Since reviewing the first
four Discworld books in September
last year, I’ve been aching to get my teeth into the next chunk of Terry Pratchett’s
flagship series. Amongst the next four books, reviewed in chronological order,
are Sourcery, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids, and
Guards! Guards!
5:
Sourcery
This book is the first since The Light
Fantastic to
feature Rincewind, the inept and unqualified wizard, and his Luggage, and we now find him working as an assistant in the Unseen
University Library, alongside everybody’s favourite Orangutan Librarian. The
Wizards are still a bickering bunch of old men whose main ambitions are to
assassinate their way up the university hierarchy, and it appears that yet
another Archchancellor needs to be appointed to that once again vacant position.
The arrival of a ten year old boy with more magical power than all the oldest and
highest-level wizards at the University put together plunges the whole place
into chaos, and Rincewind, following the mass exodus of all the other vermin in
the place, decides to run for his life. As the Sourcerer – so called because he
is a source of magic (hence the pun on the word) – expands his control beyond
the University and consequently begins to unravel the fabric of the universe,
Rincewind once again is thrust unwillingly along a path to try and save the
world.
Altogether, this is probably one of the worst books in the
series. A bit of a come-down after Mort, I
know, but unfortunately Sourcery is
one of the most unashamed ‘cod-comic-fantasy’ works in the entire Discworld canon – it has little to say,
the characters aren’t especially interesting, and the plot is a tad
wishy-washy. It’s essentially the same story as The Light Fantastic, consisting of Rincewind doing his utmost to
avoid having to do anything dangerous or heroic, only without Twoflower being
dragged along for the ride; instead he has as companions Conina, a barbarian
who would rather be a hairdresser, and Nijel the Destroyer, a skinny
middle-class teenager who would rather be a barbarian. Without any definite
ideas to poke fun at or decent characters to keep it romping along, the main
problem with this book is that its humour is lacking and not especially well-refined.
Even the Luggage fails to perform to its previous standard, with too many
attempts to grant it a personality reducing it almost to the level of a cheap
gag rather than the great icon of the series it once was.
Feel free to miss this book. There are better in store.
6:
Wyrd Sisters
Granny Weatherwax, the
witch of Lancre who previously featured in Equal
Rites, is joined by Nanny Ogg, the elderly mother and grandmother of half
the kingdom’s inhabitants, and Magrat, the young and naïve
New Age witch. When King Verence of the tiny kingdom of Lancre is murdered by the scheming Duke Felmet and
his wife, the recently-formed witches’ coven end up holding the late king’s
infant son. Shakespeare and the entire fairy-tale canon are parodied,
joked-about and critiqued in the course of this sixth Discworld book, and to superb effect.
Wyrd Sisters is a very good Pratchett work, easily one of his best.
Although one might be inclined to dismiss this as a mere parody of Macbeth – one of the most apparent
rip-offs on display here – there are many more facets of this book that go up
to make it uniquely Discworld; the
subject matter being rather more ‘about’ the theatre than simply making fun of
any one work in particular. Multiple works of Shakespeare, witch folklore in
general, stereotypes of rural life, fairy tales of both Grimm and Disney persuasion,
actors, writers and special effects, all are playfully woven together in Wyrd Sisters to make it deliciously
funny, a little bit playful, and thoroughly readable. The best aspect of this
book by far is the witches themselves, the three women who are amongst the very
best characters in the whole series. They spend most of the book bickering – or
rather, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg bicker as Magrat, being the youngest
and least experienced, merely gets bossed around – whilst trying to decide on the
proper way to go about this unwelcome new problem. Granny’s prideful bossiness
and Nanny Ogg’s uncouth cheeky nature and love of alcohol work well off
one-another, and to counterpoint them both with young Magrat’s faintly pitiful
mysticism and her clumsy attempts at being her own modern style of witch result
in three excellent, distinct characters – each is a work of art on her own, but
together they give this book one of the strongest cores in all of Discworld.
If you want a laugh, then definitely read this one. I
cannot recommend it strongly enough.
