Books - Review

Rincewind and the Luggage do stuff. Can't remember what exactly.

Good solid early Pratchett

The Hogfather has disappeared and Death has taken on the role of scrambling down chimneys, filling stockings, drinking sherry and saying 'HO HO HO'. His grand-daughter Susan is confused and tries to find out what is going on. An assassin and his band of cut-throats have kidnapped a tooth-fairy, and the wizards at Unseen University are called away from their seasonal festivities to try and help solve the mystery.

Not one of Pratchett's better efforts by any means. Far too convuluted and too many of those (thankfully short) would-be-philosophical passages of strange events when world meets world which don't actually add anything to the story. Not very funny either, too clever by half.

Corporal Carrot and his friends in the Watch (dwarf, troll and lady werewolf) foil a horrible plot by someone or other to do something dastardly with a gun (gonne)

Not very memorable.

Vampires versus the witches.

OK, read on hols in Exeter.

Criminal bloke reprieved from hanging to resurrect old post office in competition with clacky semaphore things.

Good bits with golem in. Best Pratchett for a while.

Another Discworld novel, again centred on an investigation by the City Watch, led by Vimes, and his motley crew of dwarves, trolls, humans, werewolves, and this book's new Watch Character, a vampire. A murdered dwarf is discovered in a mine under the City and trolls are the obvious suspects. But as the anniversary of the battle of blearghhyh (can't remember) comes around tensions are high between troll and dwarf community.

Not so good, this one, hardly any funny bits - the only clever thing in the book (I thought) was the imp-powered Gooseberry, that reminded Vimes of his missed appointments, and did magical research and analysis for him.

Mort gets apprenticed to Death and rides around on Binky collecting souls while Death tries to work out what having fun is. But Mort screws up by rescuing Princess thingy from her scheduled death and then has to try and stop real history creeping back in...

Well, I had thought this was one of the funnier ones but it isn't. The wizards are quite funny, but not much else.

Moist von Lipwig stars again - after his success in sorting out the Post Office the Patrician sends him in to the Bank to try and sort it out. So he invents bank notes, and his girlfriend discovers some ancient golems, and the owners of the bank are against him, and the chairman of the bank is a small dog, blah blah blah.

More of the same really. Felt like lots of ideas that just didn't quite work.

The Auditors appear on Discworld in human form and commission a clockmaker to make a clock that can end time. So he gets on with that, but the 'time-monks' have fortunately just recruited a talented novice who can probably save the day.

A bit of a mish-mash but probably the best Pratchett for a while. Has some good characters in it eg Death, Susan, the Sweeper. The Auditors were quite funny, learning to cope with being humans, but no big laughs really.

The Great God Om manifests himself as a tortoise and finds himself stranded in the garden of brother Brutha, his only remaining believer. Brutha is a simple soul but has a perfect memory and is forced to accompany the chief inquisitor on a military mission to the neighbouring country of philosophers, where he begins to learn the power of rational thought over religious tyranny.

I read this one because of that bloke in the Guardian who criticised Pratchett for being shallow and meaningless, but then admitted he had never actually read any of his books. He then read Small Gods and changed his mind a bit. I read it and thought it all a bit dull, not very funny. The philosophers were quite good.