The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

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Discworld, fantasy fiction, Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

Apologies for the hiatus in posting. My health has not been of the finest and I have tended to be sprawled asleep at the keyboard rather than alertly typing away.

It is time, now that the summer holidays are here, to get back in the book blogging saddle and tell you about our experiences of reading The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett.  This is the twenty fourth book in the Discworld series, and one which I had very little recollection of when Oscar started reading it to me. As he read on, snippets came back to me, and I wondered why I had so comprehensively forgotten it, as I enjoyed it very much indeed the second time around.

The book focuses on Commander Samuel Vimes of The City Watch, as he takes on a new role as a diplomat, trying to forge relations with the dwarves of Uberwald, and find out what exactly has happened to the Scone of Stone, which is needed for the ceremony to elect the new king of the dwarves. Sub plots involve Captain Carrot and Angua and their complex, dwarf/human/werewolf relationship and just what happens to the Ankh Morpork City Watch when Colon is left in charge.

Oscar loved it because the Watch stories are his favourite, particularly any scenes that involve Nobby Nobs, and I loved it because it really hammers home the point that by this time, Pratchett had gone way beyond the traditional limits of fantasy and is writing in a much more philosophical vein about all the foibles of being human. This is particularly underscored in his handling of the Uberwald class system, and the things about the dwarves that Vimes discovers. It foreshadows his material about goblins in the very last books he wrote.

There are the usual comic touches, but The Fifth Elephant is so much darker than the early works and, to my mind more multi faceted, showing the different layers of understanding and discovery that Pratchett was exploring. Whether a child reader will pick this up or not is largely irrelevant as the stories bear reading over and over again, and as my delight in rediscovering this attests, will last a lifetime of re-examination.

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

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Discworld, funny books, Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

The Last Continent is the twenty second book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett and my son Oscar and I have just finished reading it. Well, he’s been reading it to me.

I confess that having been a Pratchett fan right from the beginning, when this was first published I had a falling out of love with Pratchett. I really didn’t like this book, and didn’t read another one for a few years after this. This is the first time I’ve revisited it, and I still believe it is a low point in the series. It seems too much of a joke, and almost like a return to the Colour of Magic in some ways. Everything is a bit obvious, a bit too funny and the finesse that starts with Small Gods seems lacking in development here.

I confess that it was lovely to see the Librarian get such a juicy role in this book and his shape shifting scenes were the thing that saved this for me.

Having said that, Oscar really enjoyed it. He always loves anything with Rincewind and the Luggage in, and he was delighted to see them return here, roaming through the continent of XXXX, a thinly veiled Australia, which heaves with jokes about kangaroos and sheep and Mad Max type figures and which he found rip roaringly funny.

He was sad that it finished. I wasn’t.

As ever. It’s a book for teens at best, unless you’re broad minded and willing to explain a lot of stuff to an enquiring mind.

Jingo by Terry Pratchett – A Review

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Discworld, fantasy fiction, funny books, Jingo, teenage books, Terry Pratchett

Jingo is the twenty first Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett that my son, Oscar and I have shared together. It isn’t my favourite. We’re now into the middle years for Pratchett, where I lost enthusiasm for him and we parted ways for a few years. It’s interesting to read them again after such a long break (twenty odd years).

Jingo deals with the emergence of a new island between Ankh Morpork and Klatch that both cities decide belong to them. A small squabble over fishing rights and who gets to occupy the land, turns into the threat of all out war, and the mobilisation of ancestral armies on the streets of Ankh Morpork.

Samuel Vimes, commander of the Watch, smells a rat and investigates, or he would do if he wasn’t hampered by the political machinations of his aristocratic haters, in particular, Lord Rust, a man who wants to shut Vimes down for many reasons.

Oscar loved this because it is a book about the Watch. He brings to his reading, a wealth of knowledge amassed from the previous books and it suddenly makes him realise how valuable things like back stories are. He is beginning to predict how characters will behave in certain circumstances, and it gives him enormous joy when he is right.

I disliked this less, this time around, but then it seems to echo a lot of the political landscape in which we are forced to live at the moment, jingoism, xenophobia, racism and casual intolerance are all lampooned on Pratchett’s sharpest pen and I was moved to laugh more than once by parallels with current events. Despite the fact that they aren’t really funny. Current events that is.

It holds up better than I expected and there are some wonderful moments between Nobby Knobbs, Sergeant Colon and Lord Vetinari that I had totally forgotten about and which really made this a winner this time around.

