How does one make a spoiler tag? There was a bit in Wee Free that I really really liked. It was very reminiscent of a favourite movie scene.
put your spoiler here
Tiffany goes into a dream much like the ballroom scene in Labyrinth.
Many thanks, Lobsang!
I expect some kind of showdown between Sam Vimes and Carrot, maybe when the Patrician shuffles off his mortal coil. As Carrot and Vimes each becomes more powerful in the city, Vetinari serves as an increasingly critical buffer.
I think my favorite of the book is Small Gods. Brutha is just such a great character. When I used to have an AOL account, my quote was “If you do what you beleive is right in your heart and not according to what any book or god or man says, then things for the most part will be all right - Friit”. (I may have misquoted, I’m doing this from memory)
We could probably have a whole other thread about where exactly this book fits in with the others. Although there are a couple of contemporary charcters in the book, other books refer to Brutha as having been the prophet years earlier.
The only contemporary from small gods I can think of is the Sweeper, and since he’s essentially a time traveller it’s not real important.
Ther are several mentions of post-Brutha Omnians of the jeovah’s Witness type and in Carpe Jugulum it mentions that there was a schism after Brutha’s death, but not much else. Best I can work out, the other book may take place as little as 50 years after ‘Small Gods’ but there wouldn’t be any contradictions if it were 500 years later.
This page discusses the question, and there is also a Discworld timeline. Basically, Small Gods does appear to happen at the same time as the other books. I can’t really see how this is possible, though, as Brutha lives a hundred years after his walk through the desert with Vorbis, and in Carpe Jugulum Oats talks about events that happened after Brutha’s death.
So it seems to me that Pterry screwed up slightly here.
I hardly revealed anything that wouldn’t been on the jacket, and mentioned absolutely nothing of the plot that you wouldn’t have discovered in the first two pages, or in any review of the book (actually most reviews would have told you even more). The two references to the events in the story will only make sense after you read the book.
Trust me, I’ve written reviews professionally. I know what I’m doing.
Man, I can’t believe I missed out on this thread! That’s what I get for letting my attention wander … Like a few others, I also started with Hogfather and immediately gobbled up everything within a few months. My only regret is not picking “Dangerous Beans” for my user name, although I suppose Ponder is a bit more apt …
Btw, RealityChuck, it would still be nice to use the spoiler tags anyway, even if you feel you aren’t giving away much. When I saw your post I immediately skipped past it. I don’t want or need a review of any upcoming Pratchett novel, I want to read it fresh and new. Thank you.
On a related note, Shalmanese, you complain about potential spoilers and yet you go ahead and quote the whole damn thing anyway? :dubious:
Insanely good books, really. I’ve gotten a little obsessive lately – I have a $20/month subscription to audible.com so I can get most of the books in audiobook format. It gives me something to listen to at work, while I’m washing dishes, etc.
And something struck me last night – I’m bad about skimming books instead of reading them thoroughly (I finished OotP in four hours, which I rather regret), and I never got all the nuances in the end of Men At Arms:
From the scene with Vetinari and Carrot. It’s obvious that Carrot knows he’s the rightful king, but he believes very strongly that, because of that, the best thing he can do is to just “get on with a dcent day’s work”. But there’s a line I missed there until yesterday…“But if there was some pressing need…then perhaps he’d think again.” Which means to me that if Vetinari ever went mad/actually died/whatever…and the new Patrician wasn’t ruling the city well…that Carrot might very well step up.
Books…oh, the entire City Watch cycle is spectacular, with special marks for Fifth Elephant and Night Watch. I think I’d have the Susan/Death and the Witches books tied for second place, but only if I patched The Truth in there with the City Watch.
I’m looking at my calendar and realizing there’s only three months until September. Sheesh. Mean old Terry, putting out these books so fast…
My first was Equal Rites; my second was Lords and Ladies. I rather liked ER when I first read it; it’s no longer my favorite, but L&L is up there in my top five. My fellow Pratchett fans all have different favorites, though – I really love Jingo (especially the very visible Trousers of Time bit near the end) , but my ex doesn’t care for it. One of my former roommates really, really loves Wee Free Men, and I think it’s…good, certainly, but not his best writing.
We all agree that Sourcery and Eric are possibly the worst out of the series…and yet they’re both rather good as far as straight fantasy goes. Even TP’s worst is better than most other literature out there, and his best…his best is just incandescent.
Always willing to talk Discworld.
Oh – favorite characters. It’s a three-way tie with Granny, Vimes, and Vetinari. Granny and Vimes would not be half as interesting if they both didn’t have a really, really dark side to their personalities (it’s why I’m not a Carrot fan; I like him, I think he’s a splendid character, but he’s just not as interesting). Vetinari is just dreamy. In that special way that powerful dictators can be.
