Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

In which the magic of Holy Wood comes to Discworld, and chaos and hijinks and Saving The Disc ensue.

I should have liked this better than I did. The main conceit, of recreating the high points of Golden Age Hollywood, ought to have landed really well for me. I picked up on plenty of the jokes/references, and some of them even amused me (the whole saga of Blown Away recreating Gone With The Wind was pretty great, as was the King King inversion of the giant woman kidnapping the Librarian). There's nothing inherently wrong with the premise. The distinction between 'magic magic' and 'Holy Wood magic' started to wear on me after a bit but you know, that's creative and neat.

It's a Wizards book, which doesn't help. I continue to find the wizards more annoying than interesting. And Victor started out promising but just ... didn't go anywhere. Which is in character for someone pulling a Doorways In The Sand perpetual-student shenanigan, but... eh.

And the beginning felt fragmented, too many moving pieces to position in order to set up the main storyline. I actually paused right before the whole 'everyone gets to Holy Wood and the plot such as it is starts moving' scene, which probably didn't help either.

I dunno. Like Eric it feels slight, and 'movies have their own magic' is true enough but there's just not a whole lot that I want to say about it. I'm glad I read it, I wouldn't skip it if I did another reread, but it's definitely an "oh, is that it?" kind of thing.

Next up: Reaper Man, which I am looking forward to on the strength of a) Mort, and b) Death as a character.

of Dragons and the timing of Talking To

Incidentally, I've discovered another rare exception to my Pub Order Dammit rule:

It is better to read Patricia Wrede's Talking To Dragons as the last (chronological) of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, rather than the first (publication).

Talking To Dragons works perfectly well as a standalone, and it also works perfectly well if slightly tonally dissonant as the series conclusion. The reason to read it last is that the whole point of Calling On Dragons is to serve as a bridge between Dealing+Searching and Talking, and ending the series with Calling just feels narratively wrong.

... also, per Wiki Wrede made a bunch of minor updates to Talking after the first three were published, so it's almost like still reading in publication order. Close enough.