A Picture Book for Adults (The Last Hero - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: Kukana

Product:	The Last Hero - Terry Pratchett
Date:	30/09/04 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: brilliant artwork, suitable for all, fine detailed drawings

Disadvantages: not much of a story, very little character development, over-priced

'The Last Hero' is a picture book for adults. At first appearance it seems a bit like a book for young children since it's bigger than a normal novel, and the story is interspersed with some fabulous and inspired art. Unlike books for small children however, there's a fair amount of text, and some of the artwork consists of amazingly complex and detailed diagrams.

The story is set on the Discworld. This is Terry Pratchett's imaginary world which is shaped like a disc, and travels through space on the backs of four gigantic elephants, who stand on an even more enormous turtle. It's peopled with wizards, trolls, dwarfs, vampires... indeed, just about every sentient two-legged creature from myths and legends, and also some humans. They live in a culture somewhat reminiscent of medieval England, with technological ideas that could have been inspired by 20th century Earth.

The Discworld, of course, is fantasy, but the books in general are surprisingly realistic, poking gentle fun at the way people think and speak, covering issues such as sexism and racism (the Discworld has 'speciesism') with clever word plays and humorous interchanges thrown in. Accept the world and its people, and it all makes sense in a congruent whole. Well, mostly.

'The Last Hero', however, isn't a normal Discworld novel. Quite apart from the artwork, and the fact that it's a large format rather than the usual hardback or paperback sizes, it's called a 'fable'. It brings in characters who appear in varying depths in other novels, although it would be possible to read this alone without ever having read any of the others. But it doesn't really develop any of the characters, so to read it by itself would probably leave an impression of two-dimensionalism, and caricature worse than those which Terry Pratchett actually intends.

The plot is simple.

Discworld has mythologies much like those of Earth, and one of them includes the legend of someone who stole fire from the gods, and who was punished by having his liver pecked daily by an eagle, for eternity.

The Discworld also has its heroes, the best-known being Cohen the Barbarian. In other books Cohen is presented as very old but full of life. After all, heroes are heroes because they win unlikely battles against all the odds. Terry Pratchett carries this to its logical conclusion by portraying Cohen and his horde of heroes as extremely elderly, some of them doddery and hard of hearing, but still prepared to try almost anything.

Whereas they're rather minor characters in other novels, in 'The Last Hero' the heroes are the main protagonists. They have decided to do one more task before they die: to return fire to the gods. This is not an altruistic gesture, however. It's making a stand against the Discworld gods, in the hope of destroying them, even though they realise they will themselves probably be killed in the process. In true legend style they take a bard with them, who is to record their deeds in saga form for posterity.

Meanwhile back in Ankh-Morpork - Discworld's rough equivalent of London - the wizards realise that blowing up the gods' home will cause major problems all over the Disc, almost certainly destroying it completely. So they call in Leonard of Quirm (who bears remarkable similarities to Leonardo da Vinci) to find some method of stopping the heroes before disaster ensues. Leonard manages to build a flying machine, powered ingeneously by dragons. He, along with Rincewind the 'wizzard' and Carrot the watchman set off to try to save the world.

And that's about it.

Obviously the world is saved, or there would be no further Discworld books. So the main plot is a little thin. It's not a long book, so there isn't time for the usual complex intertwined sub-plots that Pratchett handles so brilliantly. But it does allow for the most wonderful pictures: detailed and very clever mechanical drawings of the flying machine and other objects of Leonard's design, and stunning pictures of parts of the Disc which have never before been seen by its inhabitants.

The intrepid trio flying to save the world actually fly through the legs of the elephants, and spend some hours on the moon (which is a great deal closer to the Disc than our moon is to the earth). These digressions, which don't really add much to the story, provide scope for some gorgeous pictures that stopped me in my tracks while reading. My teenage sons - who very much enjoyed this book - tend to think, as I do, that the artwork came first and the story was mainly an excuse to publish it.

So a bare three stars for the story, but a good five for the art, giving an average of four. Suitable for teenagers as well as adults, or for slightly younger children who enjoy the Discworld series and are intrigued by mechanics and design. I doubt if it would appeal to those under the age of about nine or ten, and I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who hasn't previously read and liked other Discworld books.

Still, it's a nice addition to our shelves which were already bulging with Pratchett books, although the larger size makes it look a little untidy alongside the neat row of novels. We usually buy hardback Discworld books these days, since they're generally on offer for half-price at Amazon and we don't want to wait a year for the paperback versions; however we didn't buy 'The Last Hero' when it was new. Even with the Amazon discount (only 30%), it seemed over-priced for something which we knew wasn't a full novel. At the full price of £17.99 it's perhaps a coffee-table luxury for someone who's even more of a Discworld fan than my family, but I wouldn't really recommend it. The soft-cover edition, which we bought, is a somewhat more reasonable £12.99 at full price, again reduced by 30% at Amazon, and available for even less at their Marketplace.

Summary: