Discworld Books 13-15, by Terry Pratchett

It is time once again for a string of Discworld novels to lighten our mood. Sir Terry left behind a substantial number of books to get through, and I’ve only gone and reviewed another three: Small Gods, Lords and Ladies and Men at Arms. Fifteen down, only twenty-six to go.

13. Small Gods

Honestly, one of the best of all – and proof of the power that Discworld has to engage with real-world issues. By setting a story around the characters of a fallen god, a naïve young prophet and a diabolical Church-leader, Pratchett is able to challenge and critique the entire nature of religion and belief. I'm sincere about this. Small Gods is entertainment that has the guts to ask some pertinent questions.

          In a land wholly devoted to the worship of the Great God Om, during a time when the next Prophet is predicted to arise, a lowly young novice in the Church is approached by a tortoise who claims to be the Great God himself. The citadel is in the grip of the sinister deacon Vorbis, a man with a mind as closed and impenetrable as a steel ball, who is ruthlessly attempting to stamp out heresy and thereby prevent the people from learning the truth - that the world is flat, and swims through the universe on the back of a giant turtle. By launching a crusade against neighbouring Ephebe, a liberal and philosophical city very much in the vein of ancient Athens, Vorbis wishes to reinforce his own hard-line brand of Omnian religion in a way that is vaguely Orwellian.

          Funny? Yes, it is. Most of the quips taken are taken at the expense of old-world thinking, religious hardliners and the world from a tortoise’s-eye view, but at the same time the subject matter of the entire story is especially serious. The effect and extent of compliance, the nature of religion, and the actual motives of gods and prophets are all key features of this story, but it all comes together through the big questions asked here. What is it that you actually worship? The god, or the edifice of religion itself? Do you believe out of love, or fear, or just blind ignorance? Do the worshippers need their god, or is it the other way round? And if He really is up there, does he actually deserve to be treated in this manner? These are just some of the questions this book prompts, and maybe its power is in the fact that it is, in fact, another Discworld book. This isn’t high-brow stuff; Small Gods is simple and entertaining, and it can be read by anyone.

          At the heart and centre of this book are the three characters of Brutha, Om and Vorbis; the idiot disciple, the dethroned god, and the power-mad priest. Both Brutha and Vorbis are exquisitely crafted elements to the story while Om, who provides a great deal of the humour as a Fire-and-Brimstone god trapped in the body of a tortoise, is both a McGuffin as well as a humility-parable. In many ways the partnership between Brutha and Om is that staple relationship in Pratchett’s stories; the reluctant alliance of the naïve and the cynical, much like the original pairing between Rincewind and Twoflower. The relationship has been redressed here for a new purpose, and is an effective core to the tale. Vorbis meanwhile is one of the most unsettling villains in the Discworld canon, a man who does not question his right to dictate what people should and should not believe, and who has no doubt that he is carrying out the will of his god – despite the fact that he hears nothing but his own thoughts echoing in his head. He cannot be argued with. He cannot be reasoned with. And he will deal mercilessly with anybody who defies him.

          Small Gods has an absolute recommendation. It is a memorable story, deals with a most relevent subject matter, and can be appreciated in isolation from the rest of the series. It is devoid of many of the usual frippery of Discworld, whilst at the same time being fundamentally Discworld in its style, outlook and humour. It easily joins Mort, Reaper Man and Pyramids amongst my top Discworld novels, and whether you’re looking for a new way into the series, or are already a fan, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

14. Lords and Ladies

The next instalment of the Granny Weatherwax saga, Lords and Ladies makes it clear just how much Discworld has become a platform for multiple and divergent character series’. Picking up where Witches Abroad left off, the three witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick return to their homeland of Lancre after nearly a year of absence. Much has changed since they left. The former court Fool Verence (now King Verence II, since he ended up as king of Lancre at the end of Wyrd Sisters) has been making a benign if naïve effort to modernize his tiny little mountain kingdom, while a new coven of younger, more gothic ‘witches’ has emerged during Granny Weatherwax’s absence. Whilst Magrat finds herself unexpectedly and a little unwillingly engaged to King Verence, with the wedding set to take place on Midsummer’s Eve, the return of the beautiful but evil Queen of the Elves threatens to bring about a dark and terrible age for all of humanity.

          It must be mentioned that the Faculty of the Unseen University make an appearance. Archchancellor Ridcully, his nerdy underling Ponder Stibbons, the deranged pill-gulping Bursar, and the Orangutan Librarian have received an invitation to the wedding, and they leave their comfortable urban environment to take a trip to Lancre town. As always the presence of Ridcully and his University crowd makes the book a worthwhile read on its own, and to see them interacting with the witches of Lancre is a unique crossover treat. Of other nice elements, the Lancre Morris Men are good for a laugh, Casanunda the Dwarf who advertises himself as the world’s second-greatest lover provides many humorous moments, and Shaun Ogg (Nanny Ogg’s youngest son) is excellent for his purpose as Lancre’s only soldier.

Just as with Witches Abroad, this is a good and consistent Discworld book for fans of the witches. There is very little else I can really say about it. The characters are good, the story is engaging, and the Elves are a dramatic and unpleasant new group of villains. For those who have no interest in the Lancre stories, you will not be missing much by avoiding this one; yet Pratchett’s writing is very much on form, the humour and the story are good, and I have to say I rather enjoyed it.

15. Men at Arms

The Discworld series stands at around forty books in total, and so it is little wonder to see groups of characters being reused time and again. We’ve already seen this with Rincewind, and again with the witches of Lancre, and now we find a sequel to Guards! Guards! demonstrating that the Night Watch are here to stay. Since saving the city of Ankh-Morpork from a gigantic dragon, the Night Watch have nearly doubled in size by taking on three new recruits – a Troll, a Dwarf, and a Werewolf. Captain Vimes is soon to marry Lady Sybil Ramkin, retiring from a lifetime of policing, but a string of murders in the city and the theft of a terrifying weapon from the Assassins’ Guild force him to put the new watchmen straight on the job.

          Sam Vimes is one of the most effective protagonists in the entire Discworld canon, taking what could have been just a clichéd cynical old alcoholic captain and giving him true life in his bones. By falling in love with one of the wealthiest women in the city, Vimes has ended up in unfamiliar territory, amongst a society he detests, while his inbuilt policing instincts keep him firmly on the ground and desperate to keep doing the job he’s always done. Corporal Carrot meanwhile is the genuine Knight In Shining Armour – even though he’s just a watchman in watchman’s armour – and his completely un-cynical drive to do his duty seems too good to be true. Except it is true! Carrot is essentially a superhuman, and while in Guards! Guards! he was still a relatively minor character, it is in Men at Arms that his personality really shines through.

          The story itself is rather good, drawing you on in the way that Discworld books do so deceptively. The typical murder-mystery shtick is livened up by Pratchett’s witty writing-style and the growing complexity of the world of Ankh-Morpork – crowded as it is with Guild-politics and the Patrician’s machinations. But though Men at Arms is a comedy book, this does not detract from the unpleasant and serious nature of the murders, and the almost supernatural but vividly believable reasons behind them. If there’s one thing that this series does most adequately explore, then it’s human nature – and despite the fact that some of the characters are trolls and dwarfs and dogs, Men at Arms serves as a good example of how this is done. I would comfortably recommend this one, even if you haven’t done Guards! Guards! yet.

Biblioworld 4

Pratchett, Terry. Small Gods. Corgi. (1993 [1992])

Pratchett, Terry. Lords and Ladies. Corgi. (1993 [1992])

Pratchett, Terry. Men at Arms. Corgi. (1994 [1993])

ByzReview: Theophanes the Confessor

When the 9^th century Byzantine chronicler George the Synkellos died, having left his grand chronicle of world history incomplete, he bequeathed his books, his notes, and his mission to his friend and fellow holy-man, Theophanes the Confessor. Theophanes carried on George’s work, continuing the chronicle from the accession of Diocletian in the year 284 CE (AM 5777, Anno Mundi  (Year of the World)) down more or less to his own day, ending with the fall of the Byzantine-Roman emperor Michael I Rangabe in 813 CE (AM 6305). It was an immense undertaking, but Theophanes finished what the Synkellos had started, leaving behind one of the most incredible historical sources you could ever read.

