The Song of Roland, a Medieval Hack-and-Slash Epic

Since last month I did not review anything particularly noteworthy (I simply made do with a cheap James Herbert novel, and left it at that), so this month I’m going to shove some culture down the internet’s throat. The Song of Roland, or La Chanson de Roland, is a medieval French epic poem, detailing the heroic last-stand of the eponymous Roland and his buddy Oliver against a horde of Islamic warriors – or pagans, as it shamelessly labels them. English translations are available and, as far as these things go, it is not especially long. Think of it as a mini-Iliad, with none of the nuance, or the plot, or the flare.

          The story concerns the near semi-legendary king Charles the Great (AKA. Charlemagne, 768-814 CE), ruler of the Franks, defender of the Papacy, Holy Roman Emperor, and conqueror of large tracts of Western Europe. The historical accuracy of this poem is quite suspect, viewing 8^th century events through an 11^th century lens, so knowing the precise history is not too important. The context of The Song of Roland is that Charles/Charlemagne is busy conquering Spain, in this era under the power of Islamic Moorish rulers, when he gets held up at Saragossa. The pagan king, Marsile, agrees to a truce, and Charles can finally leave Spain and go back home to France (the Frankish empire). Only one person is unhappy about this; Roland, the emperor’s heroic nephew, for he does not trust the enemy. Sure enough, one of Charlemagne’s trusted officers, Ganelon, goes over to king Marsile and hatches a plot with him to have Roland killed. 

As Roland and his buddy Oliver are put in charge of the rearguard while the Frankish army withdraws, they are set upon by the vast horde of Marsile’s army in a battle at Rencesvals (Roncesvalles). Roland fights heroically, his mighty sword Durendal in hand, but it is clear they cannot beat the enemy. In a last bid, Roland blows his trusty Oliphant – an ivory horn, very much the prototype of a certain Horn of Gondor – to summon Charlemagne’s army for help, but by this point it is far too late, and he and his companions perish. When the emperor arrives he is distraught by the loss of his men and his nephew, and makes one last attack on Saragossa, conquering it and at last defeating the Saracen menace. In the last scene, Ganelon is tried for treason, a trial-by-combat takes place, the traitor is executed, but Charlemagne and his people are still sad at losing Roland. The End.

          The poem is made up of around 4000 lines, divided into 298 stanzas, all of varying lengths. Each line is basically its own simple, self contained statement, a mere unambiguous description of what’s going on. Some verses are reinforced by having the following stanza essentially repeat what was said in the previous one, but with very minor changes; which gets a bit tiresome, but fortunately this rarely lasts too long. To show you how basic it is, here’s a passage I selected by opening the book at random:

[118]  “Count Roland calls out to Oliver:

          ‘Lord companion, now Engeler is dead;

          We have no more valiant knight than he.’

          The count replies: ‘May God grant me revenge.’

          He urges on his horse with his spurs of pure gold,

          Wields Halteclere, whose steel is red with blood,

          And with great force goes to strike the pagan.

          He dealt his blow and the Saracen falls;

          Devils carry off his soul.

          Then he slew Duke Alphaien

          And next sliced off the head of Escababi.”

                                                [Lines 1545-1555. Pg.78]

And so it goes on, and on, and on a little bit more. It seems a much rawer piece of writing than any of the Greek epics, much keener on saying simple, broad things here there and everywhere. Much of it is written in the present tense, which makes it a mildly odd thing to read to yourself in bed, but it’s not difficult to get used to – despite the fact that it sometimes changes tense mid-verse, or mid-line even. However, because each line pretty much works on its own, even the densest or most befuddled reader will find it impossible to get lost, or to miss important developments (I stand as my evidence for this, for there is no reader denser or more easily befuddled by things like this). As such, maybe it’d be good to read aloud to children. 

Or then again, maybe not. There’s not all too much moral ambiguity; you have your goodies and you have your baddies – the good guys are called Christians or Franks, and the bad guys are variously described as pagans and/or followers of Muhammad. There’s not much more to it than that. Some guys get together and beat the shit out of each-other, using religion as a pretext. Very much a ‘Crusades’-era’ piece of literature.

What else needs mentioning? The death of Roland himself is apparently a famous event in literature; having burst a vein in his temple, our hero spends his last moments slapping his sword Durendal on a rock, trying to break it and thus prevent it from falling into heathen hands. If you have a soft spot for famous moments, then suppose it is your duty to seek this one out. We have a broken horn, Boromir-esque, Charles the Great wins himself another princess and, all-in-all, you get a bit of that hard-edged Norman chivalry you hear so much about. Would I recommend it? Compared to the Iliad it’s a piece of cake; just slog your way from one end to the other, which isn’t too far, and feel as though you’ve achieved some culture. It’s just that this particular piece of culture consists of a lot of people hitting eachother over the head with chunks of sharpened metal.