Wonderful for teens who love fantasy, humour and satire. Not suitable for primary aged children unless you don’t mind doing lots of explaining of adult humour, double entendres, and in this case, politics and science.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett – A Book Review

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books for teenagers, Discworld, fantasy books, funny books, Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

Hogfather is the twentieth book in the Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett. We loved it for many reasons, and in particular because it means that my son has now read nearly half the  series, which is an immense achievement for a ten year old boy who a few years ago announced he wasn’t going to bother to learn to read.

Hogfather is one of the stories with Death in, who I increasingly grow to love as the series goes on. Death becomes more complex, more thoughtful, more critical of humanity and indeed more human as the books progress. Death, in lots of ways, reminds me of Dr. Who in the way that he regards the human race. Always saving them, always baffled by them, can’t help loving them.

In this book we meet Mr. Tea Time, an assassin, who even by the Assassin’s Guild’s standards has gone a bit wrong. Mr. Tea Time is a sociopath, and has been hired by the auditors, the miserable, soulless overseers of the universe, to tidy up the Disc by removing its more frivolous creatures. The half mythic, half godlike, strange creatures like Hogfather for example, a creature best described here as the Discworld’s version of Father Christmas.

Death will not put up with the auditors’ meddling when he can meddle back, and this time he enlists his most excellent granddaughter, Susan to help him in his bid to make sure that the sun rises on another day on the Disc.

Many fine  and beloved characters make their appearance in this book, which is one of the reasons we love it so. Bloody Stupid Johnson and his almost perfect bathroom in the Unseen University, Ridcully the arch chancellor and the bursar with his dried frog pills, Hex and his growing complexities, and even Corporal Nobby Nobs all get a look in on this seasonal and brilliant volume in the series.

As ever, recommended for teens mostly, but precocious children everywhere.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett – A Review

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books for teens, Discworld, fantasy books, Feet of Clay, funny stories, humour, Terry Pratchett, YA books

Feet of Clay is the nineteenth book in the Terry Pratchett Discworld series that my son and I have been reading together, and it has been a hit right from the get go. We read ten pages per day, and this is the book my son has most consistently asked to keep reading. As if I’m going to say no. We finished it this morning and as he put it down he said to me very wistfully, ‘I love the books about the watch soooo much.’

I confess that they have never been my favourites. I’ve always loved the witches best, but sharing the watch stories with him bring them to life for me, and I’m learning to love them because he loves them so much and takes so much obvious pleasure in them. It’s one of many reasons why sharing books is so very important.

Feet of Clay takes Commander Vimes of the watch deeper into the territory he most despises, dealing with the aristocracy. Of course, the irony is that Vimes himself is now a member of the aristocracy, and he’s really struggling to deal with it. He’s not the only one. In a meeting with the college of heraldry it is discovered that Corporal Nobby Nobs is also a reluctant aristocrat. Neither take it well.

The main story here is about sovereignty, which given what is going on in UK politics at the moment makes this book even more pertinent than usual. I feel Pratchett would love this. I imagined him many times as I sat listening to Oscar reading, that he was laughing somewhere. At us, if not with us.

The story deals with the issue of golems, and werewolves and whether dwarves are allowed to be girls in public, and divide and rule and a million other tiny life lessons for us all. It’s full of humanity, humour and incisive comment about the society we are saddled with. Oh for a Vetinari rather than a Theresa May though. A Vimes wouldn’t go amiss either.

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett – A Book Review

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books for boys, books for girls, books for teenagers, books for YA audiences, Discworld, fantasy books, funny books, Interesting Times, Terry Pratchett

Interesting Times is the seventeenth book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. My son, Oscar and I are reading our way through the series. Well, he’s reading them to me, and Interesting Times has taken us through our summer holidays, just in time for him to start Maskerade as he goes back to school.

Interesting Times was mis-remembered by me as the book about starting the newspaper (this is in fact, The Truth), so I was quite surprised as he started reading, to find that it is in fact, the novel about Rincewind, the luggage and them being reunited with Twoflower, the young man from the Agatean Empire that Rincewind acts as a tour guide for in the first two books of the series (The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic).

In this book, Rincewind is sent, by magical means, to the Agatean Empire in order to secure peace between its leaders and Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh Morpork. Rincewind, as is the norm, manages to cause absolute chaos on his travels and nearly dies on a number of occasions, before being sent off to his next adventure which comes a few books down the line in The Last Continent.

The book is a thinly veiled pastiche on the Chinese/Japanese feudal empire and its politics. It is, more specifically, a kind of oriental mash up and satirises everything from Chinese communism and the Red Army, to nightingale floors and beyond.