                The chronicle of Theophanes covers some five centuries of history, showing the transformation of the Pagan Roman empire into a Christian one, the fall of Sassanian Persia and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. Theophanes writes about events both political and ecclesiastical, with bishops and emperors looming large in the narrative. Wars, rebellions, plagues and earthquakes feature alongside holy synods and heresies. Being a straight-up continuation of the work of George the Synkellos, Theophanes starts his work with the accession of the Roman emperor Diocletian, and simply works forward from there.

                The beauty of Theophanes’ chronicle is that it demonstrates to us the fallacy of the ‘end’ of the Roman empire and the ‘beginning’ of the Byzantine empire. The disappearance of the empire in the west rather obscures the fact that the Roman empire, which was still just as powerful in the east as ever it had been, continued for a thousand years after the traditionally-accepted ‘Fall of Rome’. The Byzantine civilisation was an indisputable continuation of the ancient Greco-Roman world, proved by the fact that its origins cannot be satisfactorily be pinned down to any one moment in history. The chronicle of Theophanes the confessor takes us right through history from Ancient to Medieval, with no observable break or watershed moment. It’s simply a matter of perspective, and the perspective of the East is a much clearer one than that of the Dark-Age West.

                The historical periods covered by Theophanes can be broken down, according to my own arbitrary opinions, into about six categories:

Diocletian and the Constantinian family (284-363): In which the Roman empire is Christianised.

Valentinians and Theodosians (364-457): Christianity triumphs and the West crumbles.

Leo I, Zeno and Anastasios I (457-518): Fall of the West, wars with Persia and heresies.

Justinian and his successors (518-602): Persian Wars. Africa and Italy reconquered, Maurice’s campaigns.

The Herakleian Dynasty (602-717): The rise of the Islamic Caliphate and the loss of the empire.

The Isaurian Dynasty (717-813): Iconoclasm and the revival of the empire. Empress Eirene.

                When you look at it this way, it’s an awful lot of the world’s history covered in one book. Even if you don’t ever want to read the entirety of Theophanes (a decision for which I will not blame you at all), then you should at least familiarize yourself with this particular segment of world history. The events and developments that occurred during these centuries profoundly shaped the world as we know it. Go ahead and look on Wikipedia or something, like I did.

One of the most recognisable things about Theophanes the Confessor is his method of presentation, for rather than writing one continuous narrative as most ‘historians’ tend to, he instead goes about things in as methodical a way as can be – by writing about history one year at a time. He begins each entry in his chronicle with the number of the year itself – in the Alexandrian Anno Mundi style, in which the world began in about 5500 BCE – and then says briefly which Roman emperor is currently reigning, the regnal year of his (or her) reign, then the regnal year of the Persian ruler (later the Islamic Caliph), and followed by a short list of the regnal years of the various Christian bishops in the Roman empire. Then come the actual meat-and-potatoes of the entry, the writing of what happens in and around that particular year – this can range from a mere sentence, to several long paragraphs. The entry for Justinian’s 7th year, for instance, goes on for some twenty pages in the Mango and Scott edition. In essence, a typical entry from Theophanes (as translated by Cyril Mango and Roger Scott) will look something like this:

                “AM 6012 [AD 519/520]

                Year of the Divine Incarnation 512

                Justin, emperor of the Romans (9 years), 2nd year

                Kabades, emperor of the Persians (30 years), 25th year

                Hormisdas, bishop of Rome (10 years), 7th year

                John, bishop of Constantinople (2 years), 2nd year

                Helias, bishop of Jerusalem (23 years), 9th year

                Dioskoros, bishop of Alexandria (3 years), 3rd year

                Paul, bishop of Antioch (3 years), 1st year

In this year Vitalian was murdered by the Byzantines, who were furious with him because of the many people he had killed at the time of his uprising against Anastasios.

                On the death of John the Cappadocian, bishop of Constantinople, Epiphanios, who was a presbyter of the same church and a synkellos, was ordained on 25 February. Likewise on the death of Hormisdas of Rome, John succeeded to the bishopric.

                In the same year the Blue faction rioted, creating disturbances in all the cities and causing stonings and many murders. They even attacked the authorities. This evil disorder arose in Antioch and from there spread to all [other] cities and lasted for five years. They killed with their swords the Greens whom they encountered, going up and murdering even those who were hiding at home. The authorities did not dare impose penalties for the murders. This went on until the sixth year of the pious Justin.”

