Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Dick Simnel, a man who knows exactly how a slide-rule works, has invented the steam engine. Suddenly Ankh-Morpork is at the centre of a transport revolution, as journeys across the Sto Plains that took weeks can now be accomplished in hours. The Patrician assigns the semi-fully-redoubtable Moist von Lipwig, late of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, Bank and Mint, to oversee the expansion of the rail network in a manner that is politically acceptable. But when civil war breaks out amongst the dwarfs of distant Überwald and the Low King has to get home ASAP, Lipwig and Simnel realise their modest invention may have consequences far beyond what they were expecting.

Raising Steam (2013) is the fortieth and, distressingly, penultimate Discworld novel. It's also the third novel to focus on the roguish Moist von Lipwig, following Going Postal and Making Money. Curiously, Pratchett spent several years suggesting that the third Lipwig novel would be called Raising Taxes. The book's appearance in its final form suggests that not even the mighty comedic firepower of Terry Pratchett could make a book on taxation funny, whilst he could certainly stretch to bringing the steam engine to Ankh-Morpork in a comedic manner. This subject matter almost feels like a book that could write itself.

Infamously, this book was written some years after Pratchett's unfavourable medical diagnosis, and in fact is the last novel Pratchett wrote that he fully completed, edited and polished to his satisfaction (the one remaining book, The Shepherd's Crown, was assembled from earlier drafts than Pratchett would normally be happy using). However, as with Snuff, I was surprised not to discern any sign of this in the text. In fact, Raising Steam might be one of Pratchett's best-constructed novels. The average Discworld book was usually put together in stages, stage one being "throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks" and the final stage being, "write some bits between the other bits that hopefully make sense." Most of the time, Pratchett pulled this off well. A few times, he didn't. But it's only a handful of times that he pulls it off as well as this. Raising Steam has a large number of subplots and ideas that are all in motion simultaneously and all pull together at the end with a most satisfying "click."

This may also be the most epic Discworld novel. The book fills a longer timespan than any other in the series, with the action unfolding across a year or more as tens of thousands of people assemble the Discworld's first rail network from a standing start, and Pratchett only makes this rapidity convincing given the enormous manpower the continent can draw upon, including the industrious and newly-emancipated goblin workforce (paying off a major subplot unfolding through Unseen Academicals and Snuff in the process) and a golem taskforce. There are the political ramifications of the development of the railway, requiring Lipwig to engage in political discussions with the leaders of the surrounding towns (and we again get a visit to the very-definitely-not-French city of Quirm, hot on the heels of its semi-starring role in Snuff). There's the ongoing development of the goblin culture. There's the ongoing curious relationship between the Patrician and the Lady Margolotta of Überwald. We revisit the Forest of Skund for the first time since the opening books of the series. We revisit the town of Ohulan Cutash for the first time since Equal Rites (that's Book 3, thirty-seven volumes and twenty-six years earlier, for those not keeping score). We also get the deepest dive, so to speak, into dwarfish culture that we've had in the entire series, with political intrigue, coups and counter-coups. We have the Discworld equivalent of Lenin's mad train ride across Europe in 1917 (if not with quite as bloody as result). We have - get this - battle sequences. We have Vimes playing a major role in a non-Vimes-specific novel. I think we get more City Watch action in this non-City Watch novel than in the last actual City Watch novel. It's a lot.

The book also spans a much a larger amount of the Disc than we've seen for a long time, with discussions of geography, trade routes and national borders. This is the only Discworld novel that comes with a map at the front, which feels like it's breaking the last self-imposed rule Pratchett set upon himself for the series, even if the map feels more inspired by the Reverend W. Awdry's Railway Stories than by Tolkien.

There's also a simmering anger here that is allowed, with appropriate wordplay, to boil over at the right moments. The book is a simmering call to arms in favour of reason, rationality, diplomacy, science and discourse rooted in logic and facts. The world the religious fundamentalist dwarfs want, of superstition and fear and the other kept as far away as is dwarfishly possible, is being swept away and their response is to lash out rather than to adapt. Pratchett has no track with such self-imposed blindness and, as usual when he's annoyed, the author produces some of his best work.

Raising Steam (*****) is a powerhouse freight train of a book, which I was completely not expecting. It depicts the Disc and its vast array of characters in their full panoramic glory, marching into the Industrial Revolution not in fear, but in optimism and hope. If this had been the final Discworld novel, it would have been Pratchett going out on a crowd-pleasing high. But of course that would be a bit too obvious, a bit too easy. For the actual final book, Pratchett would instead go for the emotional jugular.

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Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Commander Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch has faced down some of the greatest perils anyone can think of: dragons, guns, magic, time travel and Ankh-Morpork street food. But now he faces a challenge that he cannot escape, avoid or resist through force: a holiday. Relocating to the Ramkin rural estate, Vimes has to relax, eat good food and perform other hideous tasks like socialising, but his mood improves markedly when the dead bodies start showing up.

Snuff (2011) is the thirty-ninth Discworld novel and the last to feature Commander Sam Vimes in a starring role. The character originated in the eighth Discworld novel, Guards! Guards!, originally published in 1989, and Pratchett carefully developed his character over the course of twenty-two years and multiple books, making him one of the most popular Discworld characters and also the only one to have his own theory of macroeconomics that is often quoted in the real world.

For his swansong, Pratchett gives him a starring role with the rest of the City Watch relegated to brief, background appearances. The plot is nothing spectacularly new, with shades of The Wicker Man and Hot Fuzz here (not to mention a sprinkling of light Jane Austen) as Vimes becomes a fish-out-of-water in the countryside where the rules are different and his normal resources are not available. One of the reasons for Vimes's popularity is his impressive competence, with opponents getting the upper hand through surprise or genuine innovation rather than because the protagonist is given an idiot ball to hold for a while, and that holds true here. Vimes may not know the inns and outs of countryside politics but he does know people and how they operate, and that gives him a strong advantage.

The novel is on the long side for Discworld but is not as egregiously long as Unseen Academicals, which spun its wheels so long it was surprising it could be extracted from the ruts to be published. It helps that Vimes's investigation is genuinely interesting, taking in as it does local economics and the inter-species relationship between humans and goblins, the last Discworld species it is still "okay to hate," something that Vimes sets about changing. We got a taster of this storyline in Unseen Academicals but here it is explored more in-depth, with goblin society explored in full. It's impressive that, almost forty books in, Pratchett was keen to explore more of the Disc and its people.

The book is also helped by its pacing and it furiously action-packed finale, one of Pratchett's stronger resolutions as Vimes and his squad of hand-picked friends have to race along the river to stop a huge injustice taking place. The novel also continues the immensely impressive city-building of Ankh-Morpork, with brief interludes to return to the city to find out what's up with the Patrician and some of the other Watch members.

Given this is a late Pratchett novel, written after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, it is impressive how optimistic it is (an improvement over Academicals). Vimes's investigation legitimises an entire species of people and changes the perception of them overnight, to the betterment of the world. Sergeant Colon, a popular character but one who has been excused for his limited world view and prejudices too long, gets an astonishing wake-up call. Nobby Nobbs finds happiness! Kind of. If that doesn't give you hope for humanity (or immediately adjacent sub-species), I don't know what else will.

On the negative side, we probably again get too many extended scenes with the Patrician, which dents his mystique a little. Pratchett also lets a few running gags (Vimes's son's obsession with excrement of any and all zoological origin; the Patrician's increasingly bitter, metaphorical battle-to-the-death with the Times crossword compiler) maybe run on a few times too long. But these are minor issues.

For late-stage Discworld, Snuff (****½) is a very solid book, packed with interesting ideas that make you think, and some good laughs.

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I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching is almost sixteen and is now a respected witch across the Chalk. She is taken aback when the death of a local dignitary seems to spark off a burst of hatred and fear towards witches. Her investigation reveals the return of an ancient force of evil, which unleashes bigotry and invective even from mild-mannered people, even from Tiffany's oldest friends and allies. Fortunately the Nac Mac Feegle are unaffected, and with their help Tiffany sets about restoring her reputation.

I Shall Wear Midnight is the thirty-eighth Discworld novel and the fourth to focus on the character of Tiffany Aching, ostensibly the protagonist of a series of books "for younger readers." It's also one of the darker Discworld novels, tapping into the idea that there is a coil of communal hatred in people that can be periodically unleashed for no real reason, and a canny operator can direct that bile towards their own ends.

The book is something of a Greatest Hits of the Ramtops, bringing in Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, though with tremendous restraint Pratchett does not allow them to overwhelm proceedings. We also get a flying visit to Ankh-Morpork (complete with cameos from several Ankh-Morpork regulars), a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Magrat, and even the return of one of the major protagonists of one of the very first Discworld books and has been puzzlingly MIA for the thirty-five books since. It's the largest-scaled Tiffany book and the one that seems to make the most effort to make her books feel connected to the larger Discworld setting, which it is successful at. 

But for all that, the story is focused a lot on Tiffany's personal story. She has found acceptance and respect, but that is suddenly endangered by people deciding they hate her for almost no reason whatsoever. Anyone who has been the victim of bigotry, for whatever reason, especially from people they've known for a long time, can identify with this idea. Pratchett explores the metaphor by making the source of this inexplicable hatred an actual entity, the Cunning Man, but also reinforces it by having it that the Cunning Man can only be defeated, not destroyed totally.

The book alternates between obvious in-your-face humour - the Mac Feegles would be getting tiresome if Pratchett wasn't so good at giving them development, as individuals and a species - and more subtle gags and vigorous poking of the human condition. Like Unseen Academicals before it, this book was written shortly after Pratchett learned of his early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis. Whilst Unseen Academicals ended up feeling unfocused and distracted, I Shall Wear Midnight feels focused and angry, like Pratchett had decided if he was on his way out, he was going to go out kicking and screaming at the injustices of the world. And as we know from Small Gods, Night Watch and Monstrous Regiment (among others), nothing is more glorious than an angry, articulate Pratchett.

