See 'Pratchett' and throw my money down! (Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: Hestia

Product:	Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett
Date:	06/08/02 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Always willing to learn about the DiscWorld, Pratchett looks like such a kindly chap

Disadvantages: No Nanny Ogg, No philosophy, Strangely, no jokes

I don't buy new books a lot. Seems to me that if Hunter S Thompson, J D Salinger or Franz Kafka can make their way to the shelves of the charity shops then paying full price for anything literary is going to be a disappointment.

Well... mostly it is. And maybe if I'd waited until 'Thief of Time" was £1, I wouldn't have been so disappointed with it.

I think not. Pratchett's always been an exception. I've been lucky enough to find a lot of the discworld series on the shelves of 'Oxfam' and 'The Hospice Society' but have forked out hard cash for other of this work, "Masquerade" and "Carpe Jugulum".

I didn't, then, come away feeling I'd entirely wasted my money. But Thief of Time... (I feel I can't say anything too horrible about Pratchett because he seems like such a nice man; and anyway he looks like my dad), but lets face it, it was crap.

Okay the nice ideas were there. Who hasn't wanted to know more about the History Monks since Small Gods?

Yet the story dragged. And dragged. And dragged. For countless interminable pages.

I was on holiday when I read it. I should have been Mr Pratchett's best audience. I should have been receptive.

Maybe it was that all my other holiday reading was 20p (Simone de Beauvoir, Zane Gray, Keith Waterhouse, Toni Morrison) and Theif of Time being £7, I expected it to be 35 times better ....

Well, it wasn't. It wasn't even as good. Most of Pratchett has stuff you can quote. Some of it in deep discussion.

I've always loved Captains Vimes theory of social inequality as shown through boots:

A man earns $20 a month. A good pair of boots cost $60. A bad pair of boots which let the rain in, have to be propped up with cardboard and only last 3 months cost $15.

If you buy the $60 pair of boots, they will last you a lifetime of warm feet. If you buy the $1
5 pair of boots they will always pinch your feet, leak and wear out in a few months.

The rich man spends $60 on boots
The poor man spends $300 on boots AND always has wet feet.

That sort of thing is always happening in Pratchett.

Just not in this book. (Not even with the chocolate references)

Summary: