I haven’t read a Pratchett book for quite a while, admittedly – and I gave away my books as a child a while ago, among other things, so I decided to recollect the books.
Of course since that time about a dozen or so other books have been released, and this is his new book. Pratchett has a knack of intertwining the modern world in a fantasy realm. In the latest novel, we have paradoxes, time travel, and a lot of humour.
The story is about a man, Sam Vimes, a member of the Nightwatch – the night police if you will – who struggles to return back to his own timeline, to get back to their wife and unborn child a future that is dependent on the actions he takes in the past – a time where he will meet himself and remember how naive he was.
The paradoxes are wonderful, and exciting – I can’t explain the book without giving away spoilers, but the person he is in the past is someone who dies in the future, and he has to die, in order to exist in his future.
You see during the said time travel, he was chasing the most evil serial killer that existed in Ankh-Morpok, and this guy is on a mission to kill our hero, and his younger self in order to control and change the future to his advantage.
As we read we watch as the power struggle between Carcer (the killer) and Sam, as he not only fights to protect the people of the town, but also to remove the corruption, and change history for the better – and there is a rebellion coming, however if he wins the rebellion he has no future. If he loses, many people will die, as they did before, but he has his future back – its this struggle that keeps you going until the end, climaxing with a very powerful ending.
His descriptions, his writing is so wonderfully imaginative that it conjures up the scene picture by picture in your head
Set in the familiar world of Ankh-Morpork, we meet many memorable characters from other books – this is the genius of Pratchett, he remembers things, and puts in little clues which make you think “I remember him from….”. Its wonderfully and subtly done, and brings a lot of joy when you struggle with that mind of yours to remember which books the characters were in.
Whereas Lord of the Rings was serious novel, in so much as the theme is rather morbid, the characters multi-dimensional, yet still rather depressed in a world that is pretty fucked – Pratchett takes the seriousness but adds sarcasm, irony and humour. That is the gaping difference between a similar genre, but different takes.
Still having said that, his writing can be serious when required. His descriptions, his writing is so wonderfully imaginative that it conjures up the scene picture by picture in your head. You walk and talk with the characters, you smell what they smell, you feel the emotions they feel, you are the character and the narrator.
The book has everything you could want, mystery, drama, fantasy, humour, tragedy, rebellion, conspiracy, assassinations – one thing Pratchett can do that no one else can is to merge an entire universe of genres and come up with one book. It’s mind blowing.
Highly recommended, and one of the more fun fantasy books I have read in quite a while.
Verdict: A thoroughly entertaining read. It would be a crime to miss it.