I Shall Wear Midnight (****) is not perfect, it's mildly overlong and the final confrontation with the Cunning Man is vague at best, but this is otherwise a roaring return form for Pratchett after arguably the weakest book in the series. It's also the strongest outing for Tiffany Aching.

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Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

For many years the game of foot-the-ball has been played in the back alleys of Ankh-Morpork, with teams formed from street communities coming together in sporting comradeship (involving violence and pies, not necessarily in that order). But the game is starting to turn ugly, and in the spirit of maintaining civic order, the Patrician has decided to make the game legitimate, with professionally-organised teams and codified rules. The wizards of Unseen University are invited to form a team and Archchancellor Ridcully enthusiastically agrees, with new staffmember Mr. Nutt proving an invaluable asset. But the old street game isn't going to die peacefully...

Unseen Academicals, the thirty-seventh Discworld novel, was published in 2009 and bears a somewhat difficult legacy. It was the first novel in the series to be published after Sir Terry was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, a mark that would also hang over the remaining four books in the series, with melancholic (and probably futile) analyses of what impact the illness had on Pratchett's writing. From a personal perspective, it was also the last Discworld novel that I read whilst Pratchett was still with us; the four subsequent books will be all-new to me as I wrap-up this long (long) gestating reread project.

It is also the longest novel in the Discworld series at over 530 pages in paperback, making for a surprisingly chunky volume for an author who was never keen on the shelf-destroying bricks taking up shelf-space in the fantasy sections of bookshops. The length is down to two things: Pratchett trying to do a lot more in this book than he normally attempts in a single novel, and a lessening of focus in the novel's second half. The length is even more notable than it might be otherwise because the core premise is decidedly slight. The book comes off very much as a throwback to the Discworld concept of "introduce real-life idea XXX to Ankh-Morpork and see what happens," previously achieved with the cinema, theatre, shopping centres, rock music, war, guns, post office, banks, newspapers, war (again) and tourism, and in particular to the earlier books in the series which embraced that idea without getting overwhelmed by it. Moving Pictures seems to be a particular touchstone, as that novel even gets a rare continuity mention in this one.

The book opens well with football fervour already sweeping the city and the Patrician - much chattier here than normal and, decidedly overused - decides to head off an inevitable problem by regulating it. Not willing to interfere with the game himself, he fobs the idea off on Unseen University, on the grounds they are already a sporting institution (especially the sport of eating) and have rules and a hierarchy already in place. So far so good, and the first 200 pages or so of the novel are very strong. We meet Mr. Nutt, a goblin who is trying to rehabilitate his species' unsavoury reputation single-handed and who is also a fine potential football player, as well as his friend Trevor who has promised never to play again. We also meet Glenda, our typical Hypercompetent Pratchett Protagonist Who Is The Only Sane Person In The Room, a trope which might be a bit more annoying if Pratchett wasn't so damned good at executing it.

However, the book then throws more ideas into the mix than it really has time to deal with. The former Dean of Unseen University has been poached by a rival institution in Pseudopolis and is continuing his long-standing rivalry with Ridcully from a position of (according to him, anyway) equals. The UU has also neutralised the very threat posed to reality by an evil wizard/Dark Lord by giving him the one thing greater than land or gold or magical immortality: tenure. We also touch base with Rincewind and the Luggage for the first time in a very long time, though alas they are limited here to some extended cameos. We also get hints of a romance between the Patrician and another morally-questionable ruler, Glenda's best friend becoming possibly Ankh-Morpork's first supermodel, the continued rise to criminal power by a former back-alley thug, the continued misadventures of the editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times, the City Watch getting involved...this is a book not so much stuffed to the gills, but the fins and backbone as well, and even the swollen page-count can't do them all justice.

The lack of focus can be seen with the fact we are given two reasons why UU has to form a football team. The institution is enjoying the fruits of a bequest from a deceased member, but his will stipulates they need to get on top of the situation or lose access to that cash. But then the Patrician just insists they need to form a team anyway. It feels like one of these ideas should have been jettisoned at least.

The book also feels like it can't work out what to do about Nutt. Rehabilitating a single goblin doesn't even register on the radar given Ankh-Morpork is home to the Vampire Temperance League and thousands of trolls who have agreed to abide by local laws, with werewolves serving in the City Watch and golems doing a lot of work in the city. There's nothing really noteworthy about Nutt also going against the grain of his species and being trusted, and a late-book revelation about his backstory doesn't really change that at all. As a result, a lot of the tension in Nutt's story fizzles out. If this had been a book much earlier in the timeline, that storyline would have had more legs to it.

