Terry Pratchett Archives - Martin's Booklog

Reaper Man — Terry Pratchett

Published on March 19, 2015Leave a comment

Cover of Reaper Man

Reaper Man
Terry Pratchett
287 pages
published in 1991

Even before rereading the day after pTerry’s death, Reaper Man was mired in grieving for me. Because I reread it in 2012, the year after Sandra’s death, when I had fallen back on Pratchett’s Discworld series as comfort reading, something to lose yourself in and forget for a while. And then I hit Reaper Man, in which DEATH has been retired by the Auditors for having become too human, has to find a new living as BILL DOOR and a fragile, predoomed romance starts between him and Miss Flitworth, the never married widow he ends up working as a farmhand for. It’s a novel about death and life and humanity and the essence of it is captured by what DEATH argues at the climax of it:

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

That’s a sentiment, for all its vaguely Christian overtones, I can get behind. DEATH himself has started off in the first two Discworld novels as a somewhat evil incarnation of the Grim Reaper, through his obsession with reaping Rincewind, but after this had been established as conscientious and extremely careful in doing his job and that quote sums it up to a tee. The harvest needs to be done, but it has to be done with care and attention — there’s a great scene in which BILL DOOR turns out to scythe the wheat one blade at a time and is still faster than everybody else. And it’s this what the Auditors object to.

The Auditors are one of the first of Pratchett’s standins for faceless capitalism, or so I like to read them. No identity of their own, no interest in anything that makes humanity, well, human, no interest in seeing the job done properly, only in that it’s done efficiently without any care for the individual case. Their Death is impersonal yet vindictive, an attitude familiar to anybody caught in the crosshairs of any large company’s “customer service”.

DEATH’s retirement as BILL DOOR meanwhile brings to the fore his own humanity, as he learns to live as human, deal with the passage of time and inevitability of well, himself. Seeing DEATH figuring all this out and how to act in daily life, how to become just Bill Door is both funny and sad, especially since you know how it has to end.

Fortunately there’s more than enough to laugh about in the book’s second plotline, revolving around the wizards having to deal with the fallout of DEATH’s retirement as the lack of things dying leads to a buildup of life forces, enlivening things considerably in Ankh-Morpork. Windle Spoons being one of them, who as a wizard is privileged enough to know the hour of his death, but with DEATH missing, this appointment isn’t kept so he returns as a zombie. Sort of. His colleagues are considerate enough to try out the traditional methods of dealing with the undead on him, to no avail.

Meanwhile even inanimate objects are starting to feel the effects of the absence of DEATH and amongst an infestion of snowglobes and shopping car trolleys is hiding, leading up to something sinister, something parasitic on cities, the shopping mall…

Even though I’ve reread this at least half a dozen times, this still makes me laugh out loud in places, as it makes me choke up in others. Pratchett really hit his stride around this time and Reaper Man would be an excellent place to start reading the Discworld series with. It doesn’t need much prior knowledge, it shows off both his humouristic and philosophical side and it’s representative both of where Pratchett was coming from and where he was going to.

Faust Eric — Terry Pratchett

Published on March 3, 20131 Comment

Cover of Eric

~~Faust~~ Eric
Terry Pratchett
155 pages
published in 1990

Eric is a bit of an odd duck in the Discworld, out of place amongst the increasing sophistication of the last couple of novels coming before it, almost a throwback to the very first few books. It’s a lot shorter, a lot less serious and a lot more written for comedic effect than its immediate predecessors were. All of which can be explained by the simple fact that it was first published as an illustrated book, written around a series of Josh Kirby illustrations, which was later adapted into standard Discworld paperback format, losing most of its charm in the process.

A word about Josh Kirby is needed at this place. Kirby was of course the cover artist for all the Discworld novels up until his death, Thief of Time being his last novel. His work was incredibly caricatural in nature, with very exaggerated figures and bright colours, not really to everybody’s tastes. Some might have found it a bit childish even, but I always liked it. To me his covers were Discworld, especially the early novels when it wasn’t all taken that seriously yet even by Pratchett himself. Therefore it made perfect sense to do an illustrated Discworld story with his drawings, just like his replacement as cover artist, Paul Kidby, would do with The Last Hero.

Without Kirby’s illustrations, what’s left is a slight but still fun story, a clever parody of the story of Faust. It all starts when a young wannabe demonologist, Eric, tries to summon a demon from the foulest regions of hell, but through one of those million to one chances that crop up nine times out of ten, he gets Rincewind. It’s unclear who’s more shocked to find this out, him or Rincewind. But certainly no one is more shocked than Rincewind when it turns out he is indeed bound by the summoning just as a real demon would’ve been…

So he has no choice but to try and grant Eric his three wishes: mastery foa ll the kingdoms of the Earth, to meet the most beautiful woman who ever lived and to live forever. In proper Discworld fashion, none of these three wishes turn out like you’d expect, but what remains unanswered is just where Rincewind is getting the power to even attempt them. It’s all a trick of course, with Rincewind and Eric no more than pawns in a power struggle in hell, as more traditional minded demon aristocrats attempt to overthrown their current overlord, who is slightly too impressed with modern human management theories.

