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Oxxidation posted:
It's probably in my bottom 5 of the Prachett I've read, but it is miles better then Snuff. The problem with Snuff was that nothing important, sensible or engaging happened, written badly. Events actually happen in Raising Steam, and while the writing isn't great, he's at least writing about engaging events and characters. The best stuff comes from Moist, who's actually undergone some pretty significant personal development over his trilogy arc; Going Postal goes from unrepentant conman to someone who's morally redeemed but still basically a conman. Making Money opens shows that he's still actually struggling with that unsavory part of his personality (he's robbed the pension at the Post, is play-breaking and entering, his cover eventually is threatened, etc) and slowly convinces him first, legitimacy offers him just as many opportunity to satisfy the crook that he is, but legally, and towards the greater good, and second, it allows him to actually stop lying all together; that his redemption has finally outweighed his crimes in the eyes of the city he's fought for. So the Raising Steam Moist is almost more a story about someone who's closest counterpart in the city is actually Vimes or even the Patrician; he's The conMan, he's authority, but authority who's still Moist von Lipwig. They all managed to tame some seriously dark and unpleasant elements of the city (their own personal less then moral abilities, then eventually elements of the city itself they control) into working for the greater good. I really enjoyed the sections of the book like that, where it's clear Moist has reached the end of a very long and difficult personal journey, and is now number 3 power player in Ankh Morpork, and by extension a huge amount of the world. There are a bunch of things that kind of reduce the impact of that which will annoy you, but the book is definitely worth reading. CoolCab fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Dec 7, 2013 |
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Dec 7, 2013 15:11
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| # ? May 26, 2024 00:37 |
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Oxxidation posted:There is not a 50% divorce rate. That makes this saying stupid. This is me too; I loved Thud, Wintersmith and Making Money; I shall track down 'I Shall Wear Midnight' and call it a day. Too sad otherwise.
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Dec 10, 2013 01:56
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Channel 4 interview. Poor bugger. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TahN-09_WDo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTahN-09_WDo
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Dec 10, 2013 02:59
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CoolCab posted:So the Raising Steam Moist is almost more a story about someone who's closest counterpart in the city is actually Vimes or even the Patrician; he's The conMan, he's authority, but authority who's still Moist von Lipwig. They all managed to tame some seriously dark and unpleasant elements of the city (their own personal less then moral abilities, then eventually elements of the city itself they control) into working for the greater good. I really enjoyed the sections of the book like that, where it's clear Moist has reached the end of a very long and difficult personal journey, and is now number 3 power player in Ankh Morpork, and by extension a huge amount of the world. There are a bunch of things that kind of reduce the impact of that which will annoy you, but the book is definitely worth reading. There's been ongoing discussion in this thread that crops up from time to time on who's going to take over after Vetinari either croaks or retires. I've heard Vimes and Carrot mentioned, but never Moist when he's the most logical candidate.
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Dec 10, 2013 16:32
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Gambrinus posted:Channel 4 interview. Poor bugger. Yeah. I've been lucky enough to have had a number of long conversations with Pterry over the last 15 years and I can see how his speech is halting just that little bit more. The bright light is that the progression of his condition is such that he could well live his full natural span before it incapacitates him.
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Dec 10, 2013 19:59
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Halfway through The Fifth Elephant and I don't know if it's going to be my favorite Discworld book but it may end up my favorite Watch book at the least. I love the setting of Bonk and all the factions that Vimes has to deal with. Cheery and Detritus getting tons of screen time is great fun, I love those two. There is so much else to this book that I'm loving as well: the escalating tensions in the town; all the stuff in the dwarven undercity; the mystery about the empty clackstower; the superb b-plot with Carrot, Gaspode, Angua and Gavin; even the c-plot about Nobby vs Colon back in A-M is hilarious. Goddamn this is a fantastic book. I want it to never end.
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Dec 11, 2013 15:50
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Hedrigall posted:Halfway through The Fifth Elephant and I don't know if it's going to be my favorite Discworld book but it may end up my favorite Watch book at the least. "FETCH"
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Dec 11, 2013 23:54
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  Just thought I'd drop these here, I haven't spotted it being discussed. These are the first fourth books of the Discworld collectors library. They've released the death collection first and have the rights to the first 20 or so books. 2 a month until next August (hopefully by then they'll be releasing the rest). Unfortunately they're not available in the US and Canada due to publishing rights, but I'm sure you could buy them on the UK Amazon and ship them over. I'm just getting into Discworld, but can't wait to read these four. Any suggestions which I start with, or shall I read them in order?
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Dec 12, 2013 00:19
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Read them in Order.
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Dec 12, 2013 01:21
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Gambrinus posted:Channel 4 interview. Poor bugger. God that was painful to watch. It must be one of the worst things imaginable for a writer like Pratchett to develop Alzheimer's. Being able to still have all these wonderful and creative ideas but slowly lose the ability to communicate them must be a horrific experience. I'm glad he's able to live well and I hope he's able to keep writing and doing the things he loves.
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Dec 12, 2013 02:04
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SeanBeansShako posted:Read them in Order. The Color of Magic is awful. Skip it.
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Dec 12, 2013 02:17
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Start with Mort.
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Dec 12, 2013 10:48
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Mollsmolyneux posted:I'm just getting into Discworld, but can't wait to read these four. Any suggestions which I start with, or shall I read them in order? What kind of books do you like away from Discworld?
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Dec 12, 2013 11:32
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Gambrinus posted:Channel 4 interview. Poor bugger. I haven't read much in this thread since I'm deathly afraid of spoilers and I'm still reading Snuff. But I did see that video and it makes me very sad.  For a man who made his living playing with words slowly losing vocabulary/memories/experience I can't imagine a worse fate. Let's hope he has many good years left for himself at least. BananaNutkins posted:The Color of Magic is awful. Skip it. Awful is a bit strong, but I don't recommend starting with it. It's really rough around the edges and doesn't represent Discworld at all. Mort seems like a good start.
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Dec 12, 2013 16:36
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I heard his Radio 4 interview last night (on Front Row if you'd like to listen again). He seemed very happy, which is good, but happy rather than clever. It was upsetting to listen to.
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Dec 12, 2013 17:30
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I finished Snuff. It took me a while to get going with it, and while I still had some problems with it, I ended up liking it. I guess the trick is that I just shouldn't go in expecting to be reading a vintage Discworld novel. The characters and the settings are the same, but its almost like the books post-"Going Postal" or so have to be read separate from the rest of the series (just the the middle, peak books have to be read separately from the starting books: the books that were purely high-fantasy parody were not that appealing to me. My biggest problem was the heavy handedness of the author tracts, such as when Vimes goes and talks to the young girls waiting for marriage and whips them into shape in 5 minutes by giving a speech about making it on their own. Its not a particularly clever point, or cleverly done. But I guess the bottom line is, we have an author who is dying of a terminal neurological disease and he is writing books that, while still good, are not quite as crisp as they were in his prime. A lot of authors have declined a lot further, with a lot less good reason.
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Dec 13, 2013 01:15
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MikeJF posted:Start with Mort. I'd say start with Sourcery, but Mort is a good place to start too.
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Dec 13, 2013 01:19
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I just started on Raising Steam, and I had to stop and make sure this wasn't a... fake book of some sort. Kinda like how people wrote an entire seventh book in the Potter series and published it as the real deal. It's full of sloppy, tired, entirely on the nose dialog that genuinely condescends to the reader. I'd peg the writer as "anyone other than Terry Pratchett". I'm not really sure if I can actually keep reading this. (Just look at "Moist enjoyed watching people do work". Fair enough - that's a bit of an old gag, but not terrible in an of itself. "As long as he wasn't the one doing it". You'd get a big fat underline here in any beginner's writing workshop for redundancy and diminishing the tiny humorous impact of the previous line.) (Or compare Harry King's introduction to the very same in Going Postal. The character has gone simple minded / into full on fairy godfather mode)
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Dec 13, 2013 16:27
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There's a reason for that. Harry's getting old. He wants to actually relax and be the patriarch of a family rather than a busted knuckle scrapper day in and day out.
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Dec 13, 2013 21:29
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I used to own all the Discworld series, but I've lost touch with it now so I didn't even know that a new book was out. So for that alone this thread was worth finding.
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Dec 19, 2013 08:06
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Making Money was the last Discworld book I enjoyed. I struggled to finish Unseen Academicals and couldn't make it past the second chapter of Snuff. Is Raising Steam worth returning to the Discworld series? Is it at least back at the level of Making Money?
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Dec 19, 2013 08:22
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JosephWongKS posted:Making Money was the last Discworld book I enjoyed. I struggled to finish Unseen Academicals and couldn't make it past the second chapter of Snuff. Is Raising Steam worth returning to the Discworld series? Is it at least back at the level of Making Money? No. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 19, 2013 11:18
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Without spoiling the story for me why is Raising Steam getting knocked by you guys so much? I actually thought Snuff was OK. Not as good as previous Discworld stuff but still a good read.
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Dec 20, 2013 17:33
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Kitchner posted:Without spoiling the story for me why is Raising Steam getting knocked by you guys so much? I'm only 10% in and it feels like he's throwing characters into the pot left and right so it feels more like a "city" book than a "Moist" or "Wizards" or "Death" story. The beginning is a little confusing that way, and I think we're more than a little conditioned to expect a this character or that character story.
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Dec 20, 2013 17:47
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Also note that is it being knocked as Terry Pratchett story. That still puts it well above any of its competition.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:21
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Kitchner posted:Without spoiling the story for me why is Raising Steam getting knocked by you guys so much? I actually thought Snuff was OK. Not as good as previous Discworld stuff but still a good read. There were many lines that I read that had Terry Prachet's sense of humor, but the delivery was entirely lacking in his usual subtlety, usually taking the form of [joke] [reminder that he just told a JOKE]. There were a lot of times it read like a rough draft of Prachet's work. Not to mention the expanded cast of characters that now felt more like Greek gods slumming it with the mortals than human beings.
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Dec 20, 2013 19:11
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I think the strengths of the Discworld characters were always going to be his undoing though. For example, can you imagine a Ankh-Morpork with Vetinari and Vimes? Without Carrot? You can only move on the story with the passage of time, but with the passage of time the characters can't do what they used to do and will eventually need to die.
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Dec 21, 2013 00:16
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Kitchner posted:Without spoiling the story for me why is Raising Steam getting knocked by you guys so much? I actually thought Snuff was OK. Not as good as previous Discworld stuff but still a good read. I wrote a thing after finishing Raising Steam that goes into why I feel it's slipped from "ok-ish for Discworld" (which is about where I had Snuff at as well) to "not really much fun to read at all". Spoilerless version: none of the characters have any real problems or challenges put in their way that they don't then immediately and easily overcome, resulting in absolutely zero narrative tension. If it wasn't Discworld I really would have just chucked it in the bin and never thought of it again by page 100 at the absolute latest, and probably quite a bit earlier.
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Dec 23, 2013 06:30
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Just finished Hogfather. Going to watch the tv adaptation tonight. Merry Hogswatch everyone! 
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Dec 25, 2013 07:44
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Hedrigall posted:Just finished Hogfather. Going to watch the tv adaptation tonight. Merry Hogswatch everyone! Watched the TV adaption a couple of days ago. I think it's by far the best live action version of Discworld yet. Effects were decent, the actors are good and The Death of Rats is adorable. Every time I watch it, it just makes me hope for that The Watch series gets made and is good. Iacen fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Dec 27, 2013 |
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Dec 25, 2013 11:34
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Yeah to be honest I wish I could watch the hogfather too, it's a great adaptation (unlike Going Postal) and I think it makes a good Christmas movie.
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Dec 25, 2013 18:26
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I pike Going Postal, except the part where all the golems are identical.
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Dec 25, 2013 18:30
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What gets me about Going Postal and The Colour of Magic, is that had they been combined, they would have made the ideal Vetenari. Charles Dance had the voice down and Jeremy Irons looked the part.
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Dec 27, 2013 10:11
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It just kills me that they've only twice (Color of Magic and Soul Music) got Christopher Lee to voice Death.
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Dec 27, 2013 11:54
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Pope Guilty posted:It just kills me that they've only twice (Color of Magic and Soul Music) got Christopher Lee to voice Death. Three times - he also did Wyrd Sisters. But after the Cosgrove Hall animated series he had his late career resurgence. He went straight off to do Lord of the Rings, followed by Gormenghast, two Star Wars movies, three Tim Burton movies and The Golden Compass.
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Dec 27, 2013 12:18
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So I finished reading raising steam last night. I think the story itself was fine, the jokes weren't as good as some of the older books but the man's mind isn't as sharp as it used to be. With that in mind I still enjoyed the book though. The one criticism I do agree with is there were far too many cameos in the book. If we compare this novel to previous Moist Von Lipwig novels the watch is always something on the sidelines that Vetinari never involves with his schemes that involve Moist. In this one though they feature quite heavily which I feel was unnecessary (however much I love Comes). The bit that sort of exemplified this sort of pointless cameos for me is there is a scene with Ridcully and Lu Tze. Not only does Ridcully introduce Lu Tze in such a dramatic and out of character way for Lu Tze (he even says he is a master of de ja vu, something only known to History Monks) but the entire scene has no impact on the plot and adds nothing. In fact the book contained so many well known characters I am actually wondering if it was intentional so he can retire after this book. One of my favourite things about previous novels was that you'd see this story unfolding in its own little bubble of the discworld, and occasionally you'd see characters from other bubbles on the outside looking in. This made it feel like no singular character was more important then any of the others. Over the last few novels though the importance of Vetinari and Vimes in particular has grown quite a lot, not just in Ankh Morpork but for the entire disc. All that aside though, it was an enjoyable read and some of the jokes did still make me laugh out loud. I'm definetly glad I bought it and I don't regret reading it at all, so I think the comments about throwing it away are a bit harsh.
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Dec 28, 2013 17:43
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Nihilarian posted:I pike Going Postal, except the part where all the golems are identical. That's remarkable pikesmanship. Send my compliments to your fuedal lord.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:46
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-Fish- posted:That's remarkable pikesmanship. Send my compliments to your fuedal lord.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:55
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But is it a morning-star?
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Dec 30, 2013 19:55
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| # ? May 26, 2024 00:37 |
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Snuff is $1.99 on Kindle today.
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Jan 1, 2014 16:42
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