Still, when the book works, it works well. Ankh-Morpork holds a strong claim to being the single greatest fantasy metropolis ever depicted in print, and Unseen Academical's greatest strength is fleshing that out in much greater detail. We get a strong sense of life on the Ankh-Morpork street for ordinary people that we haven't seen for a long while, and for the first time a reader can feel how the city has shifted from its medieval origins in The Colour of Magic to something more Victorian, even proto-steampunk and industrial. The atmosphere of the changing city is Pratchett's greatest triumph in the latter run of novels in the series.

But the lack of focus continues to hurt the book. For a book about football, there isn't very much football in it, and I don't get the sense Pratchett is that interested in the game. What he is interested in is the impact it has on people, and how people can wrap their hopes and fears for life itself into their support for their football team. It's an interesting theme which he does explore, but maybe in not as much depth as you'd normally expect.

Unseen Academicals (***) is well-written and amusing, with superb worldbuilding, but it is also a little flabby, somewhat overlong and unfocused, and is unfortunately towards the weaker end of the Discworld series in quality.

A previous version of this review was published in 2010.

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Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Moist von Lipwig has whipped the Ankh-Morpork postal service into shape and is enjoying the fruits of his success...or rather he is bored out of his mind and in danger of falling into bad old habits as he tries to stave off boredom. The Patrician hits on the idea of giving Lipwig a new task: rescuing Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and associated bank, and turning them into a lean, dynamic operation fit for the Century of the Fruitbat. Unfortunately, the ossified staff and lunatic members of the family that owns the bank have other ideas, as does Lipwig's own girlfriend (or person adjacent to that position), whose quest to find golems and bring them to Ankh-Morpork may have succeeded rather more than she was expecting.

Making Money is the thirty-sixth Discworld novel, originally published in 2007. The book is also the sequel to an earlier Discworld novel, Going Postal. In that book, conman Moist von Lipwig was rescued from the gallows by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, and set to work restoring the Post Office to its former glory. He succeeded handsomely.

Making Money opens a year later. The Post Office is a roaring success, but Moist is feeling a little bored, and has taken to breaking into his own bedroom to keep his skills fresh. The Patrician seems to have concluded that Moist would make an excellent troubleshooter to sort out Ankh-Morpork's other failing public services and tasks him with getting the Ankh-Morpork Bank back on its feet after the former chairwoman passed away, leaving her dog, Mr. Fusspot, to inherit the role of chairman. Moist is initially reluctant, but soon relishes the new challenge. Unfortunately, a family who own a share in the bank, the Lavishes, are not so keen on Moist's appointment and are soon digging into his dirty past to find something to use against him. Thrown into the mix are lots of golems, an undead necromancer with an eye for the ladies, a very dedicated bank clerk and a lot of clockwork items of an intimate nature.

As usual, the book is an effortless read. Pratchett's prose sparkles and flows as easily as ever, although careful reading is required to catch every observation and piece of satire as it flies past. Pratchett's typical approach of standing back, putting a mirror in front of something we take for granted (banking, in this case) and saying, "Look, this is a really daft system on quite a few levels," is again quite successful here. As with the other later Discworld novels, the broad out-and-out humour takes a back seat to more wry observations, although a comical interlude involving a dog becoming attached to a new "rubber chew toy" that in this case has fallen out of a cupboard of erotica, and then playing with it in polite company, shows that Pratchett still has time for a good old-fashioned piece of outrageous farce. That said, as with a number of other Pratchett novels the ending is somewhat contrived and the characters get out of the various fixes they're in with some fast-talk, handwaving and a nod from the Patrician, which is a resolution that has perhaps been used a few too many times in this series.

On the other hand, the book does feature Pratchett providing a wonderful take on how the advent of AI (or here, the golems) will impact the standard capitalist model of Ankh-Morpork, which is presented in both a funny and thought-provoking way. One could perhaps accuse Pratchett of jumping on the bandwagon, save he was doing this sixteen years before the release of the first commercial LLM models. Pratchett's prescience is, not for the first time, impressive.

Whilst it's not up there with the series at its best, and the tendency for characters who are intelligent and forthright in their own books to come across a bit as bumbling when appearing in cameos outside them (in this case various members of the City Watch) is a bit overdone, Making Money is a solid addition to the series and adds a lot to the evolution of Discworld and Ankh-Morpork (which is now starting to get its own underground rail network, the Undertaking), which by this point is firmly establishing itself as the most well-explored and established city in the entire fantasy canon (or at least up there with Lankhmar, Waterdeep, Sigil and Minas Tirith).

Unusually for the series, the book also has an ending setting up a future Lipwig adventure, Raising Taxes...though Pratchett could never figure out how to make a book about taxes funny, so instead pivoted to the railways with Raising Steam later on. Perhaps more regrettably, this was the last book Pratchett completed before received his medical diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's, the shadow of which would hang over all the subsequent books he wrote.

