guards! and this work obviously needed to be set before that, but it also fits with the general atmosphere of the piece. This is an environment where naive optimism gets hammered out more than it changes the world, where political change derives from back stage political decisions that doesn't alter essentials.
Still, for the hype I've heard of this book I was left a bit disappointed, and it perhaps indicates some of the aesthetic limits of the Discworld, that for all of Pratchett's good comedy and neatly rendered ideas he's not on the level of writers like Mieville, Valente or Kiernan. It seems Pratchett holds back at crucial points, and will go for the bit of satire or historical parallel over full emotional commitment to his invented situation. Specific things that bugged in Night Watch:
-It seems Pratchett gave in too much to the temptation to make cute continuity references. Was it really necessary for Vimes to encounter younger versions of as many people as he did?
-Vimes himself has grown to be a bit tedious, post Men at Arms. Too self-assured and self-righteous for it to be great fun spending a few hundred pages in his head, and his struggle with his urge to rage is rendered over-simplistically ('the monster inside him stirred')
-Vetinari's presence was largely a wasted opportunity, making a lot of jokes on invisibility and rendering him as unexplainedly helpful rather than showing him developing towards the political thinker seen in other books. Given the most looming contrast between the Night Watch era and "modern" Ankh-Morpork is Vetinari's role as Patrician, that seems to leave a bit of a void at the heart of the politics in this work.
Still, overall quite enjoyable and interesting, and I found it far more satisfactory than Unseen Academicals.
Similar to and better than: Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time
Similar to and worse than: Yevgeny Zamyatin's We
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