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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Creo que definitivamente el humor británico no acaba de convencerme. La verdad es que lo más gracioso fue el final, cuando ya estaba acostumbrada al mundo y los personajes, pero creo que parte del problema es que son bromas que necesitan mucho contexto para entenderlas. Como el título, que hasta que lo vi en contexto no caía en que es un cliché.
A pesar de eso, el mundo y las situaciones son extremadamente interesantes y a pesar de que nunca llegó a embelesarme, es una historia para entretenerse un rato. Los personajes son divertidos de seguir pero nada especialmente memorables. Aún así me quedaron ganas de leer más de este mundo.
A pesar de eso, el mundo y las situaciones son extremadamente interesantes y a pesar de que nunca llegó a embelesarme, es una historia para entretenerse un rato. Los personajes son divertidos de seguir pero nada especialmente memorables. Aún así me quedaron ganas de leer más de este mundo.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved every page, but the unserious tone made it super hard for me to get immersed. Maybe just not the right book for me at this time, but I’m glad I gave it a try!
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
For a bit of a backstory, as someone who got really into reading through the Harry Potter franchise as a young kid, JKR's latest bout of transphobia (the one which got everything changed for UK's trans community, you know the one I'm talking about), finally got me to cut the cord and throw out the books I read most, the ones that have been a huge part of my childhood. The ones that helped me through a life of being an outsider. But I just couldn't anymore. When looking through Threads and Instagram and the like for books to replace this, many people recommended Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I already had some of the books on my shelf, as the Rowling stuff had been happening for years, now, but hadn't started it yet. Well. Man, did I wish I'd done so sooner. And man, is it striking how JKR tried to copy a lot of what Pratchett did.
Now pull back briefly from the dripping streets of Ankh-Morpork, pan across the morning mists of the Disc, and focus in again on a young man heading for the city with all the openness, sincerity and innocence of purpose of an iceberg drifting into a major shipping lane.
The young man is called Carrot. This is not because of his hair, which his father has always clipped short for reasons of Hygiene. It is because of his shape.
It is the kind of tapering shape a boy gets through clean living, healthy eating, and good mountain air in huge lungfuls. When he flexes his shoulder muscles, other muscles have to move out of the way first.
He is also bearing a sword presented to him in mysterious circumstances. Very mysterious circumstances. Surprisingly, therefore, there is something very unexpected about this sword. It isn't magical. It hasn't got a name. When you wield it you don't get a feeling of power, you just get blisters; you could believe it was a sword that had been used so much that it had ceased to be anything other than a quintessential sword, a long piece of metal with very sharp edges. And it hasn't got destiny written all over it.
It's practically unique, in fact.
It is, of course, also a British thing. This type of silliness also got used by the likes of Douglas Adams (and I am here for it). But this instantly reminded me of moments like the first chapter of The Philosopher's Stone, where The Dursley's are just trying to live their mundane lives, while the wizarding world was celebrating Voldemort's demise, and later got Harry delivered on their doorstep. Let's be honest, though. Here (and with Adams), it feels so much more natural.
The book has a ton of (very British) humor, and I pretty much laughed out loud every page. Great stuff. The characters are all very unique and bring their own thing to the story. I especially liked the way Carrot (a boy who's been adopted by dwarfs and never understood why he was so much bigger then EVERY other dwarf... which also made me laugh VERY hard, the moment he gets this explained by his adoptive father and he pats the back of his knees comfortingly) interacted with the others. Carrot travels to Ankh-Morpork to jo9in the City Watch and be with other humans, and instantly starts arresting everyone and their mother, and follows the law without question, which also leads to a ton of hilarious moments. And eventually, they go to a bar, which is a very rough place. Here, I found a sentence JKR pretty much copied completely, too. Barkeep Charley of The Mended Drum is polishing glasses with a dirty rag, making them more filthy. Which is something a barkeep in -if I recall correctly The Order Of The Phoenix, when Hermoine gets a group of Hogwarts students to do too, to form Dumbledore's Army - Hogsmeade does too, word for word.
Now, all the while, in the shadows, a group of hooded figures summons a dragon which wreaks havoc on Ankh-Morpork, and Vimes, one of our main characters, goes to visit Lady Sybil Ramkin.
Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra'd, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak.
Vimes's ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armoured people on the back of a war charger telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don'tcherknow, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention.
Prehistoric men would have worshipped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve lifelike statues of her thousands of years ago. She had a mass of chestnut hair; a wig, Vimes learned later. No-one who had much to do with dragons kept their own hair for long.
She also had a dragon on her shoulder. It had been introduced as Talonthrust Vincent Wonder-kind of Quirm, referred to as Vinny, and seemed to be making a large contribution to the unusual chemical smell that pervaded the house. This smell permeated everything. Even the generous slice of cake she offered him tasted of it.
'The, er, shoulder it looks... very nice,' he said, desperate to make conversation.
'Rubbish,' said her ladyship. 'I'm just training him up because shoulder-sitters fetch twice the price.' Vimes murmured that he had occasionally seen society ladies with small, colourful dragons on their shoulders, and thought it looked very, er, nice.
'Oh, it sounds nice,' she said. 'I'll grant you. Then they realize it means sootburns, frizzled hair and crap all down their back. Those talons dig in, too. And then they think the thing's getting too big and smelly and next thing you know it's either down to the Morpork Sunshine Sanctuary for Lost Dragons or the old heave-ho into the river with a rope round your neck, poor little buggers.' She sat down, arranging a skirt that could have made sails for a small fleet. 'Now then. Captain Vimes, was it?'
Now, this reminded me a lot of Hagrid and Norbert, the Norwegian Ridgeback's storyline in The Philosopher's Stone. Hagrid gets a dragon egg, it grows too big and he can't keep it anymore.
What was it you had to show me?'
Vimes gripped his parcel like a chastity belt.
'I wondered,' he faltered, 'how big swamp ... er... He stopped. Something dreadful was happening to his lower regions.
Lady Ramkin followed his gaze. 'Oh, take no notice of him,' she said cheerfully. 'Hit him with a cushion if he's a bother.'
A small elderly dragon had crawled out from under his chair and placed its jowly muzzle in Vimes's lap. It stared up at him soulfully with big brown eyes and gently dribbled something quite corrosive, by the feel of it, over his knees. And it stank like the ring around an acid bath.
'That's Dewdrop Mabelline Talonthrust the First,' said her ladyship. 'Champion and sire of champions. No fire left now, poor soppy old thing. He likes his belly rubbed.'
Remember Hagrid's one-headed dog, Fang? He's this dragon. Every time Harry, Ron and Hermione visit Hagrid in his house, Fang does this exact thing. They're one and the same. And honestly? If Ramkin spoke with a Scottish accent, she'd be him.
ANYWAY. Really enjoyed this book and I'm so happy there's a ton more Discworld for me to discover! The world sounds so unique and vast and full of fun surprises yet to discover. I hope to get more of The Librarian, too. He was a ton of fun. Carrot having to play charades with him to figure out the title of the stolen book was amazing.
Also, just so you know. Discworld is a ton of comedy, but not just that. Pratchett can spit real bars, too:
Wonse whimpered.
He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and - and here he felt the dragon's genuine astonishment - of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm.
You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape —the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes—we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.