Making Money (****) is an enjoyable addition to the Discworld mythos, even if it doesn't do anything too spectacularly new.

A previous version of this review was published in 2008.

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Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching is continuing her training as a witch under the fearsome Miss Treason, though Granny Weatherwax is still keeping watch from afar. Tiffany makes an unfortunate choice during a winter festival and attracts the attention of the Wintersmith, a mythological figure who, this being Discworld, is rather less mythological and more real than Tiffany prefers. Once again, she joins forces with the Nac Mac Feegle to try to overcome this threat...before she is sucked into the mythological story against her will.

Wintersmith is the thirty-fifth Discworld novel (out of forty-one; the ending is just starting to edge into sight) and the third to focus on the character of Tiffany Aching. Nominally, this is a YA-focused Discworld novel. However, given Sir Terry Pratchett's resolute refusal to talk down to younger readers, there isn't a vast amount of difference between this and an "adult" Discworld novel, save toning down Nanny Ogg's double entendres a tiny bit.

Wintersmith's theme, as much as can be said, is about the interaction between mythology and reality. The Wintersmith - not quite a god but more than just a spirit - is brought into the real world by Tiffany's actions and fixates upon her, forcing her to try to find a way of removing his interest.

As is usual with Pratchett, there are plenty of laughs, some impressive character development - Roland, Tiffany's would-be romantic interest, gets plenty of solid advancement here - and some thoughtful musings on the ideas of responsibility and how some people prefer comforting illusions and lies to harsh reality. But the book also has some weaknesses. The Wintersmith himself is the latest in a long line of incorporeal characters who want to become human but don't quite get it (Death famously spent a book or two flailing around this idea) and his level of threat is quite vague for most of the book. The idea of an ancient spirit falling in love with a young teenage girl is also a bit weird, and doesn't really go anywhere.

If anything it's the numerous subplots and side-character which fare much better. Roland's attempts to evade the attentions of his aunts and turn into a good would-be ruler are entertaining, and Tiffany's tutoring of a superficial and apathetic young witch into a more responsible figure feels like it could be a whole book by itself. The Nac Mac Feegle also don't have much to do and Pratchett's attempts at giving them more development feel a bit more perfunctory here than in A Hat Full of Sky. Still, at least they are not overused.

Neither are Discworld heavy-hitter characters Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, who back off for most of the book to let Tiffany deal with the threat of the Wintersmith herself. This is a good move by Pratchett, who resists the temptation of fanservice to better develop his new(ish) protagonist.

Wintersmith (***½) is a solid, if unspectacular, slice of Discworld. It has great characters, comedic moments and some nice thematic ideas, but the central plot feels a bit wooly and never quite gels together into a concrete threat. But the Nac Mac Feegle storming the Underworld with the help of a sentient cheese and negotiating a discount on crossing the River Styx is an all-timer Discworld moment.

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Thud! by Terry Pratchett

The anniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley is looming. Everyone knows this was the great battle where the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. Or the trolls ambushed the dwarfs. Tensions between Ankh-Morpork's dwarf and troll communities are rising, so this would be the worst time for a prominent city dwarf to be murdered by a troll. When this duly happens, it gives Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch a major headache he could do without. Civil war, rioting, protests, urban unrest and delicate political intrigue are distractions for Vimes from his greatest obligation: getting home every night to read his infant son from that tome of great wisdom, Where's My Cow?

Urban centres divided by racial (well, species-al) tensions; demonstrations that some call protests, others riots; cynical demagogues riding the coattails of popularism into positions of power. If there's one thing that Terry Pratchett is, it's timely and topical. Although in this case, Thud! (the thirty-fourth novel in the Discworld sequence) was published twenty years ago, and Sir Terry himself passed away nine years ago. That just goes to show how formidable a student of history and human nature Pratchett was, and how depressingly cyclical human nature is. A joyous escape from the modern world, this book very much is not.

What it is is a formidably well-written, brilliantly-characterised piece of fantasy fiction. By this point Ankh-Morpork's claim to be the greatest fantasy city of all time, convincing in its depiction and detail from top to bottom, had been well-established and Pratchett furthers that here as he surveys the tensions in the city from the lowest rungs of the ladder (via Brick, a confused troll) to the highest (the Patrician himself). I often feel that Pratchett was a writer divided between cynicism and optimism, and that internal war can be felt in these pages. Pratchett has a city divided by class, species, income and politics, but where media is (more or less) responsible and the police mostly free from corruption (though not for want of some trying), although it is amusing that the plot partially resolves because of a copper helping himself to some loot he shouldn't have been touching.

It's also a brilliant bit of worldbuilding, as Pratchett delves into the history, legends and culture of the dwarfs ("dwarves" being an affront to Pratchett's grammatical perfectionism, despite his unabashed love of Tolkien, but "elfs" is an unacceptable step too far for him), with a bit of troll history thrown in as well. In fantasy settings where the traditional species are depicted, dwarfs usually get the short end of the stick (so to speak) but Pratchett fleshes them out here with details of their spirituality, faith, politics and culture.

