I have no point here but to warn you that it’s coming sometime pretty soon, but I very nearly read the next Anita Blake book here instead of Discworld. (In both cases, I only found out Tiassa was about to be released after I had / would have already started. Oops.) The plan fell apart when I realized I no longer owned “the next Anita Blake book”. I’ve corrected that now, but it came as quite a shock! So, y’know, pretty soon.
So, anyway, what I did instead was read Moving Pictures, in which Terry Pratchett uses the comedic voice that… okay, the truth is, I have either read zero or at most one book later in the series than this one, so I don’t know whether his voice gets funnier or not. I only know that it’s as funny as I have ever seen it to be, and that level of funny is entirely pleasing to me. So, there’s my caveat; let me try this again. Ahem. …in which Terry Pratchett uses the comedic voice that he has perfected over the last several books of the series to tell a story whose point, well, I really didn’t get.
Essentially, through the employment of an extremely subtle metaphorical representation of early Hollywood[1], he… well, he seems to be saying that it is dangerous for people to get wrapped up in fantasies while the real world is happening around them, since heroes will not actually appear to sweep them off their feet and/or save the day. Except, he’s writing escapist literature which gives people the same fantasies, only with words instead of frames of film. And as if that isn’t enough to undercut the entire thesis of the book, things go really off the rails once the Lovecraftian monstrosities take the stage.[2]
So I guess my point is… am I crazy? Does the book have this entirely unrelated meaning that I failed to comprehend? Am I right and it’s both inherently and internally contradictory? Either way, it was funny and had new characters I’ll probably never get to see again but will at least be excited if I do, so that’s not too bad. And everyone still says the best run of the series is ahead of me, which is even better news.
[1] Get this: he removes one of the Ls and replaces it with a space, only the space, the space isn’t in the same spot as the missing L was. Genius!
[2] On the one hand, there’s only one way I can see to interpret this complaint, which makes not actually spoiling it seem like a cowardly act. But I could be wrong, and I’ve already spoiled plenty enough already, old book that everyone except me has read or not.
_Moving Pictures_ is one of the few “single topic, direct exploration, snapback” books in the Discworld saga; it’s not my favorite of those, either (that one’s still coming up). But yes, it’s for the best that he moved off of that shtick.
That said, I think that reading the book and concluding that Pratchett is _objecting_ to escapism isn’t really accurate, given his well-documented opinion about the importance and power of Story. It’s been a while since I read it, I grant, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the message was more of a “write your own story, don’t let it be written for you” frame.
As to the strength of the universe, you’re standing roughly on the precipice, I’d say. In a few more books, you’ll hit where it starts to get _really_ good. Not perfect (even some of the ones after you hit the jumping-off point are meh, at least for me), but soon you’ll start to see exactly _why_ so many people read Discworld religiously.
I think this and Soul Music both suffer from the same problem, which is that a) they’re too cutesy with all their invocations of modern culture in the Discworld, plus b) they still fall into the “Dungeon Dimensions” plot (which he grows out of eventually).
Actually I don’t remember the plot of Soul Music enough to remember if it has that plot, but I hate it anyway, so.
Ah, see, Soul Music was specifically the one I was thinking of when I said “my favorite of the topic/exploration/snapback books,” but that’s because I really love the musical references. (And it’s not quite Dungeon Dimensions; it’s…well, I don’t want to say more than that for fear of spoiling.)
Bullshit musical references are the explicit ruining thing in Soul Music. HAHA IT’S DISCWORLD ELVIS. HAHA IT’S DISCWORLD BUDDY HOLLY. HAHA IT’S DISCWORLD PEARL JAM. (Not really to that last.)
So unbearable.