7: Pyramids
Book 7 is an unusual
specimen, but is a Discworld book
through-and-through. Ancient Egypt, ritual and religion are given a thorough
going-over in the way that has now become the hallmark of this series. By
applying one or two real-world rules to the concepts outlined, and then
watching as a rational 20th century mindset grapples with the all
this rampant absence of logic. A land very much in the mould of Ancient Egypt,
complete with hordes of bickering priests devoted to an endless pantheon of
deities, thousands of years of homogenous history in which new ideas and
outside influences are frowned upon, and funeral customs that generally involve
the construction of vast, elaborately decorated stone structures with sloping sides
and pointy tops. And camels. We cannot get enough of the camels.
Teppic, crown prince of the Old Kingdom of Djelibeybi – conspicuous
because of its time-slowing pyramids, its vast number of local gods, and for
its great length/immense lack of width (having grown up along a river) – has
just completed his training at the famous Assassin’s Guild of Ankh-Morpork,
when he inherits the throne of his homeland a bit sooner than expected. He
travels home to discover that nothing much has really changed in his absence,
while he has changed a little too much – a modern, cosmopolitan mindset that
puts him at odds with the old High Priest Dios. While it dawns on Teppic that
he’s little more than a figurehead whose sole purpose is to keep the kingdom
ticking-over for another generation, the construction of a new giant pyramid
for his late father begins to completely bugger up the differences between time
and space. Geometry, it turns out, has more in common with nuclear physics here
on the Disc.
Pyramids is
definitely a good one. Right from the start at the Assassin’s Guild (something
of a Hogwarts for contract killers) the book is witty, well-paced, and hits the
mark spot on. The late King Teppicymon XXVII, while in much the same vein as
the dead king from Wyrd Sisters, is a
good secondary character who provides a suitable amount of black humour as his
spirit observes his own mummification, while the pyramid contractors Ptaclusp
and his two sons, Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIb, are a perfect trio of
characters who enliven much of the book with their designer funery monuments
and Quantum Geometry. Another fine character is You Bastard, the greatest
mathematician in the history of the Disc, but I shall say little more about him
here – read the book, and you will love him.
In the end, Pyramids is
actually quite a good story, a tad science-fictiony in places (I mean this in a
good way, unusually) which makes well-rounded points against religion, ritual,
and the Egyptian afterlife, whilst poking fun at the ancient world in general,
especially ancient Greek philosophy, drama and mathematics. Definitely worth a
read, and its stand-alone nature amongst the Discworld canon makes it possibly one of the more accessible books
for a newcomer.
8:
Guards! Guards!
Ankh-Morpork has long
proven itself to be the premier Discworld
location, an amalgamation and mirror of every major western city on our
planet. In this book we get to see this grubby jewel of cities not from the
perspective of an aloof wizard, or a hapless tourist, or a privileged member of
one of the thousands of Guilds that cluster inside its walls, but rather we see
it through the eyes of the humble, underpaid and unfortunate survivors of the
Night Watchmen; the remaining few dregs of society who constitute what’s left
of the old-fashioned law and order of the city. Ever since Lord Vetinari, the
Machiavellian Patrician and ruler of Ankh-Morpork, formally legalised crime in
the city so as to make the crime-rates more manageable (and taxable, presumably), the need
for a regular law-enforcement body has steadily dwindled to the point of
extinction. The last remaining members are the cynical old drunkard Captain
Vimes and his two aides, Sergeant Colon, and the short, vile Corporal Nobby.
Three men to patrol the night-time streets of the largest and foulest city on
the Disc. That is, until the young, idealistic and, dare we say it, heroic
Lance-Constable Carrot joins the force, with a rusty old sword in one hand and
an outdated law-book in the other (not to mention a trusty Protective device
somewhere in-between), and the four watchmen bear witness to a crime of a
devastating and near-mythical variety. It seems that a gigantic dragon is loose
on the streets of Ankh-Morpork, and the Night-Watch are the only people who
want to do anything about it.
Guards! Guards!, at around 50% longer than any of the
previous instalments, is one of the most complex Discworld books so far – though not actually complicated, you’ll be
pleased to hear. Captain Vimes is as cynical a protagonist as we will ever get,
and it is for this reason that he will go on to become one of the best and most
versatile heroes of the series. While personally I am more of a fan of the
witches of Lancre, Vimes and his crew of misfits are a good set of characters
who give this book a definite new mood, and a unifying core that we cannot
help but root for and love. The hooded secret society, another selection of
misfits – albeit one bent on seizing control of the city via their misguided
machinations – are a characterful group of villains and are easily the best
antagonists of the series so far. Their plan is a perfect subversion of that
old cliché ‘long-lost king returns to
kill an evil dragon and thereby reclaim his rightful throne’, but having it
take place in what is, essentially, a modern city where hot-dog salesmen spawn
wherever a crowd gathers – for instance, at a dreadful disaster. The real hero of this story is not the dashing guy with the
glittering sword who arrives after a life of exile to reclaim his supposed birthright, but rather it is the unwashed,
uneducated sceptics who patrol the streets and ask for no gratitude – and who don’t
get any either.
