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Well, I read it, and I have to ask is that real? It reads nothing like his usual style of writing and that makes me really depressed. And the formatting on that is just abysmal. It seems unfinished. We're sure it's not some like, fan fiction that someone uploaded?
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Aug 15, 2011 18:54
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Sophia posted:Well, I read it, and I have to ask is that real? It reads nothing like his usual style of writing and that makes me really depressed. It was linked on Pratchett's Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/!/pratchett ) and published on Pratchett's website... So I have no reason to think it's not genuine.
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Aug 15, 2011 19:19
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Yeah I have to agree, that was really really badly written. I thought the same of the last couple of books, but apparently nobody agrees with me :I
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Aug 15, 2011 19:22
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Iacen posted:It was linked on Pratchett's Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/!/pratchett ) and published on Pratchett's website... So I have no reason to think it's not genuine. Well that seems conclusive, but things like this (spoilered in case people really, really want to avoid reading anything but there is nothing spoiler-y in these quotes): "a brace of oxen on steroids would not have been able to pull the copper out of Sam Vimeshim; the poison was in too deep, wrapped around the spine." "‘Me and the ladsWe had a bit of a whip-round, commander,’" "Vimes toreHe opened the package" are just sloppy and bad. Why would you even put something out there like that, completely un-proofread? I'm very confused.
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Aug 15, 2011 19:30
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AXE COP posted:Yeah I have to agree, that was really really badly written. I thought the same of the last couple of books, but apparently nobody agrees with me :I That said, this reads a lot like a less-edited version of Unseen Academicals. I assume his publisher will go over it before it gets printed, but then again, Thud! was pretty poorly proofread too.
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Aug 15, 2011 20:06
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I know it's nearly impossible not to be concerned with every missed spacing and mislaid apostrophe, but I remember reading quite a few mistakes in the prose of Unseen Academicals as well. What happened to that Milquetoast assistant who was shown proofreading every page Terry wrote with gormless enthusiasm on that Alzheimer's special? Another point tying this and UA, that book also had the misfortune of becoming more and more concerned with goblins and orcs as it went on, which just didn't do anything for me. Terry seems to be directing our discovery of these new races through the lens of pity rather than humour, which I'm much less interested in. I don't frankly care for overlong proselytizing on how orcs/goblins are evil/misunderstood and have to be exterminated/cared for, because if there's one thing Terry has shown us it's that everyone is, sooner or later, a massive bastard, and it's much more interesting to laugh at them or with them rather than sympathizing with them. I loved the pseudo-racist slagging match between the Klatchians and Morporkians in Jingo, and the treatment of vampires by the world at large. I'd much rather that than be asked to sympathize for a major fantasy race that has arrived rather late to the party.
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Aug 15, 2011 20:29
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I dunno, I felt pretty bad for golems at the end of Feet of Clay and I don't think it made that book worse. It might be trickier storytelling but I don't think approaching it from the idea of creating sympathy is necessarily a problem unto itself. It may be a problem with a lack of proper villain though - did UA have a real villain? I agree that Pratchett has always had writing problems, be they proofreading errors in my paperbacks that I see every. single. readthrough. or stylistic issues like adverbs and weak prose. That's not really what's bothering me here though - it's that the voice just feels totally wrong. It really feels like someone trying to copy his usual dry satire and failing. I think the issue might be in the dialogue, actually - the last paragraph feels in place with everything else, but Vimes and the Patrician don't sound anything like they usually do. Vimes in particular, with his rant about being shoved out, is just a completely different character. It's like he's moved commentary to dialogue that he usually would have saved for description or inner monologue. It's enough to make me wonder if they're in some kind of alternate reality or something, but they're probably not.