There are laughs, such as Colon and Nobby's unexpectedly effective side-investigation of an art theft (a bit like asking the Keystone Kops to solve the Great Train Robbery) and Vimes' increasingly convoluted trips home to read to his son before bedtime, but these are held in check by Pratchett's anger at the stupidity of the world. Pratchett motivated by anger can result in terrific art, such as in Small Gods and Night Watch, and though Thud! doesn't quite rise to those heights, it's not a million miles away.

Despite being on the longer side for a Discworld book (at 430 pages, nothing too outrageous), the plot unfolds with verve, Pratchett again demonstrating a mastery of pacing. The resolution gets a bit too metaphysical at times (not Pratchett's strongest suit) but the epilogue section which goes into more detail than normal about the fallout from the latest shenanigans is quite amusing, as well as setting up some ideas which are about to carry the Discworld setting across the technological divide into proto-steampunk. Thirty-four volumes in and Pratchett is still freshening things up and changing gears to try new ideas. It's quite impressive.

Thud! (****½) is one of the strongest Discworld novels, exploring its world and characters with skill and depth (literally, in this case). Remarkably, this is also a Discworld novel with its own dedicated spin-off children's book, Where's My Cow? (not part of the core series, but an interesting curiosity).

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Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Conman Moist von Lipwig is sentenced to death-by-hanging, but is saved at the last second by Ankh-Morpork's Patrician, who then tasks him with resurrecting the Post Office (this passes for a career path on Discworld). Moist finds his task complicated by a tiny staff, a headquarters overrun by decades' worth of undelivered mail, and competition from the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, who can send a message across the entire continent in the time it takes a mailman to have his first cuppa of the day. It falls to Moist, several golems and a very punctual cat to save the Post Office and restore a decrepit Ankh-Morpork institution to greatness. Or something adjacent to it, anyway.  

Going Postal, the thirty-third Discworld novel, is a super red-hot, contemporary piece of timely fiction. It's Sir Terry Pratchett's exploration of zeitgeisty ideas like late-stage capitalism and ensh!tt!f!cat!on, the way a beautiful and amazingly convenient idea/business is taken over the money people and the product is made ten times worse in the relentless pursuit of extra profit, and any attempt to compete with it is ruthlessly crushed by lawyers or the competition just being bought out.

Of course, Pratchett had no truck with the linear progression of time, hence this hugely topical piece of modern metafiction actually came out in 2004, which may indicate that Pratchett was a peerless seer of the future or he was just engaging with constant truths of human nature.

Most book series, let alone fantasy book series, struggle when they're thirty-three volumes deep. The author can be forgiven for phoning things in, settling back on their laurels or employing thinly-veiled cover versions of their earlier character and storylines and collecting the cheque. After teetering a little on the precipice of that in the mid-twenties of the novels, Pratchett decided to go the more difficult route of challenging himself with new characters and new audiences, such as the YA focus of the Tiffany Aching sub-series. Going Postal appears to be familiar, with the story once again exploring the introduction of a real life concept to the fantasy metropolis of Ankh-Morpork and the resulting mayhem (one of the oldest standby plots in the series), but it's got a much sharper bite than some of the earlier novels in the same vein, and the protagonist - an unrepentant conman and charlatan - is a bit darker than Pratchett's norm. Pratchett's protagonists are sometimes well-meaning bumblers who end up becoming heroes reluctantly, or older, more established, overly-cynical veterans who are dragged back into being in the thick of events, or hyper-competent people constantly bewildered by the incompetence of everyone else in the world. Moist von Lipwig is different, and maybe a bit more challenging than most of Pratchett's characters, being a lot more selfish and less sympathetic.

This all combines to make Going Postal feel incredibly familiar and quite new and fresh, which is an impressive achievement. The book also makes a statement by starting with a bang and just keeps going, with Moist plucked from certain death into uncertain-death-by-tedious-bureaucracy and the story moving like a freight train, despite its (by Pratchettian standards) generous 470+ page count. We get cameos by the City Watch and Unseen University wizards, but for once they don't take over the book. We also get a bit more of Patrician Vetinari than normal, and more insights into how Vetinari keeps the messy engine of the city running without going stark raving mad. The semaphore towers - the "clacks" - have been a key part of the background worldbuilding for quite a few novels now but here take front and centre, with plenty of exploration of how the service works and its own arcane customs (like the memories of deceased tower operators kept alive in the network, zooming back and forth along the network).

Pratchett packs a lot in, including further exploration of the golems and a potential romance between Moist and the chain-smoking Adora Bell Dearheart. Maybe even too much: the romance doesn't get a huge amount of development and he seems to lose a little bit of the thread with what to do with the villain at the end, who first appears to being set up as an ongoing antagonist to Moist but Pratchett seems to change his mind at the last minute.

