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Here's the problem I've got with Raising Steam. You've got a bunch of characters who over the course of 35-odd books always win, and now they're teaming up with each other to do something together that they all agree on and want to happen and never disagree about in any way. There's nobody from outside who seems capable of chucking a spanner in their works, and since they all agree on everything right from the start, they're not going to have to overcome infighting. Result: zero narrative tension. Of course Vimes and Detritus are going to beat the poo poo out of the grags, and of course Moist is going to pull something out of his arse to save the day - there's nobody and nothing who could possibly stop them doing these things that they've previously shown that they're extremely competent at.
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Nov 29, 2013 19:24
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Maybe I didn't formulate that properly; let me try again. It's not necessarily that there aren't any baddies, but there aren't any problems.AlphaDog posted:I can't argue with this, but it's not a new problem with Discworld. Vimes picks up the "can't be beaten" thing in what, Feet Of Clay? He's certainly got it in Night Watch and Thud, and those are two of my favorites. In Night Watch, Vimes has to: Catch Carcer, and do it properly and by the book to boot Fill John Keel's role, both within the structure of the Watch and as mentor to himself Deal with the new, ahistorical threat from the Cable Street Particulars Not bugger up the timeline too badly Resist his own urge to just wallow in the past and never go back home to his wife and son Be generally true to himself while achieving all of the above These things are all great challenges for him, which he struggles mightily with and then overcomes in the end. Sure, one of them's a great and memorable baddie, but more of them aren't; that's why it's such a good book, neh? Thud doesn't have a baddie like Carcer, but Vimes still has to: Solve the murder of Grag Hamcrusher Stop the city erupting in riots, and deal with the situation in the Cham when it comes to a head Dodge the grags that are trying to assassinate him Resist the urge to give in to the Summoning Dark Find the truth of what happened at Koom Valley Deal with being forced to have a vampire in his Watch Babysit A.E. Pessimal And all while being a good father to Young Sam and being back home exactly on time to read to him The stakes have raised again and again so that he's still being challenged by events and having to struggle with them, but there are still challenges for him to overcome. Likewise, in Going Postal, Moist has to: Come up with a succession of ideas to revitalise the Post Office Stop anyone finding out that he used to be a crook Exorcise the Post Office building Dodge assassination attempts Win the heart of Adora Belle Expose Reacher Gilt's misdeeds enough for Lord Vetinari to justify stepping in While doing all of the above, not annoy Vetinari enough that he cuts his losses on the deal That's quite enough to be getting on with, and of course it's a huge struggle trying to juggle it all; so when he pulls the miracle out of his arse at the end, it's a natural climax to his having to deal with all these problems. Now, in Raising Steam, what do they have to do? Moist is nearly seriously challenged by having to negotiate with the landowners, but almost as soon as that challenge is introduced, it's solved again. He's nearly seriously challenged again by the grags, but then he's able to beat some of them up and then increase security so he doesn't have to do it again. Then he has to get the train over the bridge, but this time when he pulls something out of his arse it's dull and has no impact because he's been so singularly unchallenged by everything else in the book. Vimes presumably has to keep the peace in the city, but we never get to see him doing any of that; all he has to do on-screen is protecting the train. Simnel just wants to build his railway, and is given a free hand and kept carefully insulated from everything else that's going on, and he never suffers any engineering setbacks or problems or competition. The three people with apparently the biggest challenges are Harry King, Lord Vetinari, and the Low Queen. Harry King's got a lot of money but he's out of his element when it comes to railways. The Queen has rumblings in the interior and then gets trapped a thousand miles away from the coup attempt. If Vetinari can't keep the peace, he's going to have a civil war in his city. But they all solve the problem in the same way; they just put one of the other characters on the case, who sort it out easily. There's barely any messes for anyone to get into in the first place.
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Dec 1, 2013 00:16
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AlphaDog posted:They're just not exactly comedies. This is true, but is there a funnier comedic sequence anywhere than Vimes walking back into Treacle Mine Road as sergeant-at-arms? "It's what they used to call the hat of authority..."
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Dec 2, 2013 14:01
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Mollsmolyneux posted:I'm just getting into Discworld, but can't wait to read these four. Any suggestions which I start with, or shall I read them in order? What kind of books do you like away from Discworld?
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Dec 12, 2013 11:32
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Kitchner posted:Without spoiling the story for me why is Raising Steam getting knocked by you guys so much? I actually thought Snuff was OK. Not as good as previous Discworld stuff but still a good read. I wrote a thing after finishing Raising Steam that goes into why I feel it's slipped from "ok-ish for Discworld" (which is about where I had Snuff at as well) to "not really much fun to read at all". Spoilerless version: none of the characters have any real problems or challenges put in their way that they don't then immediately and easily overcome, resulting in absolutely zero narrative tension. If it wasn't Discworld I really would have just chucked it in the bin and never thought of it again by page 100 at the absolute latest, and probably quite a bit earlier.
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Dec 23, 2013 06:30
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I think the best entry point depends entirely on who's asking for it. If they like cop stories and whodunits at all (and a lot of people do), then yes, the Watch is a great place to start them off. But then there are people who read a great deal of trashy fantasy, and if someone like that comes along then you better bet I'm giving them The Colour of Magic. If it's someone who reads a lot of YA, then it might be Tiffany Aching or I might get them to read about Johnny Maxwell first. Someone who looks for strong female protagonists would be all over the Witches. I'd give a film buff Moving Pictures, a music nerd Soul Music, and a divinity student Pyramids.
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Feb 20, 2014 20:54
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Omi no Kami posted:I've been re-reading the Tiffany Aching books this week and yeesh but that man can write. The thing with her in Equal Rites is she's only drawn in two and a bit dimensions, because she's like all the early Discworld characters, a spanner in the wheel to serve the points Pratchett's trying to make about fantasy - in this case, men's magic and women's magic. The book works a lot better once you realise it's basically an expanded version of this speech that he gave to a convention shortly after completing The Light Fantastic.
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Feb 26, 2014 10:58
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I dunno, the whole point of Night Watch is that he's remembered and learned enough about how to be a good quote:Vimes would be the first to admit that he wasn't a good copper, but he'd probably be spared Sure, it's a great character arc the way he rises from being an irrelevant, incompetent drunk to being the Duke of Ankh; but I do sometimes wish that we'd got a bit more of this feeling along the way, of him not being sure he's up to the job he finds himself doing and has to overcome his own self-doubt as much as the complexity of the crime. "Am I good enough to solve this?" instead of "Can I solve this in time?" is an angle I've not seen a lot of in detective stories and I wish we'd got a bit more of it before he starts dealing in the kind of international affairs that would have given Bismarck pause.
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Aug 24, 2014 11:22
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Um, did you miss the bit where he also signs over "the freehold of a large site in Goose Green", which I always then assumed became the location of the Lady Sybil Free Hospital (with Lawn in charge) in later books?
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Aug 30, 2014 15:36
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Zephyrine posted:That's alright but the 100.000 dollars seems very out of place. Well, because they've also had that conversation about memory, and how beneficial silence can be, and what he knows about the identity of John Keel. The money is to buy him off so he won't squeal about who Sergeant-at-Arms Keel was, and the hospital is his reward for delivering Young Sam.
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Aug 31, 2014 00:01
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Lord Vetinari instructs Vimes to put Colon and Nobby in charge of a traffic police unit at the end of Jingo, and we then get to see them (and hear about them) in action at the beginning of The Fifth Elephant.quote:'Now...what do we have to discuss...?' [Lord V] pulled another document towards him and read it swiftly. Presumably when Mister Vimes gets back and finishes going spare, they return to clamping duty until some point after Night Watch when Fred begins to slow down even more than he had done already.
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Sep 2, 2014 23:04
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precision posted:Given that Pratchett is somewhat enormously rich, and he has always wanted Terry Gilliam to do Good Omens, why doesn't he just Executive Produce it and cover any funding that Gilliam can't get elsewhere? Well, let's think about this. His net worth was reported a few years ago as being somewhere in the region of £42 million, but let's to go the man himself to find out why this doesn't mean "he has £42 million in the bank" (this was written some considerable time ago, in response to his net worth being estimated at £26 million): quote:"This began with some survey done by a magazine called Business Age. Since it's off by the national debt of Belgium my agent rang them up to find out what the hell was going on. Various factoids emerged, like frinstance their assumption that I sell pro rata as much in the States as I do here (hollow laughter from the American readers). And we suspect they fall for the common error that a mere appearance in the bestseller lists means millionaire status (in a poor week the book at number ten might not have sold 100 copies). But the big wobbler is that the estimate is of 'worth', not 'wealth' -- they've hazarded a wild guess at the value of the Discworld rights, as far as we can tell including film rights as well. Remember copyright lasts for 50 years and the books are consistent high backlist sellers. It's similar to pointing to a bright kid and saying 'he's worth three million quids' -- i.e., all the money she or he might earn during their life, at compound interest. It's fairy money. The kind Robert Maxwell had." The Sunday Times Rich List operates in a similar fashion. So let's be generous for a moment, and assume that in fact he at this moment has about £20 million (~$32 million) in either cash or easily liquefiable assets. It's pretty obvious that Good Omens is not going to be a cheap movie to make if you want to do it properly, right? The rights to licence Queen alone could probably pay for a load of worthy shoestring independent meditations on e.g. the subtly intertwining lives of the people who use a particular railway station toilet. 12 Monkeys cost $29.5 million. Doctor Parnassus cost about the same. The Brothers Grimm cost $88 million. Film is not a cheap business. So he almost certainly doesn't have as much money as is often reported, and even if he did it'd still be a bloody big ask to shoulder even half the production costs of a Good Omens movie with enough budget to make it a worthwhile exercise. Let's remember here that when George Harrison bought the most expensive cinema ticket in history by stepping in to personally fund The Life of Brian, even an ex-Beatle had to remortgage his house to do so.
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Sep 8, 2014 11:22
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Zephyrine posted:He did go to war in Jingo but not as street thug/assassin Willikins he went to war as just an ignorant recruit seeking glory. Made to symbolize the "glory of war" hysteria among the common man. Did you miss the bit where he immediately gets himself made a sergeant and goes round biting Klatchian noses off? "It was only one nose, sir..."
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Sep 26, 2014 20:55
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Stroth posted:I read that as being about monopolies, not capitalism. And the bit where Vetinari decides the appropriate course of action is to arrange things so that he can justify nationalising it...?
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Sep 28, 2014 00:14
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I read them mostly as arm's length industries that work for the good of the city with profit as an interesting side benefit, because the apparent private dynastic owners/operators are all secretly terrified of getting the arm chopped off if they go properly into business for themselves like Gilt did with the Trunk. Whether that's pro-nationalisation or pro-responsible-capitalism or pro-enlightened-dictatorship...
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Sep 28, 2014 11:47
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You didn't get one of the infamous soup edition books, did you? http://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and-the-maggi-soup-adverts/
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Oct 16, 2014 23:07
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I just want to see Tony Stamp and Reg Hollis from The Bill as Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs. Is that really too much to ask?
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Nov 2, 2014 22:55
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There's a line in there somewhere about the Day Watch having become another one of the city's gangs, and the Night Watch not even being good enough to manage that, right?
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Nov 20, 2014 18:22
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Fliemoe's a composite of both of them (if Fliemoe invites you for toast in his study, don't go!) There's also strong tinges of Flashman in how we see Lord Downey behaving when he was at school, much later in the series.
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Nov 21, 2014 18:42
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AlphaDog posted:I got the feeling it was supposed to teach serious important moral lessons rather than be entertaining. That's exactly what it was; it was born out of a genre literally called "improving stories", in which a load of horribly anal little children behave like little Goody Two-Shoes (and the reason that phrase endures is because she's the titular character of an improving story from about 90 years before Tom Brown) and set a good example for your children to follow. Tom Brown's Schooldays is basically about an improving story (in the vector of George) infecting a bunch of suprisingly normal kids at Rugby, and either they roll with it and turn into dull little Good People (ready to become selfless servants of the Empire!) or they get expelled like Flashman, and as far as the book's concerned, he presumably ends up dying penniless in a ditch six months later.
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Nov 22, 2014 11:50
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I enjoyed Flashman, but you know what always bugs me about the writing? At least once in every book, there's a moment where he goes "I've been in some dashed nasty scrapes, but I'm not sure I was ever in one quite as bad as [the situation he's currently in]". After a certain point I realised I was spending the entire book just waiting for it to drop so I could be annoyed by it.
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Nov 27, 2014 00:10
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If liking jokes about sheer bloody-minded literality, or people talking at cross purposes because they have no frame of reference for each other, is wrong, then I for one do not wish to be right.quote:'Well done!' said Leonard. 'Tell me, sergeant, are you of a nautical persuasion?' 
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Dec 3, 2014 00:34
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One of my favourite Pratchett quotes.quote:"...A gag that no-one's ever said they've got is the Patrician's name, Lord Vetinari. I always think of the Patrician as a vaguely Florentine prince, a sort of Machiavelli and Robespierre rolled into one. And of course there was Medici. So I thought if you had the Medici, then you would have the Dentistri, and the Vetinari. The Discworld is full of things which don't look like gags but are gags, if only you can work out what the intervening step is which I haven't given."
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Dec 23, 2014 23:27
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I loved Nation so much. It's possibly even my favourite Pratchett. If you can get along at all with books starring teen protagonists, give the Johnny Maxwell series a try.
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Dec 27, 2014 03:33
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Kitchner posted:It was quite funny that TP said in an interview he remembered someone telling him once that after reading monstrous regiment their military friend insisted TP must have served in the army, as there was no way anyone who hasn't would have been able to write the novel that well. Then you come here and people are slating it, which I don't really get. I know quite a few people who aren't really into the Watch series because they're not really into (They're wrong, of course, but...)
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Feb 4, 2015 13:14
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Whodunits are not the only kind of detectoring story, just the same as sword-and-sorcery isn't the only kind of fantasy; the Watch stories appropriate and jettison elements from all kinds of sub-genres as the author sees fit. Kitchner posted:Not many crime novels, as far as I'm aware, tell the reader who committed the crime early on and then spend the rest of the novel exploring why they did it. It's called either an inverted story or a howcatchem, depending on your feelings about language. They're a recognised sub-genre. Became more popular after Columbo did it on TV, but the basic concept goes back to stuff like The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, which starts with Holmes telling Watson what an rear end in a top hat Milverton is and why something drastic needs to be done about him.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:25
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The thing about Night Watch is that there's still some incredibly funny bits in it. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that beats Vimes walking back into Treacle Mine Road as sergeant-at-arms and putting some stick about.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:33
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I was just reading this this morning. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/12/alzheimers-breakthrough-as-ultrasound-successfully-treats-disease-in-mice
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Mar 12, 2015 16:38
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supermikhail posted:Er. I'm now reading an obituary in a Spanish newspaper ( It doesn't mean anything per se, but for me it's always been brilliantly evocative of that sort of small-time ducker and diver. (It's vaguely reminiscent of the word "dabble", which he does all the time.) I don't think it means anything or is a reference to anything, but it's exactly what someone like that should be called, if that makes sense. (In the same way that the Spanish waiter in Fawlty Towers could have had no other name but Manuel.)
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Mar 13, 2015 08:59
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), and I've just discovered that apparently Dibbler is translated Escurridizo, meaning "tricky, slippery"... So, I have to wonder, I'm not a native English speaker and Dibbler doesn't mean anything to me - in fact, dictionary.com doesn't produce anything very relevant... But does his name mean or imply something?
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Someone back in the days of Usenet wrote a really good analysis of Vetinari's role in Jingo. http://www.ealasaid.com/fan/vetinari/musings-jingo.html quote:One of the things that's always troubled me about J is the way Vetinari acts so out of character, dropping the helm of A-M and charging off on what is more than likely to be a wild goose chase (and one which, on the "real" leg of the trousers of time, turns out to be a failure, with A-M invaded). But then this discussion of the war got me wondering if it made any difference to my interpretation of Vetinari's behaviour if I assumed that he knew from the beginning of the book that Klatch was determined to invade. And it turns out it does.
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Mar 24, 2015 21:02
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I've always been fond of the footnote in Jingo that tells us there's a Mr Harris (of the Blue Cat Club) on the committee of the Guild of Seamstresses.quote:His admission caused a lot of argument in the Guild, who knew competition when they saw it, but Mrs Palm overruled the opposition on the basis, she said, that unnatural acts were only natural. d'awwww
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Mar 30, 2015 13:48
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I liked Lu-Tze much better as a supporting character. It didn't seem to me like there was nearly enough material there to carry a full book, and it seems like the subject had had plenty of parody attention before Discworld got there.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:57
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"Well, I was going to buy a book, but now I think I'll go to [INSERT NAME HERE] instead, thanks. Tell your manager."
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Apr 6, 2015 15:54
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You're kind of right, but on slightly closer inspection, there's just no way that the situation can be anywhere near that simple. We're talking about a culture where This is one of the things that really get to me about him dying - given what little he managed to show in Raising Steam (and there's hints in Thud with Sally von Humpeding also), he was clearly planning to develop those themes about the complexity of identity and contemporary human social norms even further and I was really looking forward to it, and then he simply ran out of time to do it in. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 00:40
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Arbite posted:War in all it's potential horror had been covered in Jingo I completely disagree. Jingo covered the horrors of war from the top down. Monstrous Regiment covers the horrors of war from the bottom up. They complement each other.
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Apr 29, 2015 20:44
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At the risk of being self-aggrandising:Trin Tragula posted:I think the best entry point depends entirely on who's asking for it. If I'd started with e.g. Mort, or Guards! Guards!, I may never have read another one, but Jingo was exactly what I needed to help me get what Discworld was all about.
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May 24, 2015 21:31
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Let's have it properly, shall we? That whole scene deserves it; the narratorial interjections are pure artistry.quote:'Hright,' said Sergeant Colon, 'this, men, is your truncheon, also nomenclatured your night stick or baton of office.' He paused while he tried to remember his army days, and brightened up. 'Hand you will look after hit,' he shouted. 'You will eat with hit, you will sleep with hit, you—' I could read that all day, and indeed I have.
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Aug 10, 2015 19:27
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Vimes and Detritus is a combination that just plain didn't happen often enough. And he never had the time to get around to Scouting for Trolls... Feet of Clay, take it away. quote:'Incidentally, Sergeant, I've got a report here that a troll in uniform nailed one of And, of course, the coda... quote:'Dis is der ole privy wot we don't use no more, you can use it for mixin' up stuff, it the only Nobody remembers it because it falls down the cracks of Jolly Littlebottom and Beaky Littlebottom, but it's absolutely fantastic.
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Aug 12, 2015 01:40
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I like Equal Rites a lot, but it's a sad moment when you realise that, standing on its own, it really never needed to be any more than this speech that he gave at 80s conventions, somewhere between The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.quote:The archetypal wizard is of course Merlin, advisor of kings, maker of the Round Table, and the only man who knew how to work the electromagnet that released the Sword from the Stone. He is not in fact a folklore hero, because much of what we know about him is based firmly on Geoffrey de Monmouth's Life of Merlin, written in the Twelfth Century. Old Geoffrey was one of the world's great writers of fantasy, nearly as good as Fritz Leiber but without that thing about cats. He then goes on, rather amusingly, to point out the growing ursupation of Merlin's place in culture by Gandalf, something which I would say is now complete thanks to Ian McKellen waving his enormous staff (it's got a knob on the end) around everywhere.
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Aug 16, 2015 18:29
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Unseen Academicals was the first time I noticed something really off about his prose. I cringed every time Dr Hix went "Skull ring! Skull ring!"
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Sep 2, 2015 13:05
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