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Aug 15, 2011 20:47
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Sophia posted:I dunno, I felt pretty bad for golems at the end of Feet of Clay and I don't think it made that book worse. It might be trickier storytelling but I don't think approaching it from the idea of creating sympathy is necessarily a problem unto itself. It may be a problem with a lack of proper villain though - did UA have a real villain? I agree with you on this; the story-telling in Feet of Clay regarding the persecution of golems (look at me, I'm typing "persecution" in reference to a piece of property!) was handled with a much defter touch than simply having Nutt, Margolotta and Vetinari wax for pages on how poor and drastic a situation this race has tunneled itself into and how it will take a delicate hand to make better and by the way this goblin is really an orc I hope this distinction is clear. This was also the other problem with UA that pretty much answers your question - it didn't have a main villain or any real sense of focus. It had that arsehole street thug who became captain of the other team to give us a person we could actually beat with a blow to the jaw, but the real enemy was the abstract "crab-bucket" that Pratchett tried to depict, given almost-physical form by Nutt's psychic freak-outs. To be honest, I'm still not 100% on where everything was going with that one. quote:I agree that Pratchett has always had writing problems, be they proofreading errors in my paperbacks that I see every. single. readthrough. or stylistic issues like adverbs and weak prose. That's not really what's bothering me here though - it's that the voice just feels totally wrong. It really feels like someone trying to copy his usual dry satire and failing. I think the issue might be in the dialogue, actually - the last paragraph feels in place with everything else, but Vimes and the Patrician don't sound anything like they usually do. Vimes in particular, with his rant about being shoved out, is just a completely different character. But, well, this has always been Vimes greatest fear, aside from something unspeakable happening to Sybil or Little Sam; he's going to become an Old Copper and he's going to become a pathetic wreck constantly hanging around the Yard making tea and getting underfoot of the new, real policemen. The background has been laid for this since at least Night Watch, and Vimes seems to penumbra around situations like these where early exits from the force are pressed upon him. By the end of the book he'll have found life with Sybil and Sam in the country to be much more of a salve than a toxin to old age. I will agree with you again on Vetinari seeming completely off. He's the one who makes everything work. The lion won't lie down with the rat? He will if he's loving hungry enough.
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Aug 15, 2011 21:00
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Uh it's a joke, you think he's terrified and upset and begging not to be retired out of the Watch and it's actually just that he really doesn't want to go on vacation, right? That's why they've gotten him a spade, as a joke. I didn't notice anything different about it really, I've read Wee Free Men through to Wintersmith in the past week and nothing there seems drastically out of place to me.
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Aug 15, 2011 21:08
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Nilbop posted:But, well, this has always been Vimes greatest fear, aside from something unspeakable happening to Sybil or Little Sam; he's going to become an Old Copper and he's going to become a pathetic wreck constantly hanging around the Yard making tea and getting underfoot of the new, real policemen. The background has been laid for this since at least Night Watch, and Vimes seems to penumbra around situations like these where early exits from the force are pressed upon him. By the end of the book he'll have found life with Sybil and Sam in the country to be much more of a salve than a toxin to old age. I agree with you that his feelings, for lack of a better word, are consistent, but his dialogue, to me, sounds nothing like it usually does. I mean, when would Vimes ever, in any world, say to someone ‘To be forced out after all this time! I begged, you know, and that doesn’t come easy to a man like me, you can be sure. Begged!’ He never explains his own behavior or ethos so baldly! Vimes is a man of few, but direct, words and he is never so introspective as that out loud. I mean ‘I don’t deserve this treatment after a lifetime of dedication to the city!’ Dear god. It just doesn't feel right to me in the least. Maybe I am being too picky, I don't know. Edit: And I do get the joke, but even as a joke it feels wrong for him.
