Discy business (Discworld Series - Terry Pratchett in general)

Member Name: davidbuttery

Product:	Discworld Series - Terry Pratchett in general
Date:	07/07/02 (77 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The Witches books, The Night Watch series

Disadvantages: Rincewind, Eric, "His lips moved" - aarrgghh!

Terry Pratchett, like most really popular authors, is by no means universally admired for his writing; indeed, not a few (including a good chunk of this esteemed site's members) can't understand why those who enjoy his Discworld books (like me), and especially those who think he can do no wrong (not like me) can ignore what they see as his major shortcomings; they fail to see quite how he has maintained not only his enormous popularity, but also the majority of critical opinion. So, here goes... you'll note that I'm restricting myself to the Discworld series, as while I have read quite a few of his other works (Strata, The Carpet People, The Science of Discworld etc), the Discworld books in themselves are now into their second quarter century, which should be enough to get one's teeth into.

It's common to divide the books into sub-series, and I'll do the same here. Perhaps the most well known of Pratchett's creations is the incompetent wizard Rincewind, but this is rather a shame, as he's by no means TP's most impressive creation. Indeed, I'd wager that quite a few of the casual readers who profess themselves disappointed with his work have based their opinions largely, or even entirely, on the first two books, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. These are really more out-and-out parodies of "straight" SF and fantasy than they are original novels in themselves, and it's painfully obvious. Go back and read TCOM now and the word that comes to mind is "clumsy".

The later Rincewind books are a very mixed bag. Sourcery is interesting in fits and starts, though more for the character of Coin the Sourcerer than for Rincewind himself. Eric is absolutely dreadful - the fact that it's semi-detached from the series (having originally been planned as a picture book) doesn't justify the feeble humour and unconvincing plotlines it contains. Just don't bother with it - you wo
n't miss anything. Interesting Times is enormously better, and even manages to pull off the difficult feat of finding a deeper side to brainless tourist Twoflower, though - sadly - this is pretty much forgotten after a few pages. Finally (for now) The Last Continent (such a similar title to Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent has to be deliberate, surely?) is knockabout slapstick, with Rincewind getting a lot of practice at his two real skills - foreign languages and running away - but with no real coherent plotline.

The third book in the canon, Equal Rites, is not a great work in itself, but it does introduce us to one of Pratchett's greatest creations, the witch Granny Weatherwax. In ER, she's really little more than a village witch with slightly more sense than most, but in Wyrd Sisters - otherwise a fun but rather unimaginative takeoff of Macbeth - she starts to get into her stride, thanks to the addition of Nanny Ogg, undisputed matriarch of the Ramtop's greatest (well, largest) clan, and Magrat Garlick, who at this early stage is really just a young woman who tries to see the best in everybody - not always a good idea. The legendary witch Black Aliss ("couple of kids shoved her in her own oven at the end") first appears here, too.

The third "Witches" novel, Witches Abroad, is one of my favourites, and starts the process of bringing Granny Weatherwax's darker side to the reader's attention - "she was born good and she don't like it", as Nanny Ogg perceptively observes. The journey to Genua is great fun, with TP seemingly having been challenged to a "how many references can you get into this bit?" competition - and coming through with flying colours. For the first time, too, Granny is pitted against an enemy who is her equal in power (and, as we find out, other things too).

Lords and Ladies is darker again, and by now Granny is clearly a very powerful witch indeed, an
d even her closest friend Nanny Ogg is starting to worry if she isn't going a bit... black. Still, no time to worry about that now, as there are the elves to worry about, and, as the book's blurb says, that means "lots of hey-nonny-nonny and blood all over the place". Magrat may by now be Queen, but there's no real doubt as to who's really running the kingdom of Lancre.

Maskerade - "the opera one" - is set in Ankh-Morpork, but is really a "Witches" book. I have a sneaking regard for it, but have never really found the ending very satisfying. Carpe Jugulum, though, makes me shiver - the early parts dealing with Granny Weatherwax's mind are perhaps as frightening, in their way, as anything Pratchett has ever written. The later parts (Pratchett, as a panellist on the Late Review once famously pointed out, "doesn't even write in chapters") are possibly a little overlong, and could have done with being cropped a bit.

Death (or DEATH) is perhaps the only rival to Granny as Pratchett's most memorable character. Although he does appear right from the start (he is the only character to turn up in every single book, though the Librarian [an orang-utan, and perfectly happy with his lot] comes close), he's nothing more than a supernatural murderer. Mort introduces the Death we know and love, a dedicated professional trying, and in most cases failing miserably, to understand the human mindset. He comes closest in Reaper Man, where after being informed that he is to be pensioned off, he becomes the Disc's fastest agricultural worker, and - it is hinted - comes close to falling in love.

Death's granddaughter, Susan, has rather taken over from the anthropomorphic personification himself in later books - only to an extent in Soul Music, but as the central character in Hogfather, another book that - like Maskerade - could have done with some judicious trimming. I must admit that
I've never really warmed to Susan in the way I have to Death himself - maybe it's the fact that my sister shares the name that does it. (Susan, not Death, idiot!)