Eric‘s portrayal of hell reminded me a lot of Terry Pratchett’s earlier collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Good Omens, particularly in how hell’s old fashioned evil doing is no match to modern, impersonal human invented evil. As a story it’s not up to the standard set by the preceding few Discworld novel, in feel it’s more in line with the earliest ones.

Guards! Guards! — Terry Pratchett

Published on December 10, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of Guards! Guards!

Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett
317 pages
published in 1989

For me Guards! Guards! is the last novel you can describe as an early Discworld novel. From here on all the major subseries have appeared: Rincewind, Death, the Witches and now the Night Watch/Sam Vimes novels. It’s the first novel in which Ankh-Morpork becomes more than generic, somewhat over the top fantasy city, with the first extended cameo for the Patrician and the first insights in how he rules the city. Over time Ankh-Morpork and the Night Watch would come to dominate the Discworld series of course; every novel in the main series since The Fifth Elephant either set in Ankh-Morpolk or featuring the Watch or both, but of course we didn’t know that at the time. Back then it was just Pratchett taking the mickey out of yet another set of fantasy cliches.

In Guards! Guards!‘s case, he did that by importing another set of cliches, that of the hardboiled police procedural. Sam Vimes is a hero straight out of an Ian Rankin novel: the grizzled, older, cynical detective staying in the Night Watch because he has no other place to go. He remained in his post even as the watch has degenerated into a farce and he has become a captain of only three men: Fred Colon, a fat sergeant, Nobby Nobbs, a weassely corporal and a new dwarf recruit called Carrot Ironfoundersson.

Well, I say dwarf recruit, but turns out, to his own shock, that Carrot was adopted, which might be why he’s over six feet tall; somewhat on the big side for a dwarf. Culturally though, if not physically Carrot is dwarvish to the core: honest, loyal, law abiding and extremely literal. He’s actually naive enough to want to enforce the law, which awakes something in Vimes he thought was long dead.

Meanwhile there’s a conspiracy afoot. This is not new; conspiracies are always afoot in Ankh-Morpork, whether occult or otherwise, but this is a different kind of conspiracy. It’s a conspiracy of the petty, the spiteful, the narrow minded little people unsatisfied with their lot in life, jealous of others. Their plan is simple: summon a dragon to threaten the city, so that the true king of Ankh-Morpork may return and chase the patrician, Havelock Vetinari, from his throne.

The Night Watch is of course caught in the middle and are in fact the first to run into the dragon. Investigating its appearance Sam Vimes makes the acquaintance of Sybil Ramkin, dragon breeder and high nob. The meeting between the two is not so much love as mutual fascination at first sight. Vimes quickly realises what a powerful ally she is.

What’s interesting about Guards! Guards! is the number of strong characters in it. Not just Sam Vimes, but Sybil, the Patrician and corporal Carrot are all very strong in their own way. Carrot’s strenght is the simplest, a good humoured force of nature, while Vetinari and Vimes both are much more devious and cynical, with the former more willing to accept the consequences of his cynicism, while the latter has an inner core of decentness that is its own strength. Sybil finally has that jolly hockeystick strength of the old (English) aristocracy, that ability to keep a cool head in a crisis.

There’s more of Pratchett’s evolving humanitarianism on display here as well, which would become a persistent theme with the Vimes novels. It’s not so much here that Pratchett objects to autocratic rulers — Vetinari certainly isn’t a democrat — as that he objects to unthinking veneration and rulers who just want to rule with no thought to the country they rule. Vetinari is intensly concerned about Ankh-Morpork, while the shadowy master behind the conspiracy is willing to let it be destroyed if it means power. It’s something we saw in Wyrd Sisters as well.

It’s of course an inherently conservative worldview, though it has its attractions to more liberal minded people as well, that idea of the benevolent, enlightened despot. This is what, more so than the presences of trolls and dwarves and dragons that makes the Discworld a fantasy novel, this idea that this could work.

Pyramids — Terry Pratchett

Published on November 11, 20122 Comments

A reader asks:

I’ve uh, never read any Pratchett before and have been wanting to tackle the Discworld novels for sometime but I’ve been intimidated by the reading order issue. It actually doesn’t help matters any that this is one of the most frequently asked questions, it all seems so confusing. Where to begin?

Cover of Pyramids

Pyramids
Terry Pratchett
380 pages
published in 1989

A good question. With a series that has almost forty novels, quite a few spinoff books and theatre, movie and television adaptations, the Discworld can look daunting to get into. Yet it’s not as bad as it looks. There are a couple of natural starting points: The Colour of Magic of course, but that’s not very representative for the rest of the series. A better starting point might be Guards! Guards! as that is the novel in which the whole Sam Vines/Night Watch/Ankh Morpork sub series was set up that has dominated the Discworld ever since. But of course since we’re discussing this question in a review of Pyramids, I’m going to make a case for it as the best starting point for getting into the Discworld.

the problem with the earliest Discworld books, especially the first two, is that they’re not as good as the later entries in the series, so they give you a wrong impression of it. Pyramids on the other hand is as good as any other Discworld book. What’s more it stands alone, you don’t need to have read any other book first, or after to get the whole story. Finally, more so than some, it’s drenched in Pratchett’s ideas about humanity, his philosophy so to speak. A good litmus test than for whether you’d approve of it or reject it.

