GeekReads

With the release of each new Terry Pratchett novel, I start prattling on about how remarkable it is that he’s still cranking them out, what with his Early Onset Alzheimers and all. Yet since Sir Terry first publicly announced that he had the disease back in 2007 (with its source going back to a minor stroke which he suffered around 2004-2005), he’s written and published many books, including Unseen Academicals and Nation, and at the time of writing this post, about to release another called Snuff.

This review though, is about I Shall Wear Midnight. It’s going back a bit now – it was released last year. I’ve been tardy with my reviews and it’s been several weeks since I finished reading this, but also because I waited until this was out in paperback before picking it up, so that it would match the previous 3 books in the Tiffany Aching series which I already own (an aside: despite tracking down a copy from the exact same imprint, Corgi, it still turned out to be a different size and shape to the others… geek rage!)

As for the contents of the book, I found it to be enjoyable, but probably less so than the previous ones. Jokes stemming from the antics of the Wee Free Men are starting to wear thin, and because Tiffany is grown up now (in body but much more in mind), some of her charm has worn off.

This series was always aimed more at children, but in Midnight‘s case Pratchett seems to have been bogged down by this limitation, and the result has lost the freshness of the earlier books, and also lacks the wit and sophistication of the “core” Discworld novels.

Unless you’re a perfectionist or die-hard Pratchett fan, you can probably safely give this one a miss.

I’m fairly tardy with my reviews at the best of times, so I was quite chuffed to discover that my 3 most recent reviews had a thing in common, allowing me to knock off all 3 in one go. Righto then. Toodle-pip. On with the show, wot wot!

Nation, by Terry Pratchett

It might look like a Discworld book, but it ain't a Discworld book

Terry Pratchett is a prolific author by any account, with 38 Discworld novels to his name and several childrens’ books on the periphery (although I say this in the same sense that one would refer to The Hobbit and The Silmarillion as “merely” peripheral works to The Lord of the Rings). It’s a decent body of work, selling over 65 million books worldwide, so when he was diagnosed with early onset alzheimers disease he could’ve just stopped there, having left a pretty decent legacy (also, his daughter Rhianna is a distinguished writer in the interactive space; which is to say video games). But no, Sir Terry just keeps on cranking them out, and not just in his Discworld comfort zone either.

28 years spent crafting a fictional world naturally gives one respectable insight into what makes them tick, and Pratchett unleashes the full brunt of his experience in Nation. In just over 400 pages he brings to life an entirely new world (albeit based on the real one), and a roster of characters every bit as rich and ripe with potential as any he’s ever created for the Discworld.

Another great thing about seasoned authors is their efficiency with words. Pratchett doesn’t waste a single letter; the narration in the first couple of pages contains more story than lesser authors muster in an entire chapter.

The King’s Speech

C-c-can you hear th-th-the drums, F-f-f-ernado?

If I didn’t have a self-imposed rule about writing something for every movie I see in the cinema, I’d have skipped reviewing The King’s Speech. Yeah, the movie was enjoyable and the acting was OK but it didn’t have anything I’d singled out as a “wow” factor. So Colin Firth did a good impression of a guy with a stammer – that’s what actors are paid to do. For some reason this reminds me of the scene in Tropic Thunder where Robert Downey Jr. is lecturing Ben Stiller about going “full retard” and I reckon Firth’s going to go home empty handed (my money’s on Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network).

Also, there’s something I want to ask: girls, please tell me, is Colin Firth really a good actor, or do you like him because he’s the embodiment of Anglophilia due to his having been – and remaining – the definitive “Mr. Darcy”?

To me he’s one of those actors where I can’t see the character for the man. Whenever he’s on screen I have no trouble thinking “yep, that’s Colin Firth” whereas y’know how in some movies, you get so engrossed in the character that you struggle to remember the actor or actress’s name? Yeah, he’s not one of them.

Gnomeo & Juliet

Oui, c'est en français. J'aime mieux que la version anglaise.