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Aug 15, 2011 21:08
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thebardyspoon posted:Uh it's a joke, you think he's terrified and upset and begging not to be retired out of the Watch and it's actually just that he really doesn't want to go on vacation, right? That's why they've gotten him a spade, as a joke. That's the point I'm making - one of the major touchstones of Vimes' character is he does not want to leave the Watch at all for any reason. He sleeps there (until Sybil drags him home), he eats dinner in his armour, he only goes on holiday in The Fifth Elephant because he knows he gets to do proper policework while he's there. Of course the holiday-swerve is a joke. That's missing the forest for the trees though. Sophia posted:I agree with you that his feelings, for lack of a better word, are consistent, but his dialogue, to me, sounds nothing like it usually does. I mean, when would Vimes ever, in any world, say to someone ‘To be forced out after all this time! I begged, you know, and that doesn’t come easy to a man like me, you can be sure. Begged!’ He never explains his own behavior or ethos so baldly! Vimes is a man of few, but direct, words and he is never so introspective as that out loud. No, you are right there. Those lines hit me like a shovel to the chest as being very, very un-Vimesy. He begged? Who'd he beg? Vetinari or Selachii or Rust? Come the gently caress on. And then he feels compelled to exposit this information to Cheery, of all people?
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Aug 15, 2011 21:14
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AXE COP posted:Yeah I have to agree, that was really really badly written. I thought the same of the last couple of books, but apparently nobody agrees with me :I I guess that's what Alzheimer's does to your writing skills?
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Aug 16, 2011 02:05
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Xander77 posted:Making Money was pretty good, Unseen Academicals was pretty bad, I shall Wear Midnight was utter poo poo. Anyway Nation came out after Making Money and that was fantastic no matter what you think of the latter Discworld books.
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Aug 16, 2011 03:27
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FactsAreUseless posted:
quote:Except that Unseen Academicals was better than Making Money and I Shall Wear Midnight was better than both but not as good as the rest of the Tiffany Aching series. They also vie for the coveted title of the least interesting and/or intimidating villain in the Discworld books.
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Aug 16, 2011 03:48
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I seem to be in the minority that found Making Money to be a) pretty good and b) leaps and bounds above Unseen Academicals. Making Money had a fantastically realized villain, even if he was a bit indulgent. Unseen Academicals was just a mess with plot threads and characters going everywhere.
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Aug 16, 2011 04:51
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I was not a big fan of UA, but I Shall Wear Midnight was great. I feel like a little kid, I want you all to shut up about Pratchett because you are making me sad to think he is already going down hill.
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Aug 16, 2011 06:13
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Xander77 posted:Yeah. What didn't you like about it? Making Money and Unseen Academicals had similar plot lines to the Truth and Going Postal. I don't really have any issue with any of Pratchett's newer books and while it's obvious that his story telling and prose has started to change, he's still a fantastic writer. I wasn't that big a fan of ISWM, it's definately not as great as Wee Free Men or some of the earlier witches books but it does tie up the story line (similar to how I think Snuff will tie up the storyline with the City Watch).
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Aug 16, 2011 06:26
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Making Money was okay, but it had some flaws. Specifically, I think the subplot about the golems was poorly written and felt tacked on. I don't really like Adora Belle Dearheart as a character in general, Making Money would have been a better book without her in it.
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Aug 16, 2011 10:03
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I enjoyed MM but it was nowhere as near as good as some of his other books. ISWM was worse (the whole thing with Esk was straight out of some fanfiction.net poo poo) and I can't even start Unseen Academicals any more because it's just too bad. I really want to enjoy it, I do, but I just can't get more than ten pages into it before I have to put it down again 
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Aug 16, 2011 11:37
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AXE COP posted:I enjoyed MM but it was nowhere as near as good as some of his other books. If you truly despise them so much, I will be glad to take them off your hands. I read Pratchett's books to my English classes, and I've definitely seen an increase in interest in the children towards finding clever ways to craft their words. I guarantee they'll be well appreciated, especially as I don't mind doing silly voices, which makes the kids laugh and increases their attentiveness.