The final major collection of books is made up of those dealing with the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch, and particularly the progression through the ranks of six-foot six dwarf (adopted) Carrot. He's a simple soul... but that's certainly not the same as stupid, and though in Guards! Guards! he's not a lot more than a very large copper with the gift of the gab (echoes of Wyrd Sisters' Tomjon), by the time of Men at Arms and Jingo he's not only worked out how to deal with the opposite sex (though romantic sex, as opposed to pantomime innuendo, is not something Pratchett's books are particularly comfortable with), but is acting as a sort of one-man Race Relations Board.

The strength of the Watch books is the variety of their supporting cast. Vimes, with his progression from deadbeat alcoholic to pillar of society and Knight of the Realm; Colon, playing the archetypal sarge; Corporal C. W. St.J. "Nobby" Nobbs, who may need to carry a signed letter from the Patrician to prove his species, but may also be the rightful heir to an earldom; and, thanks to a Discworld version of affirmative action, Angua the werewolf, Detritus the troll (don't salute!) and assorted dwarfs, ghouls, vampires and other guests of Mrs Cake's very understanding boarding house.

The aforementioned Patrician is the man who keeps everything ticking over, overseeing the power struggles between the (legalised) Guilds of Assassins, Thieves and Beggars, and making damn sure that the participants are all pulling in different directions. He never appears to do very much, and you sometimes wonder why he's in a particular book, but generally if you mentally remove him from the plot, the whole thing falls apart - the Patrician's subtle nudges on the levers of the city mac
hine are often not very spectacular, but usually act to prevent an explosion. He seems to have stopped hanging mime artists upside down in scorpion pits (opposite the slogan: "learn the words") now, though, which personally I deeply regret.

There are two books which don't fit in with any of the main sequences, and in some ways they're very alike: both deal with the power of a highly conservative priesthood over their flocks - and, in the case of Pyramids, even over the nominal ruler of the state. Small Gods is the more interesting of the two - possibly Pratchett's best Discworld novel, in my view. It deals with some quite complicated issues of how faith and rationality intertwine, and the mutual effect on each, and does so fairly successfully, with a hero you can empathise with and a really nasty villain to get your teeth into.

I suppose it's only fair, after my generally supportive comments about the books above, that I mention the things I think Pratchett doesn't do so well, and one of those is his choice of names. Yes, some are excellent - Granny Weatherwax, Ponder Stibbons and Samuel Vimes fit their characters perfectly - but all too often TP is lazy, and simply pinches names from elsewhere. Okay, so in-jokes and hidden references are part of what makes the Discworld books so much fun, but others are either feeble (Latatian for the dog-Latin that is Ankh's ancient language, or "Twurp's Peerage") or tossed away for no apparent reason (has Ecalpon, which was glancingly referred to early on, ever been seen in the series again?).

Worse is his tendency to greatly overuse a few stock phrases, so that we usually hear about a "wossname" rather than a "thingummy", "wotsit" or the like; we've also come to expect a rather boring reminder that Ankh is built on loam, but mostly on old masonry. By far the most annoying trait TP has, though, is that almost *every single
time* a character has to do any mental calculations, we read "his lips moved". The same damn phrase over and over again - it is unbelievably irritating! Can someone as obviously literate as Terry Pratchett *really* not think of something different to say?

The final question to consider is that of whether the Discworld saga has run its course, and I think that parts of it have. The Ankh-Morpork I once knew - a semi-mediaeval city ruled by a combination of magic, bar brawls and the Patrician (mostly the last-named) has become a city held back from the modern age only by a narrative rubber band stretched beyond its limits. When even the seemingly invincible taboo against moveable type has been breached (in The Truth), and long-distance communication (the clacks) has been invented (The Fifth Elephant), then we cannot be far away from steam engines, electricity and the like, and at that point I think all the trolls and gnomes will start to feel a little bit out of place.

The "Witches" books suffer less from this, as they are mostly set at least partly in Lancre, a much more backward place than the great metropolis of Ankh. Here, rural life still goes on much as it has done since time immemorial, with the inhabitants' lives determined far more by the harvest and by what Granny Weatherwax calls "headology" than in the city. The stories that deal with supernatural forces still work well here, and I think that these books will probably survive longest. Rincewind I don't much like anyway, but he seems to be essentially a city person, as to the rest of the wizards, so my concerns above about Ankh apply here too.

All in all, I think that Terry Pratchett and his Discworld deserve their places in the annals of fantasy fiction, and I do believe that the series will still be considered a landmark a hundred years hence. It's by no means flawless, and the occasional laziness which mars some of the books is as irrit
ating as a mosquito bite on a gorgeous summer's day. But I'm happy, for the moment at least, to continue relaxing in my deckchair with a copy of one of Terry's tomes.

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