Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett

" They have a curse… They say… May you live in INTERESTING TIMES " Take one hopeless Wizard with an advanced sense of preservation. Call him Rincewind. Have him somehow save the world several times without ever getting the credit for it. Have him in innumerable tight spots with no way out but have him stay alive throughout everything. Place him on a remote island where nothing can possibly happen to him, and where he can enjoy his favourite state of being - boredom (because nothing is trying to kill him / eat him / rip his limbs off). Take a university full of Wizards. Inhabit this university with several ...  Read the complete review

“May You Live in Interesting Times”. This is the strongest curse that the people of the ‘Counterweight Continent’ can muster. You see rules and tradition run their lives. This land of communism sets great store in examinations indeed, a 3000 word thesis and a verse of poetry is required to become a gardener in these parts. However, the peasants long for freedom (or at least a longer piece of string for their water buffalo). This results in the ‘Red Army’ uniting to succeed in “Untimely Demise To The Forces of Oppression”. How will they do this you may well ask? Well with the forces of good on their side and the power of “The Great Wizzard” how can they ...  Read the complete review

On the Counterweight Continent, gold is found in such abundance that it's as valuable to the people there as dirt is to the citizens of Ankh-Morpork. In Ankh-Morpork, a little gold would go a long long way. The Agatean Empire have nothing Ankh-Morpork can afford, and Ankh-Morpork has nothing they want. Therefore short and infrequent messages are exchanged between the two rulers by means of a Pointless Albatross. When the Emperor of the Agatean Empire sends a message to Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, asking for the "Great Wizzard", Havelock Vetinari asks Mustrum Ridcully (the Archchancellor of Unseen Unversity) who exactly they want. ...  Read the complete review

This is a story about a little journal and how much trouble it causes on the counterweight continent. Somebody managed to leave the walled continent and travel to the lands of the blood-sucking ghosts and actually had quite a nice time. The problem is that the Emperor rules by discipline and fear and this little journal might get people to see a different world than the one handed to them or even worse might allow them to think. The hapless Rincewind doesn't die very often through this long book. The story was very enjoyable and the supporting characters were actually a bit more than two dimentional. ...  Read the complete review

I started reading Interesting Times with some trepidation, only really on the reccomendation of my brother who'd read it and said it was good. That trepidation left me after a few pages. We're back in classic Pratchett country. The Counterweight Continent meets Rincewind, the Great Wizzard, although what they say to him once they find out he's a lazy university dropout (a future for this reviewer, maybe?) who can do as much magic as Paul Daniels - that is to say, not much. In addition to Rincewind, we see an appearance from Twoflower, who apart from the early books we have seen little of. There is also Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver ...  Read the complete review