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Aug 16, 2011 11:47
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Snowmankilla posted:I was not a big fan of UA, but I Shall Wear Midnight was great. I feel like a little kid, I want you all to shut up about Pratchett because you are making me sad to think he is already going down hill. I Shall Wear Midnight was weirdly plotted and paced, but it had one of the best emotional cores of almost any of his books. It doesn't hurt that Tiffany is a really strong character. Maybe it's because I'm a woman but that book really resonated with me, particularly the ending, and it's a nice departure from almost all schlocky YA romance. So you're definitely not alone in thinking it was a good book; I really enjoyed it. 
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Aug 16, 2011 13:14
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So why does Esk as a character turn ISWM into 'fanfiction.net poo poo'? If you haven't read Equal Rites you wouldn't know who the character was and wouldn't catch the few references to Sorcery so what's the real complaint? I am curious and would like a little more explanation for that criticism as I've seen it before in this thread and I don't really know what it's supposed to mean. I thought UA was kind of meh, it seemed to be building up to something bigger and there wasn't much payoff. And Making Money was too similar to Going Postal and the characters seemed to know that, it felt like there was no real conflict. I still enjoyed reading both of them though and I'm invested enough in the world that I'll keep reading them for as long as they're being written. Unless his daughter takes over and fucks it all up in which case all bets are off, but I'll read whatever Terry writes.
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Aug 16, 2011 13:23
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:So why does Esk as a character turn ISWM into 'fanfiction.net poo poo'? If you haven't read Equal Rites you wouldn't know who the character was and wouldn't catch the few references to Sorcery so what's the real complaint? I am curious and would like a little more explanation for that criticism as I've seen it before in this thread and I don't really know what it's supposed to mean. She appears out of nowhere and serves absolutely no purpose other than to make people who've read Equal Rites go "Hey! It's that girl from that book! I read that!" and then go away again. She takes no part in anything that happens, and imparts no useful advice whatsoever. Of course, 2/3 of the characters in I Shall Wear Midnight are much the same, so hey ho. EDIT: Making Money was awesome, even though it was the same book as Going Postal, for the fact that we had a male protagonist who was actually on top of poo poo and wasn't just being swept along by events and treated like a doofus by a cast of people who somehow know more about everything than him.
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Aug 16, 2011 13:48
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But she's the one who lets older Tiffany talk to herself so unless that's supposed to just happen by itself (and it can because it's magic but if you want to be that reductive then why are you reading this stuff in the first place?) so she does have a purpose. And again, unless you've read those books (most of us probably have but not everyone) the references fly over your head and mean nothing. e: And the lack of conflict is what makes Making Money so boring, it's like Moist is just going through the motions and knows how to solve everything in one go because the plot tells us he knows how to solve everything. I honestly can't remember who the bad guy in that book is and by contrast I can recall the villains/conflict of every other Discworld book off of the top of my head. ONE YEAR LATER fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Aug 16, 2011 |
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Aug 16, 2011 13:54
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"<character> flies in out of nowhere with superpowers and incredible intelligence and a deep knowledge of what is happening, saves the day then disappears" is an incredibly common thing in bad fanfiction. It was dumb and far too explicitly magical/supernatural for Discworld.
AXE COP fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Aug 16, 2011 |
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Aug 16, 2011 13:58
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:e: And the lack of conflict is what makes Making Money so boring, it's like Moist is just going through the motions and knows how to solve everything in one go because the plot tells us he knows how to solve everything. I honestly can't remember who the bad guy in that book is and by contrast I can recall the villains/conflict of every other Discworld book off of the top of my head. Who was the villain of Soul Music?
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Aug 16, 2011 14:01
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Mister Roboto posted:Who was the villain of Soul Music? The music itself, it tries to get Buddy to become a rockstar and almost kills him. And Susan is involved and Death plays the guitar at the end. e: No I did not look that up, seriously.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:03
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A number of Pratchett's books based in Ankh Morpork follow a similar story line being the introduction of a 'modern' concept (like holidays, insurance, a modern day police force, rock and roll and more recently the printing press, the postal service etc) into a fantasy world setting and while the characters are different, we know that the stories will end up happily ever after most of the time. UA was a bit different since it looked like Pratchett was starting off another story line. Has anyone read any of Rhianna Pratchett's stuff?
