Words are inadequate

In which the great god Om discovers that his empire-spanning religion has decayed into a rather nasty secular power structure, and his sole remaining faithful worshiper is Brutha, a typical Pratchettian protagonist (slow-witted and socially maladept but good-hearted).

Alternately: in which I revisit the book that put me off Discworld some twenty-five years ago.

Summer, late nineties. I was having a bad time of it, for any of a number of reasons. I was at the library and thinking I could do with something fun and light. Say, like Discworld, I remembered enjoying those when I was in high school, I could try another one. So I picked up Small Gods. Which proceeded to live up to my expectations so poorly that I didn't read another Pratchett book for over a decade (Nation, which, meh), or another Discworld book until, well, the start of this project.

Surely, surely, I said to myself, I have misjudged Small Gods. Surely it is not as unsettling and unpleasant as I remember it being. Besides, my Xianity was still in its death throes, so likely I was just hypersensitive to whatever it had to say about religion. Surely I'll like it better this time through.

"Better" is relative. Literally the only part of the book I retained any memory of was the introduction, the eagle and the tortoise. "What a great friend I have in the eagle." I remembered well -that- I disliked it, but not -why-. With the benefit of years of therapy and self-knowledge, I can make a better stab at that now.

The thing is ... Exquisitor Vorbis, the antagonist, lacks redeeming features. He is an intensely unpleasant person, and personality. And we spend half or more of the book following Brutha as he follows Vorbis, gradually realizing that Vorbis is in fact an awful person, and more gradually deciding to stand up to Vorbis. This happens to be a particularly triggering set of circumstances for me. (And late-nineties Tucker was traumatized by that depiction and had no idea why.) As a result my emotional response to the book is to hurl it as far away from me as I possibly can.

So. Looked at more objectively ... I still don't like the first half. It's grim. Lies and betrayals and the conquering of Ephebe. (I wanted to like it! The Ephebians are some of my favourite Discworlders.) It gets better as Brutha develops a spine, and as Ephebe gets, well, unconquered. I'm not sure what I think of the Omnian afterlife as being a journey across a desert, though I do approve of the final image of Brutha taking Vorbis's hand. Overall it feels out of place for a Discworld book. Sort of like a delayed overcorrection from the insubstantiality of Faust Eric.

Oddly it reads to me like a very Christian work, or at least one that exemplifies the ideals of certain flavors of Protestantism. Personal relationship with God, opposition to institutions, emphasis on kindness and forgiveness, etc. Turns out the general recipe for Being A Decent Human is fairly universal.

Next: ... oh, it's Lords and Ladies, another Witches book. Oh well.

In which Death gets fired. (As distinct from Death taking a bit of a holiday, as in Mort.)

This marks the first appearance of the Auditors, who I think become sort of recurrent ... villains? Plot-motivators? At least, I remember them from the movie version of Hogfather. They seem like the sort of thing that would show up somewhat often.

Reaper Man feels like two half-books glued together: "Death gets fired" and "the wizards do some stuff back in Ankh." As a "Death" book, I like this less than Mort. As a "Wizards" book, I like it better than any of the other Wizards books thus far, excepting possibly The Light Fantastic. So, progress, of a sort?

Like everyone else in the known universe, I like Pratchett's Death. I like him as Death, and I like him as Bill Door. I guess this was a way to work the "Death learns about life" part of Death Takes A Holiday into the mythos, and it does a good job of that. I was happy to see Mrs Flitworth when she turned up (a rarity in a Pratchett female character for me, so far), I very much enjoyed the Death-vs-newDeath duel. As for the Combination Harvester and Death as John Henry... that, I'd say is how to do Modern Life Into Discworld in a way that I appreciate it.

Speaking of which: I did not enjoy the shopping mall, in the 'wizards' half. Partly it feels very nineties, very much Of Its Time in a way that even Moving Pictures wasn't; partly it just ... wasn't interesting. Okay, malls as parasites on cities, got it, but then it just sits there. (Snowglobes into trolleys is a better-worked-out version of Avram Davidson's "Or All The Seas With Oysters" but I preferred the original. Possibly because it didn't outstay its welcome.)

Against my will I have developed a fondness for Archchancellor Ridcully and his utterly unwizardly approach to wizards and wizardry. I hope to see more of him. Also the ridiculous vampires, and the werewolves.

Overall I'd say this was a better than average Discworld, but not as good as I'd hoped from a Death book. But after the disappointments of FaustEric and Moving Pictures, it's a welcome change. More trajectory like this, please.

Next time: Witches Abroad.

Faust Eric marks the reappearance of Rincewind, the cowardly wizard last seen banished to the Dungeon Dimensions at the end of Sourcery. Here he's accidentally summoned out of the Dungeon Dimensions by a fifteen-year-old demonologist. Eric (the demonologist) demands that the demon Rincewind grant him three wishes: mastery of the kingdoms of the world, the most beautiful woman in existence, and eternal life. Hijinks, as you might imagine, ensue.

Well, they can't all be winners.

It's slight, is what it is. After the relative thematic weight of Pyramids and Guards! Guards!, and even of Sourcery, Eric just doesn't hold up. It reads like a bunch of set-piece gags: the jungle tribe, the Creation, the Trojan war, the Inferno, all wrapt up in the Faust gag. They're none of them bad gags, mind. I enjoyed the Trojan war in particular ("Lavaeolus," GODDAMMIT PRATCHETT). The writing and the sly humour have matured substantially since Colour of Magic. And the whole scheming-demons metaplot hung together nicely. It just left me with a sense of ... was that it? Really?

Apart from the bit in Unseen University at the very beginning, and the presence of Rincewind and the Luggage, there's almost no reason for this to be a Discworld novel. Not unlike Colour of Magic, honestly. But TCoM had the excuse of being the first Discworld. Eric is just a weird throwback. Good but not what one expects, or necessarily wants.

Up next: Moving Pictures.

In 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.

This is the first Discworld book that I can definitely say I've read before. Not that that means much: it's been pushing three decades since I found it and a few others in the high school library and though "huh, this is by half of the Good Omens team, I wonder if it's any good?"

What I remembered: the whole "eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son is a sourcerer, a source of magic" premise; the extended riff on Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" ("It looks like someone took twice five miles of inner city and girdled it round with walls and towers" absolutely cracked me up on first read); the not completely satisfying ending. And that I liked it enough to read the few more the library had, but apparently not enough to go on a Quest for the rest of them by special-ordering them at Waldenbooks or anything like that.

So, Sourcery. Coin the young "sourcerer" arrives at Unseen University bearing his father's staff with his father's spirit inside. He then proceeds to take over the University and usher in a new age of the rule of magic. Our old friend Rincewind flees with the Archchancellor's hat, which has its own ideas about how the rule of magic should be implemented. World-shaking hijinks ensue.

It's a return to Rincewind and the wizards of Unseen University, in their first "real" Discworld outing (depending on how one feels about Equal Rites, I guess). As such it feels a bit shaky, like it's trying to merge two worlds with some significant rough edges. It's got the world-ending plot of The Light Fantastic and the flood of pastiches of The Colour of Magic; it's got flashes of the kindness and insight of Mort. And it's got the unfortunate casual sexism of Equal Rites, though here it's at least played for some actual laughs. Being focused in on just Rincewind's discomfort instead of the whole of wizardry makes it somewhat more palatable.

The wizards as a whole feel out of place in Discworld, is I think what I'm trying to say. They work well as a counterweight to something else, say, Granny Weatherwax's no-nonsense people-centric views, but they need something to push against. And Sourcery doesn't give them that. It goes a long way towards explaining why they're the ridiculous lazy layabouts they are (because if they were in charge we'd have, well, the rule of sourcerers, which is just Bad News for everyone concerned, except for maybe the one survivor), which isn't nothing, but it's backstory. It's no good as a foreground, not in the way I expect Discworld to be.

Which isn't to say it's a bad book. Like The Light Fantastic, it works on its own terms. It's a perfectly reasonable comic quest narrative, complete with reluctant hero and wild magic. It's got Creosote the terrible poet, and the Nijel/Conina romance. And it's good to spend time with the Luggage again, and to see more of the Librarian. After Mort, I just wanted something more, I guess.

On the other hand:

"It’s vital to remember who you really are. It’s very important. It isn’t a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong."

I wish teenaged Tucker had remembered that when he read it all those years ago. I wish he'd reread the book often enough to remember it.