But it's hard to argue with the results. Going Postal (****½) manages to feel safe and edgy at the same time, bringing in ideas both new and old and unfolding with some vigour. Pratchett is on fine form here, and with Moist von Lipwig he has created a compelling new protagonist whom you'll look forwards to seeing again.

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A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching has begun her apprenticeship as a witch, working for Miss Tick, who has one soul but two bodies. After a dull start to her work, they are accosted by a hiver, a formless spirit which can possess living bodies, driving them to acts of malice. Tiffany has to fight for her body and soul, but fortunately has a group of surprisingly capable allies: the diminutive, oft-drunk Nac Mac Feegle, and the formidably competent Granny Weatherwax.

A Hat Full of Sky is the thirty-second Discworld novel and the second (of an eventual five) to focus on the character of Tiffany Aching. Originally published in 2004, Terry Pratchett had decided to write a series of Discworld books aimed at younger readers. Amusingly, due to Pratchett's utter refusal to talk down to children, he doesn't entirely seem to know how to do this, so has knocked off the occasional double entendre from his writing and shaved off about 100 pages from his average page count but otherwise carried on as normal.

As a result, A Hat Full of Sky feels like vintage Pratchett, just more focused (no bad thing; some Discworld books tend to circle the drain a few times before finding their point, which is not the case here). The cast is much smaller than normal, the scope more intimate, bordering on the claustrophobic. Given the nature of the story is very internal, this feels appropriate.

The main story, ostensibly, is about Tiffany getting possessed and "turned bad," although Pratchett seems to be ahead on the curve on how this could have been tedious. Tiffany only spends a small amount of time possessed by the hiver, with most of the book revolving around events before and after. Pratchett is often less interested in the most obvious route to humour or action, and more interested in causes and results. Pratchett is also a very human writer, so here his focus is more on the impact caused by events on Tiffany's character and even feeling empathy for the hiver, the "monster" of the story.

That's not to say the book isn't funny. Pratchett's skill at wordplay and minor-but-amusing worldbuilding details (some of them drawing on real-life folklore, as the afterword attests) remains undimmed. He also spends a bit more time making the Nac Mac Feegle a deeper and more interesting culture. Them showing up drunk, head-butting a badger and yelling "crivens!" can only get you so far, so here a more thorough exploration of Rob Anybody's character and the motivations of his new queen - who finds the tribe's allegiance to Tiffany bemusing - adds more depth to a group previously only known for knockabout comedy value.

Pratchett also deploys Granny Weatherwax with restraint, though she has more page-time than in The Wee Free Men. One of Discworld's most iconic, formidable and impressive protagonists, it would be easy for Granny to take over the narrative and deal with Tiffany's problems for her in five minutes, so Pratchett is good at using her tactically during the book's finale, so as not to outshine our actual protagonist. Tiffany herself develops nicely here, the traditional "why am I not being taught actual magic on Day One of learning to be a witch?" storyline being quickly displaced by a more thoughtful, intelligent examination of responsibility, empathy and consequences.

A Hat Full of Sky (****) is Pratchett at his most focused and disciplined here, delivering a smart, tight story. It's not the most expansive Discworld story and some may prefer the more widescreen/deranged antics of, say, the City Watch in Ankh-Morpork, but it's a very solid read.

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Wertzone Classics: Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

Borogravia is a minor but bellicose country, with a long history of invading its neighbours under the pretext of religious commands given by the deity Nuggan. With Nuggan's commands becoming more unhinged (banning ginger hair, garlic, cats, jigsaw puzzles and the colour blue), the reasons for war become increasingly random as well. Its neighbours, finally fed up by its constant aggression, have joined with the regional superpower of Ankh-Morpork to finally end the threat once and for all.

With war raging - or shambolically bumbling around - bar worker Polly Perks decides to go searching for her missing brother. She poses as a man to join the army and is assigned to a new regiment, only to find out almost the entire company has had the same idea. With women doing men's work also deemed an Abomination Unto Nuggan, the regiment has to keep their heads down, infiltrate an enemy keep, and work out how to rescue/escape their assorted family members, and, if possible, end the war before it causes any more damage.

Throughout his prolific career, Sir Terry Pratchett had a knack for using his witty dialogue, sharp prose and keen knowledge of history and culture to explore many different concepts. In most cases, he produced a brilliant Discworld book exploring a certain idea, like the press or the dangers of fundamentalist religion. But, when he turned his attention to the idea of war, he uncharacteristically dropped the ball. Jingo was perfectly okay, but lacked his trademark intelligence and depth.

Ten books later, he decided to give it another go, and this time nailed it. If Jingo was about the superficialities of going to war for absolutely no sane reason, Monstrous Regiment is about war as a much more complex force. Here we have burned-out homesteads, villages standing amidst salted fields and people's homes being invaded for reasons they don't really understand. Borogravia is fighting a defensive war against invaders, but it's also been a bellicose lunatic in the past, and is being flattened under the weight of the abuse heaped upon it by its own rulers. This creates a complex stew of ideas and themes, which is where Pratchett is at his best.