                                [Excerpt from Mango and Scott translation, 1997, pg.252-253]

                Interesting, I know. Theophanes is not the most literary of writers, as you can probably tell, simply presenting us with bland statements and facts about what was going on where and at what time. We get very little sense of the writer’s personality or opinions, other than that he was an Orthodox Roman. Generally he is at the mercy of his own sources, for pretty much the entire chronicle is a cut-and-paste compilation of other writers’ work – the most he will ever do is paraphrase some other historian, and assign a group of events to a particular year. As such, most of Theophanes’ chronicle supplies information than can still be found in the works of more authoritative and useful historians. This is with the exception of the last third of the book, which deals with the history of the Herakleian and Isaurian dynasties. For these two centuries very few other narrative sources exist, so if you’re keen on the rise of the Caliphate, Iconoclasm or the empress Eirene (who is amazing, by the way), then be prepared to thank Theophanes and his chronicle.

                But mayhaps we should be wary before we thank Theophanes himself. There is a certain amount of scholarly debate over how much work Theophanes himself actually put into the chronicle that bears his name. After all, he claims in his own preface that he was merely finishing the work started by George the Synkellos, and how much of this chronicle was actually written by George is a matter of argument. This is not an academic article, so I shall refrain from trying to contribute to this argument. All I will say, however, is that I think George the Synkellos was largely responsible for the creation of this chronicle, even if he may not have had an active hand in writing it – while it would not exist if Theophanes the Confessor hadn’t finished the work that George had started. George had a grand vision, while Theophanes brought the project to a completion and, as such, it now justifiably bears his name. What we ought to do is never forget that this is just one half of a vast work of universal history, created by a partnership between two Byzantine religious intellectuals who wrote a systematic account of world events from the mythological Creation to their own days in the aftermath of the Isaurian Iconoclasm. It was an impressive undertaking, and I have had the privilege of reading it in its entirety.

                Of all the Byzantine and broader European chronicles out there, the ultra-synoptic nature of Theophanes might make this particular source more easily accessible than others. Each year is laid out as clear and proper as can be, and thus you can track down individual rulers, events and oecumenical councils and find Theophanes’ take on the matter. Now however would be a good time to emphasise that inaccuracies in dating often creep into the work, so this particular primary source cannot be considered an absolute, perfect authority on the events and chronology it pertains to report. Yet despite this, as a grand history of the Roman empire in transformation, and of the Mediterranean in the first millennium, it is a most useful and wonderful thing. As an attempt by a couple of medieval minds to codify and organise history, it is even more remarkable. Anyone who has even a passing interest in Byzantium will find this book essential reading.

Bibliozantium 2

Theophanis: Chronographia. In two Volumes. J. Classen (ed.) Bonn (1839 and 1841)

Theophanis Chronographia. C. de Boor (ed). Leipzig (1883)

The Chronicle of Theophanes – Anni mundi 6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813). trans. H. Turtledove. Philadelphia. (1982)

The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor – Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813. trans. C. Mango and R. Scott. Oxford. (1997)

                                [A short explanation of this bibliography: The 1839 J. Classen edition is a full Greek-text version of the chronicle as prepared for the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, which has the advantage of being freely available on Google Books, but the disadvantage of being unreadable to anyone who cannot understand ancient Greek or Latin. There is a better edition, prepared a few decades later by Carl Gotthard de Boor, and likewise this is freely available on the internet but is only in Greek. The 1982 H. Turtledove edition is a partial translation of the Chronicle into English, covering only the last third of the chronicle (the years 602-813), while the 1997 Mango and Scott edition translates the entire text, from Diocletian to Michael I. The Mango and Scott edition is by far the best, being more complete, more scholarly and more recent, but it is much more difficult to get a hold of. Turtledove, while being criticised by Mango for being ‘highly inaccurate’, is at least cheaply available on Amazon and has footnotes which are less bewildering and more helpful for the newcomer].

Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll’s famous story for children takes us on a surreal journey into childish dream-landscapes, meeting mad characters and experiencing bizarre concepts and physics-bending mechanics along the way. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are generally entertaining, but they rather lack rhyme or reason in terms of plot, narrative and structure. This is not inherently a bad thing, but for these children’s stories it means they can be a little bit of a slog to get through sometimes.

