Pyramids (Discworld 7)
Jan. 14th, 2022 08:24 pmIn which time acts weird, with a pseudo-Egyptian backdrop.
The book starts off alternating viewpoints between the old, just-dead king of Djelibeybi (yes) and his son, Prince Pteppic, who's training as an assassin in Anhk-Morpork. The first quarter feels like, well, like a normal Discworld book, to the extent that there is any such thing. The city and the Assassins, the king's annoyance at how being dead isn't all it's cracked up to be and his embalmers' banter and conversation, it all feels familiar.
And then Pteppic comes home to become the new king and things get Interesting.
Because the thing about Pyramids is that, for a nominally silly fantasy book, it applies an awful lot of rigor to working through its ideas. I suspect this is true of Discworld as a whole (I mean, there are, what, three separate Science Of Discworld books?) but Pyramids is where I've first noticed it.
Pratchett comes out and states his basic idea, about halfway through the book: "Pyramids are dams in the stream of time." The old king is getting the biggest and most impressive pyramid ever built, and so of course it causes time to go all manner of wonky in Djelibeybi. And as a side effect the gods of the Djel appear, which... one does not actually want a vulture-headed god hanging around, much less multiple competing gods of the sun.
There's a side trip to pseudo-Greece, with philosophers and epics; there's a handmaiden who's set up as a romantic interest except the book doesn't go that way and is very sweet and sad about it; there's a camel who's the greatest mathematician of the age. The whole thing is a lot of fun, maybe because it mostly didn't have to fit in with the rest of Discworld and was free to be its own weird thing. I loved watching how Pratchett got to explore all the different angles of time and geometry, and more how he let his characters do the exploring. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with.
And then the ancient high priest Dios, at the very end of the book, blown back in time to repeat the cycle over again ... chills.
Very happy with this one.
The book starts off alternating viewpoints between the old, just-dead king of Djelibeybi (yes) and his son, Prince Pteppic, who's training as an assassin in Anhk-Morpork. The first quarter feels like, well, like a normal Discworld book, to the extent that there is any such thing. The city and the Assassins, the king's annoyance at how being dead isn't all it's cracked up to be and his embalmers' banter and conversation, it all feels familiar.
And then Pteppic comes home to become the new king and things get Interesting.
Because the thing about Pyramids is that, for a nominally silly fantasy book, it applies an awful lot of rigor to working through its ideas. I suspect this is true of Discworld as a whole (I mean, there are, what, three separate Science Of Discworld books?) but Pyramids is where I've first noticed it.
Pratchett comes out and states his basic idea, about halfway through the book: "Pyramids are dams in the stream of time." The old king is getting the biggest and most impressive pyramid ever built, and so of course it causes time to go all manner of wonky in Djelibeybi. And as a side effect the gods of the Djel appear, which... one does not actually want a vulture-headed god hanging around, much less multiple competing gods of the sun.
There's a side trip to pseudo-Greece, with philosophers and epics; there's a handmaiden who's set up as a romantic interest except the book doesn't go that way and is very sweet and sad about it; there's a camel who's the greatest mathematician of the age. The whole thing is a lot of fun, maybe because it mostly didn't have to fit in with the rest of Discworld and was free to be its own weird thing. I loved watching how Pratchett got to explore all the different angles of time and geometry, and more how he let his characters do the exploring. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with.
And then the ancient high priest Dios, at the very end of the book, blown back in time to repeat the cycle over again ... chills.
Very happy with this one.