We learn much more about the Hogfather, the Tooth Fairy, and other anthropomorphic personifications in the course of the story. Susan was only sixteen in Soul Music, when we last saw her, and has since grown into a formidable young woman; here we get to know her better. She’s working as a governess and has become something of an expert on childhood fears, which serves her well in dealing with the Tooth Fairy’s tower and various other things.
The wizards of Unseen University and their thinking machine Hex have their share of the story, as well, though Rincewind is absent—presumably still on EcksEcksEcksEcks.
The Hogfather himself is off-stage for almost the entire book, though. He doesn’t have a single line of dialogue.
Mr. Pratchett demonstrates in this novel that he understands children very well indeed. But then, by this point in the series he’s demonstrated that he’s got a pretty good handle on the entire human race, and children generally qualify as human. Not that it’s always obvious.
Britain’s Sky One television network has made a live-action adaptation of Hogfather as a four-hour miniseries, but as of this writing I’ve only been able to see brief excerpts, since I’m on the wrong side of the Atlantic. The bits I’ve seen look very well done, though, and the producers seem to have done an especially fine job with Susan.
Death and Susan are featured again in Thief of Time, as seen in Chapter 32, and of course Death continues to appear wherever appropriate in the various other series. Next in the overall series, though, it’s back to Commander Vimes and the Watch.
25
Jingo (1997)
THE LOST ISLAND OF LESHP has resurfaced in the Circle Sea, midway between Ankh-Morpork and the empire of Klatch, and both nations find themselves determined to control this rather soggy bit of real estate. A peace mission from Klatch arrives in Ankh-Morpork, where someone promptly attempts to assassinate the ambassador. Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Watch, sets out to investigate this crime, and finds himself entangled in politics, intrigue, patriotic fervor, and war.
The Patrician, Havelock Vetinari, prefers not to oversee the actual war, and hands control of the city over to Lord Rust for the duration of the conflict; in company with Leonard of Quirm, he then undertakes some investigations of his own.
Klatch is invaded, though not very successfully.
Along the way, Nobby gets in touch with his feminine side, we learn a little about the species known as Curious Squid, and the usual sort of shenanigans go on. It all ends with order restored, the mysteries solved, and Vimes made a duke.
Reg Shoe, the zombie first encountered in Reaper Man, has joined the Watch, as have representatives of various other exotic species—though no Curious Squid.
We discover that Lord Vetinari can juggle. Given his training as an Assassin and his generally high level of competence, this does not come as much of a surprise.
At one point a reference is made to “The monstrous regiment of watchmen,” perhaps anticipating a novel yet to come—or perhaps just playing around with the English language a little, since John Knox’s oft-quoted phrase111 has been around for a long time.
Yet another Dibbler parallel appears in Klatch, a fellow named al-Jibla. Alas, we never learn his forenames.
While in general I don’t try to provide detailed annotations, since the fans online have already done such a thorough job, the L-space annotations on Nobby’s disguise as “Beti” fail to mention one of the possible reasons that name was chosen—the Betty in mummers’ plays and Morris dancing is a half-man, half-woman.
The target of Mr. Pratchett’s satire here is obvious right from the title. He’s attacking the sort of belligerent, unthinking “patriotism” known as “jingoism,” and its tendency to bring about pointless wars—usually ineptly run wars, at that. This makes this one of the less-subtle novels in the series, but it’s still both highly entertaining and thoughtful, and at least as relevant now as when it appeared ten years ago.
At this point in the series, we really aren’t seeing much real change from one book to the next; Samuel Vimes is still ferociously egalitarian in his beliefs, moving up the social ladder but not happy about it, and convinced that the world would be a far better place if people minded their own business. He sees everything from the point of view of the honest policeman, including considering war to be a crime worthy of arresting all concerned for breach of the peace. The other members of the Watch are also set on their paths—Captain Carrot as the natural leader who declines to assert his authority, Angua as the Watch’s secret weapon and Carrot’s devoted companion Detritus as the one-troll heavy weapons squad, Sgt. Colon as the fat and stupid old copper, Nobby as . . . well, as Nobby, and so on.
By no means am I saying that the Watch books are getting repetitive, because they aren’t; it’s just that the pattern for them is set. And we’ll see it continue in The Fifth Elephant.
First, though, we last saw Rincewind arriving on the continent EcksEcksEcksEcks.
26
The Last Continent (1998)
IT’S NOT AUSTRALIA. Mr. Pratchett has stated that explicitly.
EcksEcksEcksEcks is, however, very reminiscent of Australia, which nobody denies. When Rincewind lands there (as we saw him do at the end of Interesting Times), he finds that it’s cut off from the rest of the Discworld, and appears to have been added after the rest was built, rather than being part of the Disc’s original creation. It doesn’t fit with the rest. It’s magically separated from the rest of the Disc, to the point that the weather systems that ought to reach it don’t, and it never rains there.