Susan and Agnes run a close second.
Incidentally, I think someone ought to write an article in re: TP as a feminist writer. All of his female characters are absolutely wonderful – not perfect people, not always strong or attractive or capable, but always people.
Doesn’t the Librarian make a brief cameo in Small Gods?
I think “Thief of Time” neatly takes care of any temporal discrepancies in the Disc World — After the first glass clock was built, history shattered and the Monks had to put it back together. Sometimes they had to do a bit of cutting and pasting to make everything fit.
Damn, I guess I should make this a spoiler…
Well yes, actually, but they got to him through L-space IIRC. In other words, they traveled through space-time to get him.
Hello fellow Pratchettarians!
I’m really a HUGE fan of Terry’s work, especially the Discworld books. I think my first book was Guards! Guards! and after that I was hooked. But I have to say that my favourite TP book is probably Good Omens. I forced so many people to read that my copy is actually starting to fall apart. Half of the pages are loose. My favourite charakters are Death and Sam Vimes because they are among the coolest charakters ever created.
Actually, they sored pretty high on that list…
Re: Carrot. Sometimes that actually makes me want to throttle TP until he decides were he’s going with that storyline. Right now the only thing he achieves with it is driving me nuts! Gah!
Dammit! That was supposed to be ‘scored’! ‘Sored’ doesn’t make any sense!
I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve given copies of Good Omens. Most of them have become fans of both Terry and Neil.
I don’t think Carrot will ever go “bad.” It is possible though that he and Vimes will have some kind of confrontation in the future, but he respects Sam so much I don’t think he’ll ever decide to hold on to power as king.
I actually wouldn’t be surprised to see Sam get a shot at the patricianship though. Sometimes I wonder if Vetinari isn’t manipulating him into becoming his successor. Not that Sam would necessarily accept, but if it came down to a choice between him and Rust, I think he’d take the position in a heartbeat.
Hmm, I can’t see anything particularly difficult for a fanboy/author to explain away there.
Both books occur in the Year of the Notional Serpent. We don’t kow the discworld calendar do we? If it is like some Earth claendar the same years get cycled. The chinese calendar cycles years regularly.
Philosophers turn up in two books. These were old men. No problem with a 50 years gap or longer. Or they could just be different people with the same name.
A Dr. Cruces appears in both books. The Assassins guild is very big on family tradition and make appoint of giving post grad scholarships to children of deceased members. Having 2 Dr. Cruces’ at different times would be a trivial detail.
Whether A Djelibeybi fleet would participate in a war under Dios is very much open to speculation. I can easily see that society doing so out of custom despite being totally ineffective.
Yeah OK, so Pterry screwed up. But it could be explained away. 
Masquerade was the first one I read…my then-boyfriend-now-husband insisted I read it about a week into the relationship.
(on the day we met I quoted the entire preface to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from memory. He got down on his knees and proposed.)
But I digress.
We own every Pratchett book we could find (I think we’re missing a couple of the Johnny ones) and I have read every DW book about five times. More, in some cases. We can’t walk by a bookstore without going in to see if there is a new one out. At least once a week.
Susan is defintely my favorite character. Picking a second favorite would be impossible.
There are just too many hilarious exchanges…although I think my favorite happens in Men At Arms
…‘Yes’ said Carrot ‘An appointment is is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two’…
Genius.
I know at least one woman who was rather surprised when she first learned that Terry Pratchett was not a woman too, simply because his female characters were so well-crafted. They actually behave like real women.
I also like that Pterry is capable of writing about active, important women who aren’t beautiful. Some are plain or even unattractive, but they’re still valuable characters. I often feel that many fantasy writers have to make all their heroines stunningly beautiful on top of everything else to convince us (or perhaps themselves) that the characters are really worthwhile people. In the Discworld books, even the women who are beautiful, like Angua, aren’t the subject of the panting purple prose Pratchett makes light of in The Light Fantastic when describing Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan. We know Angua is beautiful because of the way the men of the Watch react to her when she first signs up. We see that sometimes the downside to being a beautiful woman is not being taken seriously, and better still we later learn that the downside to not taking Angua seriously is being on the receiving end of some GBH!
Amen! I empathised with Agnes to an almost painful degree when I first read Maskerade. Especially that one line by the theater manager, watching Agnes walk away… “Do you think she realizes how fat she is?” :rolleyes: I heard the occasional comment to that effect about myself pre-WW. You never see a fat girl portrayed as a strong, capable character in fantasy… except, of course, when reading Pratchett! He breaks stereotypes without making that the obvious focus of the story.