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Aug 16, 2011 14:11
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:The music itself, it tries to get Buddy to become a rockstar and almost kills him. And Susan is involved and Death plays the guitar at the end. Also the head of the Musicians Guild is a minor villain, though I can't remember his name off the top of my head.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:11
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:The music itself, it tries to get Buddy to become a rockstar and almost kills him. And Susan is involved and Death plays the guitar at the end. Gotta disagree with you there, friend. Buddy was SUPPOSED to die in a brawl, but the music kept him alive because IT wanted to stay alive. And then it (somewhat) voluntarily left him alone when it'd fulfilled its purpose of being heard. Possibly the least villainous force the entire series has encountered, as it didn't really harm him so much as turn him into your typical Rock Star Junky.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:12
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Mister Roboto posted:Possibly the least villainous force the entire series has encountered, as it didn't really harm him so much as turn him into your typical Rock Star Junky. The point of that story was that rock music is a powerful, living force that takes everything a person has to offer and then kills them young in a blaze of glory. Just because Death saves the band at the end at the behest of Susan and moves them into another reality where they were never rock musicians doesn't stop the music from being an ultimately malevolent force in Buddy's life. That's the ultimate villain that Susan and Buddy are trying to fight. Edit: Spoilers just in case.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:14
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Mister Roboto posted:Gotta disagree with you there, friend. Buddy was SUPPOSED to die in a brawl, but the music kept him alive because IT wanted to stay alive. And then it (somewhat) voluntarily left him alone when it'd fulfilled its purpose of being heard. Doesn't Death show up and start playing his guitar because the music-with-rocks-in-it is the song of chaos that will destroy the disc? Anyway that is beyond the point, which was that I can recall the major source of conflict in books that I haven't read in probably 7 years but I don't really remember what was going on in Making Money and I read that 3 years ago when it was published. I remember the golems at the end, Moist burying them as an insurance policy so other cities/countries won't attack AM but I can't remember why there was any tension in the first place.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:18
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Why are you putting stuff from books from the early 90s in spoilers? The villain in Making Money is the Vetinari groupie who dresses up like him, he and his family own all or most of the banks and have dicked it all up.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:26
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Because some people who haven't read the whole series have popped up in this thread and I don't want to potentially ruin anything for them. Also thanks for the refresher.
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Aug 16, 2011 14:30
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Kegslayer posted:What didn't you like about it? Making Money and Unseen Academicals had similar plot lines to the Truth and Going Postal. I don't really have any issue with any of Pratchett's newer books and while it's obvious that his story telling and prose has started to change, he's still a fantastic writer. What about characters (I didn't mind Esk, even though she had nothing to do with anything, but Preston really set off my fanfiction alarms)? What about the main conflict? ISWM's conflict was 100% retarded. We start with a villain that should, in theory, be intimidating and scary as gently caress, but he's treated like a total nuisance by the plot, catching up to Tiffany and getting away just because someone glanced at a clock and decided we haven't seen him in a while. And he's dispatched in a completely perfunctory manner, mostly because someone looked at the same clock and decided it's time for the book to end. Can you imagine Sam Vimes taking a look at the main villain in any one of his books and going "hey, rest of the police force, kindly gently caress off. I don't care how much theoretical damage this guy could do to the city and those I care about, this is something I have to do myself"? How intimidating would that villain seem, when Vetinari, the Low King and Moist are all casually cheering Vimes on from the sidelines, indulging in a golf-clap when he deals with the bad guy in a properly sporting manner? Xander77 fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Aug 16, 2011 |
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Aug 16, 2011 15:16