          In the second half of the 19^th century Lewis Carroll (or Charles Dodgeson, to use his real name) wrote a couple of stories for his friend’s daughter, a little girl he had an arguably suspicious attachment to. Whatever the reasons for his ‘friendship’ with the real-life Alice – and it’s fairly certain Carroll would be lynched if he exhibited the same behaviour today – the literary output that was a result is generally regarded as a children’s classic. The two books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There are of such similar calibre that they are generally confounded as part of one whole work. Film adaptations have made use of both stories, whilst reading one book and not the other seems like a waste of time. Most editions I’ve seen include both books, and as such I will be reviewing both of them here as one work.

          It begins with a child called Alice (Incidentally, the real-life Alice’s father, a certain George Henry Liddell, was largely responsible for helping to compile a very famous dictionary of Ancient Greek, but this is just a piece of trivial information) who, bored by her sister’s company, decides to follow a well-dressed white rabbit down its rabbit-hole. Tumbling into a weird little dream-like world, Alice finds herself lost and confused, her body contorted to peculiar shapes and sizes by eating and drinking suspect substances, while strange people and curious creatures sprout nonsense at her and act in a generally peculiar way. Okay, that doesn’t actually sound like a very nice, child-friendly story to me now that I say it like that. In the context of the story it’s all perfectly fine, and Alice herself never seems to be under any kind of threat. She is generally on top of the situation, and seems more or less in control of herself and the world around her. As far as protagonists go, she’s quite good at driving the story all by herself and at facing up to the lunacy she finds throughout the titular Wonderland. Maybe it’s alright as a children’s story after all.

          So after Alice wakes up and proves it-was-all-a-dream-after-all, she must then encounter another dream-world in the sequel. This second adventure, which takes place in a world on the other side of a mirror (the titular looking-glass), lands Alice in a giant and rather abstract game of chess. She must make her way from one side of the land to the other, with the promise that she will become a queen when she arrives at her destination. In many ways this second story feels substantially more dream-like than its prequel, for scenes and landscapes suddenly change from one thing to another, characters completely alter their outward forms in the blink of an eye (a Queen becomes a sheep, for instance), and at one point Alice finds herself running along as fast as she can but making no progress whatsoever. Like the first story this one has little that can be described as a plot, but the more believably dream-like nature of the story makes it just an ounce more interesting to read. If I had to pick a preference between the two, I’d have to choose Through the Looking-Glass for this arbitrary reason.

          Interspersed throughout the narrative are a number of short nonsense poems, playful little rhyming stanzas that demonstrate Carroll’s affinity for the entertainingly ludicrous. The legendary poem ‘Jabberwocky’ is featured in the early pages of Through the Looking-Glass, but this is just one of many such verses that can be found in the Alice books. Here is a taster:

          “’Tis the voice of the Lobster’, I heard him declare,

          ‘You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.’

          As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose

          Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.

          When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,

          And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:

          But, when the tide rises and the sharks are around,

          His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.”

[L. Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Wordsworth, 1992. pg. 87]

          You see? We all need a bit more of that in our lives. Generally they are fun little diversions, and to see the characters’ confusion over saying or hearing these words of nonsense is where the novels are at their best.

          Any severe criticisms? Besides the lack of appeal to any who are not prepared to read a fairly nonsensical story, I suppose I could also offer a warning about the language register. Being Victorian, sometimes the language can come across a little old-fashioned – I’m not sure if children would find this a hindrance at all. In many ways this only ends up with the book feeling quaint, rather than inaccessible. It’s far from being Jane Austen, so it should be all right. 

So then, my original criticism stands; that the stories just don’t go anywhere. They serve only to dump Alice and the reader into the middle of a mad world, so that she can interact with a few dozen lunatics in weird situations over the course of a hundred pages, until it’s time to wake up and close the book. It’s worth reading for the poems at least, and to have ‘Jabberwocky’ deconstructed and explained by Humpty Dumpty is as good a reason as any for delving into these things. At any rate they’re on the list, so you should totally have read by now; and if not, then what are you waiting for? Do it now! I shouldn’t have to tell you again.

Biblioland

Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Wordsworth: Ware. (1992 [First published 1865 {1871 for Through the Looking-Glass}])