Polly and her fellow soldiers have little interest in the greater geopolitical complexities of the war, instead just trying to rescue individual people from the maelstrom. But, thanks to a chance encounter with newspaper reporter William de Worde (cameoing from The Truth), their mission inadvertently becomes famous across half the continent, and takes on a grander importance. It's also symbolic of the losses Borogravia has suffered, where an entire regiment is made up of women because there's increasingly few men left able to fight.

As in his best, most cutting books, Pratchett remembers to keep the funny: the regiment consists of an assortment of funny characters, the most memorable being Maladict, a suave, reformed vampire who has sworn off blood but developed an equally crippling addiction to coffee. But there's an undercurrent of seriousness here that is powerful: more than a few of the recruits have been victimised, and how they deal with trauma is a subtle but constant theme of the book. Sergeant Jackrum also emerges as one of Pratchett's most fascinating characters, a counterpoint of his more familiar Commander Vimes (who has a few brief appearances in the novel as an Ankh-Morpork liaison) who went down a decidedly more disturbing path (with more than a whiff of Life on Mars' Gene Hunt to them as well, for good and ill).

The book unfolds with a very deliberate pace: at just under 500 pages this is one of the longest Discworld novels but it earns its length by dividing the narrative into several distinct sections as the mission unfolds, as well as the larger-than-normal cast giving Pratchett a lot of characters to develop. But this also gives the book the feel of holding a stick of dynamite that's about to go off. Pratchett is known for being funny but he is absolutely at his best when he is angry, and I get the distinct impression as he wrote the book and continued researching things like the treatment of people in war, especially women and "non-conformists," he got progressively angrier. By the time the book concludes, the humour is so laced with white-hot rage that it is positively acidic. But Pratchett also never loses control. He doesn't go into some lecturing rant (a weakness some of his other books suffer from) and he never dissipates the focus on the story or characters.

Monstrous Regiment (*****) is Pratchett's take on war - actual, messy, horribly murky war - and gender and politics. It's a long book, by his standards, but he maintains the pacing and tension to deliver one of his finest and most thought-provoking novels.

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The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching is serious and studious for her age, and has little truck with myths and superstition. When her brother is kidnapped by an evil supernatural force from another universe and she is offered an alliance with the Nac Mac Feegle, a species of diminutive-but-psychotic warriors, this offends Tiffany's worldview. But pragmatism wins out, and she has to reluctantly embark on an adventure.

The Wee Free Men is the thirtieth Discworld novel, and when you're thirty books into any series you might be forgiven for resting on your laurels a bit, especially when the previous one, Night Watch, is often cited as the best thing you've ever written. For Sir Terry Pratchett, this was not an option. Having experimented with a Discworld book for younger audiences, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, he decided to start a whole new sub-series within the wider Discworld framework that would be aimed primarily at younger readers.

Pratchett being Pratchett, this meant relatively little changes or compromises to his usual vision. Some of the very occasional double entendre gags are gone, the book is somewhat shorter than usual, but beyond that Pratchett didn't really censor himself at all. If anything, this is a more thoughtful, contemplative Discworld book than the norm, with some enjoyable setpieces interrupted by Tiffany's internal musings on life and her ambitions.

Tiffany is smart, curious and sensible, not given to recklessness but also having a strong moral centre. She may be a quintessential Discworld protagonist, being often the only sane person in the room and constantly wondering why selfishness and hatred even exist. She is cut from the same competence cloth as Granny Weatherwax and Samuel Vimes, but lacks their experience and cynicism. She is a well-drawn protagonist who has to overcome problems presented by capable enemies, rather than because she's holding an idiot ball (something many other writers could learn from).

What is impressive about The Wee Free Men is how much of it is told from within Tiffany's head: the Nac Mac Feegle are not given to in-depth dialogue (although they have a few bon mots of wisdom) and many of the other characters are evil, monsters, stupid adults or even less-communicative children. Just about the only person Tiffany can have a decent 1:1 conversation with is a sentient toad. This means we get to lock into Tiffany's thought processes and motivations in a lot of depth, which is refreshing.

Taking part in a hitherto-unexplored part of the Disc with almost no recurring characters (not even Death, making this the first Discworld novel that he skips out on), at least until the last chapter, The Wee Free Men also makes a viable on-roading point for the entire series. Technically the main villain did (briefly) appear in Lords and Ladies, but that is really not alluded to in the book so is not hugely important.

The Wee Free Men (****½) sheds a lot of the extended subplots that had started padding out the Discworld books around this time and is focused and entertaining, with a small but well-drawn cast of characters. It's funny, but intermittently, with musings on growing up and responsibility. For the first in a new, YA (or outright children)-focused series, it's surprisingly contemplative and thoughtful, and all the richer for it.

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