As a side note, I wonder how much Graydon Saunders was thinking of Sourcery when he envisioned the world of the Commonweal. "Wizards destroying each other with no concern for or conception of the masses of non-wizards whose lives they're ruining" is sort of the Commonweal's premise, though taken much more seriously. Or maybe it's just convergent evolution and an extrapolation of Absolute Power to its obvious end.

Up next: Wyrd Sisters.

In which Terry Pratchett takes gentle aim at Rampant Sexism, with not wholly satsifying results when viewed from thirty-odd years later.

I feel that I ought to like Equal Rites a lot more than I ended up liking it. (I loved the title.) The setup is good: a dying wizard comes to a tiny village and names as the heir to his power the just-born son of a blacksmith, who turns out to be a daughter (in a culture where Women Aren't Wizards), and hijinks ensue. And I'm amused by the way the book recapitulates the first half of A Wizard of Earthsea: young wizard goes to a reclusive rural teacher, wants to learn more, and goes off to the School of Wizards, where something terrible breaks through from another reality.

Eskarina, the young wizardess, reminds me of ... I don't know about myself specifically, but certainly of the kinds of kids I enjoyed hanging out with as a kid. "[T]he infuriating way she had of relentlessly pursuing the thread of an argument long after she should have put it down" feels deeply familiar. I liked Granny Weatherwax, too, though she seems a bit ... unpolished? More like a collection of tropes and less like a full character. I guess that's also true of Esk. Thin characters, maybe that's my trouble.

Or maybe it's that blatant sexism and gender-essentialism are more frustrating than sources-of-amusement these days, even when they're being taken down a peg or three.

Yeah. That might be it. I enjoyed pretty much everything to do with the various witches, and mostly wanted to bang my head against a wall whenever the wizards showed up. (Except for the dead wizard's staff. Pratchett writes animate objects exceedingly well.)

And the book itself feels slight. Neither the social commentary nor the story are strong enough to carry it along. I certainly don't regret having read it, but it feels like the weakest thus far. Though it is at least moving in the direction of "stories that happen to be set in Discworld" rather than "stories about Discworld".

Three cheers for the Librarian, but that was always going to be the case.

Last things first: the only reason this does not end on a literal cliffhanger is that Rincewind loses his grip and falls off the world and THEN it ends.

So that's obnoxious. Luckily I have The Light Fantastic ready to hand.

This book is divided into four parts: a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser pastiche; a Conan pastiche; a Pern pastiche; and one I don't recognise, about magical engineering. (I'm tempted to say "Recluce" but I haven't read any of those, nor do I know anything about them other than "magical engineering" and "thick paperbacks with Darrell K. Sweet covers".) Tying these episodes together are the hapless "wizard" Rincewind, the tourist Twoflower, and Twoflower's animate, sentient, homicidal Luggage.

There's a framing story of the Discworld gods playing a game that feels more akin to Magic Realm than Chess. Which makes sense to me: only a game of such complexity would hold their attention, and only divine beings could fully comprehend the enormity of the rules of Magic Realm. Honestly, the Lady may be my favourite part of the book.

Look, the book is mostly a send-up of other fantasy books. It does a fine job of doing that, and it's by no means a bad book, but ... it's slight. Pratchett doesn't put a whole lot of work into character development. Everyone gets a couple of traits: Twoflower oblivious and exploration-hungry, Rincewind cowardly and carrying around a mega-powerful spell in his head that prevents him from doing any other magic, etc etc. Nobody really gets developed beyond what's necessary for the scene to work.

The explicit Discworld world-building comes off weird to me as well. Death is just so petty in his pursuit of Rincewind. The as-yet-nameless Patrician shows very little sign of being a powerful behind-the-scenes manipulator; he's just a cruel tyrant. I don't know whether Ankh-Morpork feels like itself or not, since it burns down in the first story and doesn't recur. Weird.

And yet. The whole Discworld concept, and the bits of history and other background worldbuilding that Pratchett gives us, provide glimpses of the depth that I expect to come. And while the prose is mostly serviceable-funny, there's still occasional bits of what I think of as fundamentally Pratchettian ... wisdom, maybe.

"We don't have gods where I come from, " said Twoflower.
"You do, you know," said the Lady. "Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods."

That kind of thing. That, I think, is why people read Pratchett? It's certainly part of why I do.

Next up: The Light Fantastic. More Rincewind and (I assume) Twoflower and the Luggage. I wonder if it will be more parodies or turn into its own thing.