The book doesn’t quite work for me. I think that by this time, the Rincewind character is getting a bit repetitive. The reunion with Twoflower is quite touching and this time, Twoflower is given more dignity and is less of a bumbling tourist, but you get the sense that Pratchett is going through the motions a bit here. Some of it works well, some less so, and some of it is pretty heavy handed.

Having said that, Pratchett at his worst is always better than a lot of other writers, and there are, as ever, some laugh out loud moments and some absolute gems of lines and ideas.

As ever, the book is really suitable for teenagers who will get more of the jokes.

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett – A Book Review

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books for boys, books for girls, books for teenagers, books in a series, Discworld, fantasy fiction, funny books, Soul Music, Terry Pratchett

Soul Music is the sixteenth novel in the Terry Pratchett Discworld Series, and the latest that my son has finished reading to me as we work our way through the lot.

I remember loving Soul Music when it first came out, but on re-reading I am not so enamoured as I was, although Oscar absolutely loved it. He loved it so much in fact that his usual ten pages became fifty yesterday as he insisted on finishing it, because he wanted to know what happened at the end.

Soul Music is about rock ‘n’ roll reinvented for the Disc as ‘Music With Rocks In’.  In this book though there are really two stories. The first of which deals with what happens when Pratchett time slips the history of Rock ‘n’ Roll through a Discworld sensibility and manages to create an entire mountain of puns and sly allusions to our own understanding of it as possible. The second is his furthering of the story and character of Death, by introducing Death’s grand-daughter, Susan to us.

To me, the two stories do not make particularly happy bedfellows on re-reading. The narratives are at times, rather clumsily bolted together to make a whole, but when you think about the magnificence of Susan in Hog Father, this is tame stuff in comparison and you feel that the story of Death trying to forget, and Albert trying to save him, and Susan coming to an awakening of her unusual birth right, would have made a much better story on its own.

Oscar loved it though, and that’s what matters. He particularly enjoyed all the terrible jokes, and was delighted that the wizards make a memorable return in this book. He was particularly happy about the Librarian creating a magical low ride motorbike in the basement of the Unseen University.

This is everything you would expect from the Discworld, it’s just a bit less polished than normal, but enjoyable nonetheless. It is recommended for teens, and I would, as always, suggest that you start at the beginning of the series if you want to get the true magnificence of what comes later, as part of what makes these books so enjoyable is tracing all the references to previous adventures as you build on your vast knowledge of the Discworld.

 

Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett – A Book Review

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books for teenagers, Discworld, fantasy fiction, funny books, Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett

Men At Arms is the fifteenth book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, and sees the return of the City Watch. In this book you feel that Pratchett really has committed to the Watch as a sub series of the Discworld books. He takes it into more concrete territory here, extending story lines, plotting into future  books and really hooking the readers into the cast of characters that got their first outing in Guards Guards.

My son absolutely loved this story of the assassination of one of the Clown’s Guild and the mysterious deaths plaguing the city, all played out against the backdrop of Commander Vimes marriage to Lady Sybil. In this book you get to meet Angua, a fantastic character who goes on to be one of the backbones of the watch, Detritus finds his forever home, and the Patrician begins his journey to the complex three dimensional character he finally ends up as in later books.

You also get to see Pratchett moving further into his role of social commentator.

Reading this book with Oscar, during recent weeks, where intolerance and fear of the ‘other’ has blossomed and spread into violence and hatred on our streets, I felt so strongly that this book should be mandatory reading for all. It made me miss Terry and what he would make of these extraordinary times we are living through, and listening to my son read it was equal parts pain and pleasure.

A book for our times. As ever with Pratchett’s oeuvre, not really one for primary school children unless you are very relaxed about swearing and explaining things like the seamstress’ guild. Perfect for teens.

 

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett – A Review

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books about belief, books for boys, books for girls, books for teens, books to make you think, Discworld, fantasy books, funny books, Small Gods, Terry Pratchett, YA/Teen reads

Small Gods is the thirteenth volume in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, and for many Pratchett fans it marks his shift from an amusing fantasy author to full blown icon. It is considered to be the pivotal novel in which his work becomes much, much more than just fantasy and starts becoming a record of a much deeper and more thoughtful engagement with the world, reflected in the strange distortions of the reality of the Disc.

As such, this is a difficult novel for the young Pratchett fan. There is its themes, which are about belief and what shapes religions and people’s faith. Then there is the fact that it is much more serious than the previous books. It is, of course, amusing, but the darkness that has always been there in Pratchett, is never far from the surface in this novel. Then there is the fact that this is a standalone novel. None of the characters who appear in this novel make it into any of the others (except Lao Tse, who suddenly appears in Thief of Time), and by now Pratchett had begun to develop certain series that fans had started to hold in great affection and rejoice to return to. There is none of that here.