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I don't have much to say about UA because I don't remember a ton of it and it wasn't one of my favorites, but I'm not sure you really understand the purpose of ISWM at all. None of the Tiffany books are meant to be laugh riots - light-hearted, yes, but they're YA books that talk about growing up more than anything. Much like Harry Potter got darker as they aged, so do the Tiffany books, and most of ISWM is more a treatise on what it's like to reach adulthood and be alone, and explore how you decide to see the world once you're really responsible for everything in your world. They aren't satire (though there are satirical elements) so much as they are books about being a young girl, set in Discworld. Sam Vimes often ends up dealing with things entirely alone, though he doesn't mean to be doing that at the start and finds help where he can, but not only have the witches books have emphasized the role of the individual over the group but in order for Tiffany to have that coming of age story and become and adult, she needed to be alone. It's a completely separate set of characters and a completely different storytelling goal. That may or may not be what you want from a Discworld book, of course, and I don't blame people for wanting a funnier book where there wasn't one, but that doesn't mean it's a bad book just because it's not funny. It just means it's not what you want. Though I totally agree that the way the villain was shoe-horned in didn't work at all and should have been reworked to make the book great instead of just good. And as far as Preston goes, that was sort of the joke of it - that YA books spend their time with two people dancing around each other only to ultimately end up together, but in the real world it usually turns out that the person you really fall in love with is someone that you just notice one day out of the blue, and it's not really so hard after all. He wasn't "fan fiction" so much as subverting a literary trope.
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Aug 16, 2011 15:38
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Sophia posted:
A never before mentioned character who is endearingly quirky, shunned by society and only appreciated by the main character (and the audience, in theory) is fanfiction cliches 101. Edit - also, the whole Discworld narrative casualty thing, that was supposed to be canon, right? Sure Discworld routinely plays with tropes, but setting the two characters up for 3 books only to go "actually, nope. Here's a really poorly conveyed lesson about how things work in reality" is stupid as hell, since - hey, Discworld doesn't work like reality, at all. Edit x 2: Sophia posted:Sam Vimes often ends up dealing with things entirely alone, though he doesn't mean to be doing that at the start and finds help where he can, but not only have the witches books have emphasized the role of the individual over the group but in order for Tiffany to have that coming of age story and become and adult, she needed to be alone. It's a completely separate set of characters and a completely different storytelling goal. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Aug 16, 2011 |
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Aug 16, 2011 15:42
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I thought the story did a good job with the relationship between Tiffany and Roland. Pratchett has hit on this kind of thing before with Cohen the Barbarian when he meets up with Rincewind in one of the books. What happens once the monsters are gone and it's just two people in a relationship?
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Aug 16, 2011 15:45
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Xander77 posted:The other 3 TA books were funny. I don't know about laugh riots, but they were funny. This one isn't. Obviously you just don't like the book, and that's okay. I don't mean to try to convince you to like a book that you don't like. But I liked it a lot and thought that it really accomplished most of its goals. I actually liked the book as a whole better than Wintersmith and equally as much as A Hat Full of Sky. Just difference of opinions, I guess. Edit: I suppose what I'll say is that I wish I Shall Wear Midnight was a book that existed when I was a 15 year old because it is very much about what people should know as they age. And for me, that makes it a good book. Sophia fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Aug 16, 2011 |
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Aug 16, 2011 15:51
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I wonder if I Shall Wear Midnight was the last step in the allegory of being a girl going through puberty to womanhood, and represented the NON-romantic stalker type. Tiffany's previous males, i.e. Roland, were shuffling awkward boys with shuffling awkward crushes. Whereas the Cunning Man, whose name alone conjures up certain images, is a flat out predator of women because he hates women. The book BEGINS with a child-abusing drunk (whose wife stays with him anyways), so we're dealing with dark realities here. Pratchett has a daughter now, perhaps this was his way of exploring what it's like to imagine the rottenness of men your little girl will encounter as she grows up. Mister Roboto fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Aug 16, 2011 |
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Aug 16, 2011 20:14
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