In essence Guards!
Guards! is a marker-stone in the development of Pratchett’s expanding
world. At the top of the city is the Patrician, Lord Vetinari, a man who has
briefly appeared in several of the previous books (most notably in Sourcery, but to no real effect), but it
is here first of all that we see one of Pratchett’s greatest characters emerging,
a man so devious, so manipulative, so paranoid that he can remain in control of
a city as chaotic as Ankh-Morpork. Like so many of the other characters in this
book Vetinari is highly cynical, and he therefore runs the city not as an
idealist seeking to do right, or as a lunatic who only wants power and wealth
from his position, but rather as an engineer maintaining a machine – it doesn’t
have to work perfectly, it just has to function, to do the job it was meant to
do. Vetinari is basically a tyrant, a dictator, but he is as benevolent a one
as it is possible to get. In addition the other supporting characters are
excellent as well; Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler the street-vendor, bustling
entrepreneur and seller of suspect goods, makes good in the first of what will
be many appearances in the series, and the Librarian of the Unseen University
finds an interesting little role in this book as he ends up being temporarily
drafted as a member of the Watch. Lastly, one of the finest aspects of this
book is Lady Sybil Ramkin and her collection of swamp dragons. Sybil Ramkin is
one of the most effective characters on display, a no-nonsense breeder of pet
swamp dragons whose firm-headed sense of aristocracy, her towering stature and her complete
lack of vanity make her a wonderful final supporting character; and that's to say nothing of the swamp dragons – a species of animal so weird and volatile (literally:
explosive) that they could only come from a Discworld
book.
All in all, a very good entry in the series. I thoroughly recommend it.
In conclusion, of this
selection of Pratchett's works Sourcery
is not that great, while all the others are excellent and well worth a read. If
there’s a common theme for this phase of the series, it seems to be a
lot to do with kings and kingship. Sourcery
seems to be dominated with the idea of whether ‘power = right?’, while Wyrd Sisters and Pyramids are both about murdered kings and their successors. Guards! Guards! finally brings this train of thought to an end by
dealing with it head-on, wilfully pointing out what's wrong with the common tropes of heroes and
kings and thereby having great fun with the idea. All in all, the Disc proves
to be a good arena to test these ideas, and to great humorous effect. None of
these books are too difficult to grasp, but there’s definitely more going on
underneath than you would expect from what some, admittedly silly people, still think of as just another comic-fantasy series.
If
I had to pick a favourite, I would be hard-pressed to choose; Wyrd Sisters is a well-rounded comedy, Pyramids is one of the most enjoyable
sci-fi works I’ve ever read, and Guards!
Guards! is thoroughly Discworld through
and through, and has swamp dragons. I think my favourite might have been Pyramids, strangely enough. The Quantum
Geometry alone is delicious, but along with designer pyramids, the Assassin’s Guild
and one of the broadest swipes at Ancient Greek
literature/mathematics/philosophy ever attempted, this particular book has a
distinct quality that separates it from the other entries in the series. Unlike
the others mentioned in this review, it does not reuse characters from previous
instalments, and nor is it followed by sequels which feature the same characters
– making it a rare stand-alone example. The main characters, admittedly, are
not the best – both Wyrd Sisters and Guards! Guards! are better in this respect –
but the supporting characters, the plot, the setting, and the humour more than
make up for this. But overall, a firm thumbs-up for all three.
Biblioworld Part 2
Pratchett, Terry. Sourcery. Corgi: Reading. (1989 [First
Published 1988])
Pratchett, Terry. Wyrd Sisters. Corgi: Reading. (1989
[First Published 1988])
Pratchett, Terry. Pyramids. Corgi: Reading. (1990 [First
Published 1989]
Pratchett, Terry. Guards! Guards! Corgi: Reading. (1990
[First Published 1989]
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