This deals with the novice monk, Brutha, an earnest, devout young man who has had his faith in Om drilled into him by a terrifying zealot of a grandmother. Brutha has certain unique qualities. He has a rigid grip on his faith, he has an eidetic memory, he copes best with certainty and routine, he is not equipped to deal with change. These make him the perfect novice monk, as does his lack of imagination. He spends large parts of his day in the gardens, hoeing the melons and that’s as exciting as things get until he bumps into a tortoise who is dropped into the gardens by a luckless eagle.

The tortoise starts to talk to Brutha, and Brutha realises that the tortoise is in fact a manifestation of the god Om, that Brutha so fervently worships. Om, it appears, is in a spot of bother. He had wanted to manifest as a great, roaring bull, but faith in him was so weak, he has been trapped in the guise of a tortoise for several years. Brutha is his salvation. But is Om, Brutha’s?

The interplay between believer and believed is fascinating and this is set against the wider concerns of religion/belief. Omnia is a dark, troubled place, ruled by a rod of iron and full of fear. Religion is the cornerstone of the country, and yet the fact that Om himself is so small and helpless, shows Brutha that actually, what people say they believe and what they actually believe are two different things. This is made manifest in the figure of Vorbis, one of the most unpleasant characters Pratchett has ever written. Vorbis is the chief inquisitor of Omnia, and as well as terrifying the Omnians into submission, he has plans to expand into neighbouring territories, territories where Brutha is about to discover, the issue of belief and thought is much more fluid, and dangerous.

My son found this hard going, although he warmed to it in the end. It engendered a great deal of discussion and if only a fraction of what we talked about remains for him to think over in the coming years, it will have been well worth reading, but I would say it was his least favourite so far. Now we are reading Lords and Ladies which is much more his style and he is steaming ahead with it.

As ever, I recommend these books to precocious primary students with a great grasp of vocabulary and the patience and interest to persevere, and teens and YA audiences who are more equipped to deal with the issues they raise.

 

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett – A Book Review

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book reviews, books for teenagers, Discworld, fantasy books, funny books, Moving Pictures, Terry Pratchett, YA books

Long term readers will know that my son and I are working our way steadily through the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett as part of his reading journey for school. We have just finished the tenth book in the series, Moving Pictures.

Moving Pictures is a standalone book. There are a few characters here who crop up in other books, Detritus the troll, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler and some of the wizards, but nobody in a starring role here makes it through to another book.

I can kind of see why.

I didn’t like Moving Pictures when it first came out. In fact it was the first Discworld book I didn’t devour on the day I got it. It took me a few days as I recall. I found myself losing interest in it. I think there was too much of our world in it, and not enough Disc. The allusions and references come thick and fast in this book as Pratchett celebrates the magic of the movies in the way only he knows how. The main characters, Ginger and Victor, don’t really have enough about them to make them stand out, lovable characters. They simply do their job, and it’s not enough to make you care that much about them. You find yourself caring about the peripheral characters more.

I found that on this re-read with Oscar I enjoyed it more. It’s cleverer than I remember (I think I’m cleverer than I was, to be fair). It still isn’t subtle though, and the warmth and empathy that goes alongside the poking fun in the later books is kind of lost here amongst a welter of jokes.

The book tells the story of Holy Wood, a place of sunshine, sea and sand outside of Ankh Morpork where the magic of films really does become magic, a magic that wants to mesmerise people into letting demons from the dungeon dimension into the world, hypnotising them into acquiescence through the power of what Pratchett calls ‘the clicks’.

The clicks are invented by alchemists, thrilled at last they have something the wizards don’t. They take Ankh Morpork by storm, and soon move their base of operations to Holy Wood, where things start to get very strange, very quickly. The main characters here are Victor, a perpetual student wizard,  and Ginger, a young woman with big dreams, none of which are being fulfilled in Ankh.

Oscar’s favourite character, and mine too, is Gaspode the Wonder Dog, a sharp witted Ankh mongrel who suddenly finds he can speak, infected with the magic of Holy Wood. He is the voice of reason amongst all the madness.

Oscar enjoyed the jokes and because he is interested in and understands the world of films, found himself much more au fait with what was going on than say in Pyramids, where the jokes often flew over his head. It is actually one of the more satisfactory Discworld novels to read with a child. It is also less violent and has fewer sexual allusions and jokes which was a bit of a relief in terms of having to explain everything. It remains though, fundamentally a book for teens rather than younger children.