The Bibliography of Roland

The Song of Roland. Translated by Glyn Burgess. Penguin. (1990).

Haunted, by James Herbert

Everyone loves a ghost story; unless you don’t believe in ghosts, and find the idea of people hanging around after they’ve died to be a load of codswallop. Even so, a piece of clichéd formulaic tripe like James Herbert’s Haunted can get away with such things, because fantasies are a necessary part of telling any story. If a writer wants to alter the rules of the world somewhat in order to tell a genuinely good story or – in Herbert’s case – to make money and retain his position as big-league cheap horror thriller writer, then he can go right ahead. Because this book does indulge in fantasy, no matter what kind of supposedly ‘real-world’ issues it feels as though it may be addressing. Actually, I’ve only just realised he died a couple of years ago, aged 69, so I may be a bit more reserved on judging his worth as a writer – after all, it’s not polite to speak ill of the dead (at least, the recently dead), so we might have a vaguely interesting discussion about this book specifically about ‘the afterlife’ in light of that.

          If you know anything at all about ghost stories, then it’s quite possible you can guess the entire plot right at the beginning. The whole book seems to be constructed entirely out of clichés, tropes and hackneyed nonsense, so there is very little here that surprises or enthrals. Perhaps James Herbert is better examined through some of his other novels, such as his flagship The Rats, or The Fog, or The Secret of Crickley Hall, because it’s damned difficult to do anything even remotely interesting with a tiny little story about ghosties – but considering this is the only James Herbert I had on me at the time, and I wanted to get at least one review done for February, this’ll have to do.

          The story is this: David Ash – because the borderline alcoholic, hard-smoking sceptical paranormal investigator with a tragic origin story has to have a cool name so that he’d be even more irresistible to the ladies – has been contracted to investigate strange goings-on at the manor of Edbrook, near a village called Ravenmoor, a desolate and ill-maintained old house in the middle of nowhere. Spooky location and hard-bitten manly protagonist, check. The only people who live there are the Mariell siblings: Robert, Simon and Christina, three adult orphans who have free-reign of the manor and who seem to delight in tormenting the only other occupant of the house, their dear old housekeeper and aunt, Nanny Tess. Mysterious, isolated and possibly insane residents, check. They have a big scary dog, and a girl in a white dress can occasionally be seen strolling the house and grounds at night. Wandering spirit; check. There, now you have all the ingredients you need to write your own ghost story – just don’t get too creative with it, or you might end up being a tad original.

          In all honesty, it’s not actually a dreadful book; Herbert knows how to make clichés work for him, and obeying a formula with as much dedication as this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The surly, cynical protagonist was necessary in order to fit this scheme, if only so that it could result in some emotional conflict between him and the ‘reality’ of ghosts and afterlives. There is nothing original in the characters, or the setting, or the idea behind the story, but the writer at least can handle all the elements competently, no matter how silly it gets. When the true horrors of the setting are revealed, it actually gets a bit boring – mostly because you’ve been expecting so much for the previous three-quarters of the book. Actually, there was a film purportedly based on this book – using the same names, only everything has been completely changed: the personalities, the story, the time-period, even the genre. I’m not sure what’s worse; reading a piece of tripe like this, or watching a movie-adaptation afterwards that changes literally everything about it, yet still can’t do anything remotely interesting with it. The movie also happens to be terrible, but I don't know if I'm angry at for not including anything but a token relation to the source material - no matter how awful that source material may be.

          But if there’s one thing that annoys me about this novel – because, as I’ve already outlined the predictable plot, the clichés, the writing style, none of that bothers me too much as it’s just McDonalds level story-telling – then it would be the pseudo-science used to explain ghosts. The protagonist had to be of the sceptical persuasion, so that his rational scientifically-based ‘illusions’ about the world could be well and truly smashed by the ‘reality’ of lost souls wandering the Earth. He works for an institute of paranormal investigators, or something Scooby-Doo-ish like that, who are shown to work very hard in order to disprove fraudulent mediums and uncover rational explanations behind so-called hauntings – yet the presence of a genuine “medium” amongst their number, the use of telepathy, psychic links, and the pseudo-scientific concept of after-images as an explanation for ghost-sightings, all of this just reinforces how silly the whole thing is. The protagonist himself, the hard-line rationalist of the group, states at one point:

          “’I’m prepared to believe that emotions of certain distressed people can be so strong at the moment of death, whether through pain, unhappiness, or shock, that an impression is left behind. An after-image, if you like, that can take years, maybe centuries, to fade completely.’”         

