Appropriately enough, just as the DWRC returns from beyond, the next book in the queue is Pyramids, otherwise known as How to Become a Pharoah Without Training.
As with a number of early Discworld titles, this is a fun read, but not particularly deep. It’s primarily intended as a sendup of Egyptian stereotypes, especially the animal-heads-on-people-gods and royal-inbreeding cliches.
Still, despite its light tone, Pyramids has a number of memorable characters. Teppic, especially, strikes me as regretfully ignored; I’m a bit disappointed that he hasn’t popped up in any subsequent novels, if only as a cameo (hey, it’d be a break from dropping Carrot or Granny Weatherwax into everything). Dil and his sons were also fun, but admittedly it’s hard to work them into other stories.
The most interesting thing about Pyramids, though, is Dios. He’s not cut from the Evil Grand Vizer cloth, but is simply a single-minded person driven by ceremony and repetition. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, the road to Djel is paved with Dios’ rituals.
Pyramids probably ties for my least favorite Discworld novel with Sourcery and Monstrous Regiment. Dios is a good character, as was the camel, but none of the other characters are all that memorable, and I don’t really like Pteppic. (I also don’t like the whole “Pt” thing. Yes, Terry, we know about Ptolmey, but you’re just being cute. Same with the Djelibeli thing)
Part of the problem was the pacing, which was uneven (and which is a problem in a lot of the earlier Discworld books) There’s a long period of time where nothing happens and then everything happens at once. Small Gods was a much better look at the Om-Ephebe-Tsort-Djelibeli region.
I particularly liked the insight it gave us into the Assassin’s Guild. I’d love to see a book centering on the AG… although it might be kind of redundant considering how much AG already showed us.
Most notable for me is our first real look at the philosophers - ground we’d revisit in Small Gods - also Dios reads in some ways as a first pass at Vorbis - a personified comment on singleminded religion, I think. Certainly that sort of thing is much better dealt with in SG, but I can see the cogs begin to turn here.
I liked the whole assasin’s school beginning, too. Something proto-Potter about it, but what, I can’t quite articulate.
Also, the whole thing is a wonderful pisstake of the sort of pseudoscience beliefs of pyramidiots who try and use them to sharpen razors. Sharp wit there…
Definitely there are serious undertones to the whole book - more of Pterry’s humanist philosophy, not just a silly romp.
I like Pyramids a lot, too. I actually have a first edition copy - the only first edition I own, and it was not on purpose.
I loved the Assassin’s Guild stuff. And I loved the “test”, although I was disappointed when
It wasn’t a real person!
I also liked the whole Godhead thing, with the corn stalks, etc. And the smuggler ship. I have based many smugglers ships on that one - looks fat and looks like it wallows like a cow but moves like an angel.
I can’t quite make the Dios == Vorbis connection myself. Dios was a well-intentioned but misguided caretaker, whereas Vorbis was a self-serving malicious bastard. Dios would have been appaled at Vorbis’ action, and doubtlessly would have pointed him as an example of the barbarism of the “false religions” outside.
Teppic, Chidder, et al are supposed to be a parody of the old “Tom Brow’s Schooldays” children’s books, according to the Annotated Pratchett File. I guess that sort of thing goes back.
I mostly didn’t like the ending. The entire “unending Dios” line was overly cute.
In other news, I think that people are bit too hard on Vorbis. He was perfectly religious. It was, as it happeneed, that he was a devout follower of a very cold and unpleasant god.
Proto-Potter my fat, hairy arse. You’d think no-one had ever written a school story before Rowling. Not just Tom Brown, but Malory Towers and half a hundred others, and only a few years ago there was hardly a children’s annual but had a school story in it.
I really, really like You Bastard, the great mathematician.
Sorry that I didn’t continue the threads. I kinda lost interest when no one else was actually re-reading the books but me.
Anyway, I think Pyramids is a sort of trial run for Small Gods. Not that I think Pterry* intended it as such -but I think he was flexing his writing muscles to see what he could get away with. This is the first real outing into him making fun of our own world, instead of having fun and making parody of the fantasy genre.As such,ity’s very good, though of course it pales as compared to his later works.
*I don’t know when the fans started calling him Pterry, but if it was prior to Pyramids, then I bet the whole Pt thing is more a nod to that than something to do with Ptolemy.
I was reading them. It was my excuse to go out and buy the ones I didn’t have yet. I don’t post a lot because I don’t have anything particularly incisive to say.
I remember the pyramid stuff. I was at a spend the night party and the father of the household had made a little cardboard pyramid that he kept his razor under. Even as an 8-year-old, I knew that was dumb.
In some ways, having the central conceit of the book be a slap at a long-gone fad makes the book less funny. But it isn’t just a one note satire*, and there is plenty of other stuff in there. It’s fun, if not as great as things eventually got.
*My biggest “complaint” about later books is the constant complaining about the class system. Yes, we get it, privelege based on birth is dumb. I wonder if the class system is that much more overt and pervasive in Britain, or if it is just Pratchett’s personal bete noir. In either case, I keep wanting him to move on and make fun of something else, already.
Who? Om? This is more of a discussion for the next thread, but while Om was, especially before his encounter with Brutha, fairly cold and unpleasant, he was still infinitely more compassionate and less cruel than Vorbis, and in fact, Om ends up being the one to kill Vorbis.
I very carefully said “in some ways” - I even italicised it, for Pete’s sake. I never said “Dios == Vorbis”, just that they shared a certain singlemindedness about their take on religion, even when that take is at odds with the observed reality around them. And they are both willing to sacrifice others in serving their singleminded ends. Now, those are not the same ends, and I never said they were. Just that one has the seeds of part of the other’s character in him.
Naah, it’s not that - I’ve read enough public school stuff, from Tom Brown all the way to Billy Bunter and annuals like Valiant and Mandy, to get the antecedents. I did say it was hard to articulate, but there’s something in the modern style of TP that Rowling also has, but the earlier stuff lacked. I wouldn’t be surprised if JK had read TP, given he was Britain’s best selling author befor her.
If all you think I’m getting at is the public school setting, you’re mistaken.
Amen. And there was even a series called The Worst Witch that was set in a witches school, and the protagonist was an ordinary student and not some smug little “chosen one” git.
You see, it’s stuff like this that makes people think you’re a girl! You probably read Trebizon as well.
To make him go, you hit him with a stick. To make him stop, you really hit him with a stick…
