Atwood is a Canadian writer. Some would say the Canadian writer.
No, they definitely got the last one dead right.
The best thing I can say about Eric is it would make a middling Tom Holt book.
There were a couple of scenes in Eric [DEL]Faust[/DEL] that I enjoyed:
[ul]
[li]The field demon at least taking some pity by skipping some of the subsections of the daily reading of the safety orders.[/li][li]The senior demon getting “promoted” into a locked-away office, and finding his own bizarre satisfaction in writing up the Mission Statement for Hell. “We Are In the Damnation Business.”[/li][/ul]
The Last Continent
This book was the final main Rincewind/Wizards book, though I still have the Last Hero and the Science books, which I understand involved them as well.
I was surprised in the opening 25% or so of this book how much is the wizards at the school instead of Rincewind, but I didn’t mind. I almost find the wizards more interesting at time. Still, we got back to Rincewind and the whole thing moved right along.
It was OK, though I found Interesting Times to be the superior and best Rincewind novel. His crew there was the funniest and I found myself enjoying that book all the way through. This one was only OK in parts. The atheist god was a huge hit for me and the wizards back in time was also great.
Anyway, not my favorite, but a good solid Discworld book.
The Rincewind books in general are pretty bad, and ones I feel Terry himself didn’t really want to write but Rincewind was a popular character (search me for a reason for that, he’s so one note…) so I get the idea either he or his editor felt he had to keep writing for him.
To me they mostly feel like a series of “bits” with Rincewind going “would you look at that, that sure is silly ; also my cowardice is never not funny !” at them. Which, granted, is pretty much exactly what TCOM/TLF were but…eh. Sourcery is ok as I remember it (but I haven’t reread it in forever), and Interesting Times is actually fun in parts but mostly, meh.
I think my favorite Rincewind moment ever is actually in The Last Hero.
(very minor spoiler)
“I just wish to make it known that I don’t want to volunteer.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
"Sigh… Volunteering. But I don’t want to.
I’m rather late to the party, but let me put down my favorites, which I’ve reread a couple times each:
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Interesting times: Rincewind’s visit to the Discworld’s equivalent of Asia. Having lived in Asia IRL I found a lot of the jokes particularly spot on and hilarious.
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Wyrd Sisters: I enjoyed Pterry’s take on witches, magic, and Uberwald, mixed up with Shakespearean tropes (Bubble bubble toil and trouble etc.).
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Pyramids: Don’t know why but I found this one a lot of fun and particularly memorable. Son of “Egyptian” king is taking his final exam at the Assassin’s Guild in A-M and meanwhile, back at home, his insane dad manages to kill himself kind of by accident. The son is now king…and he’s got to go back home and deal with things. Oh, and I think this book is the source of all the Pt… jokes associated with Terry Pratchett.
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The Last Hero: Yes, I like this one, it combines a lot of the enjoyable ideas from the various other books. Stebbins as mission controller? Carrot as an Apollo Astronaut? It works!
I tend to remember and like snippets from different books, forgetting where the snippets are from, which gel into an overall experience. Not all books are equally great; some feel complete while others seem like a collection of good bits and a lot of less interesting stuff.
Thud!
Been reading other things for awhile, but I was happy to come back to Discworld and even happier to be back with the City Watch.
I…was not a big fan of this book. There are moments and I am always happy to see the Watch crew, but this book is going down the path Night Watch did. It focuses on Sam Vimes so much, everyone else feels like they are doing cameos here and there.
I prefer my Watch books to feature everyone. Anyway, it wasn’t just that. I was not as pulled into this story as I hoped to be. It was a lesser Discworld book for me. Not much to say. Decent in parts, but nothing too great.
I will concede that Sam Vimes Has A Holiday About Racism Being Bad And Dumb is not one of the greats, and I don’t really remember much about it except the scene with Berserker Vimes killing people while yelling WHERE IS MY COW ?!
Which is admittedly a fantastic mental image. But it’s not even the worst Discworld book about Sam Vimes Pointing At Racism And Thinking It’s Well Silly…
Also, if you read it as being kinda sorta sideways-like about Palestine/Israel it manages to be both pretty naive AND quite problematic at the same time ^^;
What’s next for you, then ? Which ones are left on the to-read list ?
I have not read the following:
Pyramids
Last Hero
Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Monstrous Regiment
Going Postal
Wintersmith
Making Money
I Shall Wear Midnight
Snuff
Raising Steam
The Shepherd’s Crown
I also plan to re-read the first two Tiffany Aching books now that I have read the Witch books.
…I somehow never realized that it’s specifically about Palestine/Israel. But yeah, it does seem to fit a lot more closely there than to war in general.
And I don’t think you’ll get much dispute that it’s not the worst of the Discworld books, but it’s one of the weaker ones.
A lot of real bangers left on that list, including three of my top 5. I envy you !
I mean, I suppose it’s about any entrenched ethnic/religious feud that’s gone on long enough that it’s become it’s own cause for continuation - might as well read it as The Troubles or India/Pakistan or Bosnia/Serbia. But yeah. Similarly anti-Dwarf stereotypes and xenophobia throughout the series can be read as lampooning any casual racism and it’s not quite a 1-to-1 Dwarves = Jews; but still it’s a *lot *that.
Which causes some unfortunate implications when they’re the side with the ultra hardliner faction doing conspiracies to keep the war going, conspiracies that spill beyond the scope of their silly mountain feud and disrupt the politics and lives of honest Not_Londoners and literally undermine the city from within. :o
I think it’s just as much about Muslim immigrants to the UK as it is about the Palestine situation.
Well yeah obvs, but the two are inescapably linked, both in the book and IRL. The Ankh-Morpork half of the story is about immigration questions, while the trip to Koom Valley and so on is about the ancestral foreign grudge that’s spilling over via immigration - much like Israel/Palestine is the purported driver of much mutual distrust and antagonism between Arab and Jewish communities all across Europe and in the US (but really it’s even more complicated and it’s a useful pretext to perpetuate toxic shit more often than not and yadda yadda).
The petrified trolls & dwarves defending themselves back to back against the Summoning Dark inside the secret cave would then be…hmmm… “remember when you guys were all resisting Ottoman/British oppression together ? Wasn’t that nice ?” I guess ? Direct analogy only goes so far :D.
Unseen Academicals is much, much too high on the list, but other than that…
I’ll say. Never in my life have I seen such immoral and quite frankly offensive opinions broadcasted with such confidence. Shame on you.
Wyrd Sisters below Thud! ? Unseen Academicals over Moving Pictures ? Mort at number 14 ? No.
You are objectively and factually wrong and a bad person.
Well, we agree on Small Gods.
checks that Eric is correctly at the bottom The list is fine.
I too rate UA high (higher than Mahaloth does, in fact) and definitely higher than MP
I’m the only person on the planet that found Small Gods boring…I would shot myself in the foot before I read that slog again.
I still have it as number one, but I could see The Truth switching with it. I really loved The Truth almost as much.