                 [Hodder and Stoughton Limited. Pg. 95]

          So, not ghosts, but sort-of ghosts? I find this idea to be even more ridiculous than the notion of ghosts-proper, that somebody’s consciousness could survive death and remain disembodied and wander around a particular location, jumping out at particular people and scare them. It seems that humans feel so much pride in their own self-awareness that they can’t see it as anything less than extraordinary – for the view that they may one day die and that a consciousness will simply cease to exist, a permanent end to consciousness, leaving no trace that they once were alive, seems more difficult for them to grasp than the idea of wandering spirits and life after death. The human imagination is a powerful thing, it seems; no less powerful than a bit of hysteria coupled with the nonsense sprouted out by “mediums” (See: Fraudulent Individuals).

          If you want a ghost story, then this is quite average, almost banal. Don’t bother reading it; your life will not be markedly improved for having done so. And James Herbert, rest in peace – because if you come back to haunt me for giving one of your books a not-very-good review, I won’t be especially pleased, especially due to my stance on this issue.

Bibliobrook

Herbert, James. Haunted. Hodder and Stoughton Limited. (1988)

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde’s only novel is a dark little tale of excess and debauchery in the upper echelons of Victorian life. It concerns a handsome young man named Dorian Gray, and his chance meeting with the devious and witty old cynic Lord Henry through their mutual friend, the painter Basil Hallward. Dorian is absolutely empty-headed, modelling for the painter without a care in the world, until Lord Henry strikes up a firm friendship with him and tells him all about the wonders and pleasures of the world available to someone as young and drop-dead gorgeous as Mr Dorian Gray; if only until old age and ugliness sets in. After he finishes sitting for the latest portrait, Dorian suddenly has a tantrum over the fact that this likeness of him will continue to remain young forever, while he himself will only ever get older and uglier until the day he dies – foolishly saying that he would give his soul if only it were the other way round. After being gifted with the painting, Dorian Gray suffers a traumatic relationship with an actress and realises, to his horror, that the image in the picture has begun to change – reflecting the inner corruption of his soul, the Dorian Gray in the portrait begins to age and develop outward signs of a corrupt lifestyle. With this undeniable proof that his hasty wish has been granted, he sets out on a personal journey of discovery to see what depths of pleasure and depravity he can reach, heedless of the damage he does to his acquaintances or his soul as he is assured that he will retain his youth and good looks despite whatever foul deeds he commits. The painting will pay the price.

          Overall it’s quite a good book – a very simple concept at its heart allowing Oscar Wilde to tell a rather unique and engrossing story. The writing is excellent, packed with a certain amount of literary skill that often fails to be boring, whilst displaying those characteristic Wilde witticisms that makes one wonder if the man was really like this. Most notably this is seen in the character of Lord Henry, a dark and captivating figure with a sharp tongue and a whole catalogue of sexist remarks; one is inclined to want to punch him every time he enters the room. He’s wonderful. Of the plot, it progresses quite naturally, at a steady and deliberate pace, hitting some superb high points as it rolls inexorably towards its grim conclusion. It’s a sick little book, and for the most part I enjoyed it.

          Of the author, what more needs to be said? A few years after The Picture of Dorian Gray was published, Oscar Wilde – once the most celebrated man in the British Isles – was marked by brutal misfortune as a result of the harsh anti-homosexuality laws and attitudes of the era. Oscar Wilde was a talented writer – a fact that he was all too aware of – and that his literary career was cut short like this is a shame and a tragedy. The preface at the beginning of the book outlines a bewildering ethical and aesthetic standpoint that the man seemingly hoped to convey through his writing, and while this more than anything else makes him seem a tad pretentious, it’s difficult to deny that he had style and intelligence to back it up – and this book goes some of the way to proving it. While I can’t help but think he was a bit a conceited old bastard, nobody, least of all this man, deserved the fate in store for him.

          So yes; a damn good book. Dark, and at times horrific, the plot is fresh and original, the writing impeccable, style and poignancy combined to create a book worthy of one of the most famous names of the Victorian era. Go ahead and read it; you’ll certainly remember it at the very least.

Biblioture

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin: Reading. (1994 [First Published 1891])

Discworld Books 5 to 8, by Terry Pratchett

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 20^th 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]