Pied Pratchett (Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents -Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: Pingu

Product:	Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents -Terry Pratchett
Date:	19/12/01 (146 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Perfect

Disadvantages: None

Well the annual re-read of my Pratchett books had to be interrupted for this and The Last Hero, which both came out in the same month. Last Hero turned out to be something of a disappointment. This didn't. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is just a fantastic, charming, witty and downright clever book.

It's something of a spin-off. If you've read Guards Guards you'll remember the rats who waited on the Patrician while he was imprisoned. He thought their tunnels probably went under Unseen University, and that some magic must have seeped into the tunnels, making them rather intelligent. This is more or less the story of those rats, although it goes one step further. They have now actually eaten magical garbage from outside the kitchens at Unseen University, and can talk, read, organise armies, and generally outsmart the average human. Add to their ranks one cat, aka Maurice, who also finds himself elevated to talking fairytale creature, and is about as smart as it gets. He finds himself a kid who can play the recorder and the biggest scam in Disc history is born. Basically the rats 'infest' one town at a time, kid shows up, plays his recorder - for a large fee - and the rats follow him out of town.

The scam becomes complicated when they arrive in a town which is already being scammed by its resident rat-catchers, a really nasty pair. Not only that, but it becomes clear that they are acting under the guidance of something more sinister - but I'm not going to say any more, because that is the essence of the story.

Pratchett somehow manages to pack about 10 different plots into this book, and weave all of them around the main story. What's more, all of them are worked out quite satisfactorily. There's the mental journey of the rats' leader, who just finds his whole new world very confusing, and views this newfangled thinking thing in much the same way that OAPs view Metallica. The only way h
e knows how to lead is the ratty way, and his story is about adjustment and compromise. There's the story of the rats' military commander, widely expected to challenge for overall command, but who realises that the only way to keep the rats together is for him to fiercely support their leader. His plot is about him going from hard-bitten, logical robo-rat, to being able to accept ratty religion. There's Malicia, a young girl whose head is so full of stories that she makes reality fall into plots around her. Her story is about the abrupt shock when reality departs violently from the 'correct' ending. There's the 'visionary' rat, whose faith is founded on a book called 'Mr Bunnsy.' His story is about realising that, when it comes down to it, rats are just rats; in an emergency all their new found intelligence is abandonned, and they panic just like rats. His faith is shattered, and he has to find a way to rebuild it.

The characterisation is just the best that Pratchett has done. It's on a par with the way Rincewind, Captain Vimes and Granny Weatherwax have been fleshed out, but done in a much shorter space of time. And what's great - what makes it so fresh - is that Pratchett *really* thinks about his characters, rather than going for stereotypes. After all, talking cats have been done thousands of times. But usually, the moment they learn to talk, they become just a generic, 'nice' fluffy person - taken straight from puss in boots - with no personality. Maurice, on the other hand, remains a cat through and through; a selfish, cunning, amoral, disgusting, flea-ridden whirling ball of claws.

The details also make the book. Like the way the rats are named. They take their name from the first thing they managed to read, when they suddenly became intelligent, meaning that it's mainly words you would find on the side of food containers. Some of them will make you howl.

And the writing
style itself. Pratchett is the master of what I would call 'camera-angle-writing.' He describes an event from a particular perspective, leaving out everything you wouldn't see from that perspective, so that you find yourself struggling for details. This approach keeps me extremely curious, and I find myself suddenly realising what went on, during an event, several pages later when more details are filled in. For instance, at the beginning of the book, a hold-up is described, where a highwayman tries to rob Maurice and the rats. He ends up in rather a lot of pain, and in fear of his life, but it's only several pages later that you manage to fill in what happened.

This book is stunning. Pratchett is truly writing literature nowadays. There is as much in one of his novels, to be gained by analysis, as there is in a Shakespeare play, but Pratchett is a darn sight more entertaining. Read it!!

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