Terry Pratchett novel spoilers; take care...

[sabrinamari]

The new Terry Pratchett novel is one of my favorite things.

It's a bait-and-switch hiding in plain sight. It's a razor-sharp mace wrapped in a soft velvet pouch. It's a story about racism, genocide, human trafficking and the cruelest kind of human stupidity in comic fantasy form. Do not read this imagining that you will come away feeling jolly about the world. But it won't leave you feeling helpless and depressed, either.

Also, it has Sam Vimes, and that makes it much easier.

Comments

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

Sir Terry knows he only has a little time left. He's not writing light, cheery stories anymore -- or, at least, not just light and cheery. Every story of his that I've seen in the past 3-4 years is full of you need to know this!

His young adult stories about the education of a young witch named Tiffany Aching are amazing guidebooks for adulthood, capable of countering any amount of Disney princess stupidity.

And "Nation" -- "Nation" isn't set in Discworld, so some people may have skipped it. It, too, is a story about racism and cruelty; it's also about maturity, and what it means to be A Real Adult When Folks Are Counting On You (or as some reading this might put it, "clergy"). It may or may not have a happy ending. Read it.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I love the Tiffany stories. Tiffany has loads of good sense, and reminds me of Dorothy.

I will read Nation very soon. It sounds like my kind of story.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

The great thing about fiction is that it allows and encourages you to tell important truths in easily digestible forms.

Spoiler alert for this comment.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Some of my thoughts, which I copied and pasted from the discussion we're having on Ravelry about the book:

1) OK, so I loved Vimes in this book. In this one, more than any other, I really got the feeling that I tend to get from Granny Weatherwax in a lot of books: the feeling of knowing how bad you could be if you ever gave yourself a chance, but being good enough not to give yourself that chance. When he makes the choice to do something not-so-good, it always seems to be a choice of the lesser of two evils. And he never seems to think it’s a GOOD thing to have to hurt someone, even when a part of him enjoys it. The inner struggles he faces were more real in this book than ever, and I thought that was great.

2) I love Willikins. He’s a bad guy with a good heart. Although he has the capacity for a lot of nastiness, you get the feeling that he wouldn’t be bothering to engage in any of it anymore were it not for the fact that he is as protective of the Vimes family as a guard dog. And you know, I can’t help but hear him in Michael Caine’s voice. Probably because of Michael Caine’s role as Alfred in the Batman movies. :) Oh, and the killing at the end sort of reminded me of (pardon the geekery, ignore if you haven’t seen it) the last episode of Season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Giles kills a young man to prevent the evil goddess who shares the man’s body from being able to do any more damage (she’s perfectly capable of destroying the world). Giles says to the man that Buffy could never have killed him: “She’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us.” Then he suffocates the man. Willikins is no hero, but sometimes, the non-hero, the anti-hero is what’s needed.

3) The goblins playing music reminded me of the Ood singing in Doctor Who. Anyone else have that thought? Also, as awful as it was, I was very much affected by his description of the goblins eating their newborns when there wasn’t enough food to keep them alive, and the creation of the Soul of Tears pot afterwards. It takes something that exists in the animal kingdom, but puts it in, for lack of a better word, a human context, and makes the goblins’ plight more poignant. Pratchett’s descriptions of the goblins balanced them so well between “human” and “other.” It’s a tough concept to really grok--but it’s very thought-provoking. It puts you in a place where you have to wonder if you could see a creature so “other” and still be able to--and still be willing to--treat it as equal to a human.

4) That expression, “the dreadful algebra of necessity.” What a turn of phrase. It reminded me of that Stephen King story where a drug-smuggling doctor is shipwrecked on an island with no food, and he starts to amputate bits of himself and eat them in order to survive. Damn.

I agree with those who said that the story involving Fred and the rest of the Watch just seemed tacked on. It didn’t integrate well with the rest of the book. I wish it could have been fleshed out a bit more and woven in a bit more tightly with the rest of the plot.

Re: Spoiler alert for this comment.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

“She’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us.”

One of my favorite Rupert Giles moments EVER. :-)