The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

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Discworld, funny books, Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

The Amazing Maurice is the twenty eighth book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and the first one that he deliberately wrote as a children’s book. It won him his most distinguished literary prize, The Carnegie Medal, largely because I like to think that children’s librarians are much smarter than literary critics and have always known genius when they’ve seen it.

The Amazing Maurice is a cat who, like the educated rodents he hangs around with, spent too long eating things that the wizards at Unseen University threw away, and suddenly discovered he could think, and talk. Maurice and the rats have teamed up with a ‘stupid looking kid’, who can play the penny whistle, and are travelling the Disc, simultaneously infesting and ridding the town of a plague of rats, and a hefty sum of money for doing so.

As they arrive in Bad Blintz, the rats tell Maurice that this is their last con. They want to find the nirvana promised in the book Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure, which has become their bible. Maurice grudgingly agrees, but before things can swing into action they find that sinister forces are afoot in Bad Blintz. Can they save themselves and the townspeople of Bad Blintz?

On first reading I found this a strange choice for a children’s book. The Amazing Maurice may have more than echoes of the Pied Piper fable. It may also be influenced by Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, but it is a very dark tale. It’s about the human in animals, and the animal in humans. It has moments of savagery and genuine fear and tension that many of the previous Discworld novels lack. Just as I assume that children’s librarians are smarter, I found this was the point where I realised that Pratchett knew children were smarter than your average adult, too. There is no pandering to young minds here. There is direct, straight talking, fierceness and no compromise whatsoever and it makes the book worthy of the Carnegie and every other prize you might care to mention.

It’s funny, of course. There’s a lot of mention of widdling in jam, but it’s also funny in an extremely macabre, sharp way that cuts to the bone of what Pratchett is doing, showing humans to humans and talking about what it is to be humane.

On re-reading it with Oscar, I only have more praise for it. It’s one of those books I think should be compulsory reading in schools. Sod Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm. This is the one.

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The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

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Discworld, Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero

The Last Hero is the twenty-seventh book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, and one, which when I started reading it with my son, I realised I had never read before. It was a real pleasure to read something new (to me), and which, unlike The Shepherd’s Crown, did not make me cry.

The Last Hero is more of a novella, and our version is a beautiful, large format, cloth bound book with full colour plates that are beautifully drawn by Paul Kidby. Oscar, my son, particularly enjoyed this format as he had a real chance to examine all the pictures and see the Discworld up close, so to speak. My favourite illustration was the Librarian, his was the turtles swimming through space.

In this book, Cohen the Barbarian and his ageing horde have a bone to pick with the dice playing Gods who gamble with the lives of ordinary Disc dwellers (if there is such a thing) and heroes alike. Cohen decides to go out with a bang not a whimper, and they set off to deliver the gift of fire back to the Gods.

Back in Ankh Morpork, the Patrician enrols the help of the wizards to try and stop the world ending and with the help of Leonard of Quirm and the City Watch, they launch a vessel filled with their brightest and best, and Rincewind to save the day.

Many different strands of Disc lore weave together to make this modern myth come to life. I think it’s best described as a romp, and one we thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

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Discworld, fantasy fiction, funny books, Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Thief of Time is the twenty sixth novel in the Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett, and one of my absolute favourites to read. I was so looking forward to sharing this with Oscar, and the experience did not disappoint. This is one of the series that really has stood the test of both time and quality for me.

The book features Lu Tse, who pops up in earlier novels, (Small Gods for example) who is one of the Monks of History. The Monks of History are a pastiche of all the martial arts/zen buddhist/karate stuff you’ve ever seen or read about. The abbot regenerates into a baby every time he is reborn, but retains all his wisdom along with needing his nappy changing and shouting ‘wanna bikkit’. The monastery has mandalas and mystically tended gardens, and time wheels powered by yak’s butter and Lu Tse shuffles amongst it all, the mysterious sweeper with a penchant for smoking dog ends and quoting his Ankh Morpork land lady’s gnomic wisdom.

Lu Tse has to take his assistant Lob Sang to Ankh Morpork to stop the auditors stopping time altogether because time and people do not mix without making a mess. There are cosmic clocks, more horsemen of the apocalypse than you would normally expect, passing references to Reservoir Dogs and in amongst it, creating order out of chaos, Death’s grand-daughter, Susan.

Full of jokes and wisdom and humanity, it’s hard to see how Pratchett pieces all this together to create a unified narrative, but he does, and it is glorious. It can be read on so many levels, and probably enjoyed on even more.

 

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.