The story starts with Teppic, heir to the ancient kingdom of Djelibeybi and student assassin in Ankh Morpork, that being the education suitable to the Discworld aristocracy. When he gets the news that his father the king has died, he returns to Djelibeybi to become the new king. But his time in Ankh-Morpork has changed him, modernised him and coming back he runs smack dab in the unchanging force of tradition you get in a ten-thousand year old kingdom, as personified in the head priest Dios. When this tradition meant sacrificing his father’s favourite handmaiden, Ptraci, at his funeral, Teppic revolts, to no avail..

Meanwhile one of his first deeds as king is to build a pyramid for his father, ten times as big as any pyramid ever seen in the country. But, while the pyramids can be seen flaring off time at night, the knowledge of why they do this or why it’s dangerous to build them too big has been lost. Soon the pyramid begins to warp time and space and the whole country revolves itself ninety degrees in spacetime, in the process making real everything the Djelibeybis believed in as the gods come to visit. And because the kingdom was the only thing that stood between Tsort and Ephebe, which would’ve otherwise be neighbours: its disappearance meant war… It’s up to Teppic and Ptraci to stop the war, sort out the kingdom and solve the riddle of the pyramids.

The theme that runs through Pyramids is that of sloppy, emotional individual people having to battle throuhg, in this case, hidebound tradition. The main villain of the story, Dios, genuinely cares about Djelibeybi as a kingdom, but not really about its people, whereas Teppic for the most part doesn’t care about the kingdom or his role in it until he meets Ptraci when it’s her personal plight that moves him. It’s the sort of thing Pratchett writes about a lot, of systemic unhumanity coming up against illogical, sloppy humanity and losing. It can be a bit smug at times, but here it’s done perfectly, also because Dios is not just a one dimensional villain and you can feel some sympathy for him.

All of which makes Pyramids the ideal discworld starting point: a good, standalone story that doesn’t rely on too much continuity and showcases all of Pratchett’s good sides.

Wyrd Sisters — Terry Pratchett

Published on November 4, 20121 Comment

The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills.

The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?
There was a pause.
Finally another voice said, in for more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday’.

Cover of Wyrd Sisters

Wyrd Sisters
Terry Pratchett
331 pages
published in 1988

The opening paragraphs of Wyrd Sisters are a good indication of the rest of the book. This is MacBeth: Discworld style and the witches do not intend to stick to the script. That’s because Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are sensible witches and while the third member of the coven is a bit wet — as in, she actually believes in such things like covens — Magrat Garlick still has a steel core of good Lancrian common sense. They know better than to meddle in affairs (well, mostly) or dance with demons, never mind doing it skyclad. Yet when the king is murdered, his baby heir disappears and the usurper duke turns out not be just a bit evil, but actually uncaring about the land, they’re dragged into meddling against their own will.

This then is the first proper Witches novel, introducing Nanny Ogg and Margrat Garlick as well as a better worked out Granny Weatherwax than the one we’ve met in Equal Rites. As characters they conform to the old witches stereotype of the maiden (Magrat), the mother (Nanny Ogg) and the other one (’nuff said). Nanny Ogg in particular fills her role well, being earthy and salty and in good humour msot of the time, which you can usually tell by which couplet she has gotten to in the hedgehog song. Magrat on the other hand is the sort of witch who believes in crystals and such, while Granny Weatherwax is not just bossy compared to other people, she’s bossy compared to other witches… They’re some of Pratchett’s best creations.

They’re also representative of his philosophy. They’re stubborn, hardheaded, sometimes obnoxious, emotional, not very friendly, but when push comes to shove they’re on the right side. The duke meanwhile isn’t evil as much as he’s uncaring. He has killed the previous king because he wanted the power of being the ruler, not because he cared for the country he would rule. Whereas the previous king might’ve burned down houses and exercises his droit seigneur (a large dog), he did it in a personal way, rather than just because they were in the way. It’s the sort of evil we’ll encounter a lot more of in the Discworld series and had already seen in Sourcery.

Another Pratchett theme we’d see more is that of the power of speech and how it can change the world as it changes people’s perspectives, here worked out for the first time. The witches are traditionally feared but respected and much of that is due to how they represent themselves. People see the pointy hats and they think witches. So when they speak, people listen. But as the duke finds out, that authority can be challenged by a whisper campaign, by pointing out that these are just a bunch of foolish old women, that they are responsible for evil things, that they’re not very nice. In the end, the struggle between the duke and the witches comes down to who can offer the better narrative.

At this point in the series Pratchett has clearly found his stride and it shows. The writing sparkles, the plot’s tight and it’s all a bit better than earlier novels in the series.