What! An animated feature that isn’t from either Pixar or Dreamworks?! And it’s not half bad either, you say? Yet it’s true, I actually enjoyed this one very much.

Firstly, let me dispel what’s likely to be the biggest fear for those considering this movie: Gnomeo and Juliet isn’t a remake of Shakespeare’s play with gardening puns. Neither does it get bogged down in the seriousness of its premise of having garden gnomes that come to life when humans aren’t around – it’s not Toy Story, but in a good way.

The whole thing is played for laughs, and never takes itself seriously at all, which makes it a buckets of fun all round.

Call me strange, but my favourite thing about the whole movie was how every time the characters touched, or made contact with another object, there would be a little stony “chink!” sound that I found really satisfying for some reason.

Another classic Paul Kidby Discworld book cover

Despite the tragic early onset of Alzheimers, Unseen Academicals shows that popular fantasy author Terry Pratchett is still in top form. He’s got the “diamond in the rough” schtick down to a T, but the difference is that at the end of each story, those polished diamonds don’t disappear off into obscurity – they sparkle on in subsequent novels, imbuing the Discworld with an extreme richness (pun intended).

The 37th novel in the Discworld series(!), Academicals continues the recurring theme of the modernisation of the capital city of Ankh-Morpork. Recent books have seen A-M gain a postal service, a telecommunications system known as “the clacks”, a shiny new banking system, its own currency, and now, football (soccer) and, er… a high-end fashion industry*.

Pratchett still has the touch, and the book offers unnervingly accurate insight into the human psyche, as the plot bores deeply into the inner workings of players, fans, and of course – because it’s soccer – hooligans. The British humour, Flintstones-style take on the modern world, and the satire of fantasy conventions are all exquisitely funny for sure, but beneath the veneer of slapstick he hits hard at issues such as taking the ambiguity of dwarven genders and putting them into the context of the high-end fashion industry, to explore ideas of sexual identity and individual choice, without speaking of sex whatsoever (although there’s more sexual innuendo than usual for Discworld novel as far as I can recall).

The "Jolly Sailor Tobacco Football Cards" depicting characters from Unseen Academicals, available separately and also illustrated by Paul Kidby

Rather than following the escapades of a single character, several plot threads weave their way in and around of each other:

• The wizards of Unseen University, who need to put together a football team or risk losing the significant financial benefits of a bequest that funds their lackadaisical academic lifestyle
• Trevor Likely, trying to grow out of the shadow of his late father Dave – a legend who scored a record number of goals the historical game of “foot-the-ball”
• Nutt, a genteel so-called goblin who discovers the truth about his enigmatic past
• Glenda Sugarbean, the homely head of the university’s Night Kitchen, and her ditsy, comely friend Juliet (“Jools”) Stollop whose modelling debut (heavily armoured and wearing a dwarf beard) leaves the fashion world abuzz and has them trying to find the mysterious “Jewels”
• The dwarf Madame Sharn, head of the fashion label Shatta, and her flamboyant assistant Pepe, at the launch of their new line of micromail.
• The ins-and-outs of the “Shove” – the collective of football followers, being that when they get together to watch a game, nobody can really see anything and all that happens is a lot of shoving.

… and of course the welcome appearance of recurring characters such as Havelock Vetinari, the seemingly omniscient Patrician of Ankh-Morpork; and brief cameos by Death, and Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler.

What I love most about Pratchett even more than the insights, is his mastery of the written form, and his ability to ignore the conventions of language that we take for granted, as when one of the characters in the book is described as being full of “charisn’tma”. And like most of the other Discworld novels, he pushes the boundaries of typography by using bolds, italics, font-sizes, Death’s dialogue ALWAYS IN CAPS and more, to eke every bit of meaning possible out of the words on the page.

To confuse my sporting metaphors, Unseen Academicals adds another home run to an already impressive scoreboard, and I seriously hope that Pratchett hits a couple more before the end of his innings.

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* For this reason, if you’re new to Discworld I don’t recommend starting with this book – check out the reading order in Wikipedia for more details.