Not rarely. Never.
Time is also somewhat damaged in its vicinity. Rincewind keeps stumbling across things that have been there for thousands of years, but that hadn’t been there for thousands of years a few hours ago.
Before going further, there’s something I feel it necessary to mention here. Obviously, I love the Discworld stories—I’d hardly have read them all, let alone decided to write a book about them, if I didn’t. But naturally, some I like more than others.
The Last Continent is my least-favorite novel in the entire series. Some people think the first two are the worst, or point to various others as a bit lacking, and maybe I’m missing something, but to me, The Last Continent seems very definitely the weakest entry.
Where the novels before and after it in the series have nicely constructed plots, rich characterization, and everything else necessary for the creation of an entirely satisfactory reading experience, The Last Continent seems more a series of gags strung together by a series of dei ex machinae—literally, as Rincewind survives and is guided on his way through the direct intervention of a divine being that manifests itself through cave paintings, posters, billboards, and the like. This being may be the continent’s creator, though that’s not established definitely; it usually appears in the form of a kangaroo that tells Rincewind he can call it “Scrappy.”
In the course of the story, Rincewind makes his way across a good bit of EcksEcksEcksEcks, encountering mystical kangaroos, Mad Max references, beer, ballads about bush rangers, beer, drought, and more beer. He’s aware, as he travels, that EcksEcksEcksEcks has severe long-term problems caused by its failure to fit properly into its place on the Disc, and that the lack of rain is one of these problems, but he’s not making any attempt to solve them; he’s simply trying to run away and get off the continent and back to Ankh-Morpork.
Meanwhile, the senior faculty of Unseen University is trying to find a way to treat the Librarian, who has fallen magically ill. His incapacity has made the university’s library impossible to use safely. It’s suggested that Rincewind, once the Librarian’s assistant, might be able to help, and so, led by Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the wizards set out to retrieve Rincewind.
However, they’re almost immediately sidetracked by a discovery in the rooms of the Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, who, they realize, has been missing for some time without anyone having noticed. They wind up on an
island some distance off the coast of EcksEcksEcksEcks, more by happenstance and authorial fiat than by planning or reason, where they encounter an interesting god and have a few adventures.
In the end, Rincewind and the senior faculty all wind up beneath a brewery in the Ecksian town of Bugarup, where they are led to perform the magic necessary to screw the continent properly into place on the Discworld.
They are not there through any skill, daring, or pluck of their own, but only because divine forces have put them there. Rincewind completes the ritual not because he’s figured anything out, or made a conscious choice at all, but because Scrappy has guided him to do it.
For me, this is a thoroughly unsatisfactory way to structure a novel.
Yes, there are lots of funny bits along the way, especially if one is familiar with Australia, and Rincewind does display some cunning here and there, but all in all I consider the story a disappointment. After reading it the first time, I pretty much concluded that the character of Rincewind had been played out.
That was before I read The Science of Discworld, though. That’s where we see Rincewind next, and where he redeemed himself in my eyes, as described in Chapter 29.
First, though, let us return to Lancre and its witches.
27
“The Sea and Little Fishes” (1998)
THE LONGEST OF THE SHORT prose-only Discworld stories, originally written for the anthology Legends, “The Sea and Little Fishes” introduces the Witch Trials, which we’ll see again in the Tiffany Aching series. It also gives us a first look at Letice Earwig, who will return in A Hat Full of Sky.
The Witch Trials, it should be noted, are nothing like the infamous witch trials of our own world, but are, rather, modeled on sheep trials, or time trials, or whatever—they’re an annual competition in witchcraft, they are not court trials.
This story is about Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg—Agnes Nitt, the third in the Lancre coven, has only the very smallest of roles. Really, it’s a character study of Granny Weatherwax, as seen from Nanny Ogg’s point of view. It establishes once and for all that Granny is the most powerful witch on the Disc—and, like the wizards of Unseen University, an important part of her power is knowing when not to use magic.
She’s also not a nice person. A good person, someone who does what’s right, but not a nice person.
She’s a proud person. She demands respect.
Which is a plot point in our next novel.
28
Carpe Jugulum (1998)
THE KINGDOM OF LANCRE is celebrating the birth of an heir to the throne, and King Verence has invited the neighbors in. Unfortunately, those neighbors include a clan of vampires from nearby Uberwald, the Magpyr family, who decide to make themselves at home.
Permanently.
Lancre, of course, is protected by its witches, but the vampires have planned for that. These are not your traditional, easily handled vampires; these are modern vampires, who have overcome the traditional thinking that has held their kind back for so long. Garlic, sunlight, religious symbols—those can all be survived with a little training. There’s no need for all that skulking about in the dark, being warded off by holy symbols, turning to dust, or whatever; with the right mindset and some careful practice, these vampires know that all these weaknesses can be overcome.
And witches can be handled.
Or so they think. Planning has its limits. Agnes Nitt, the youngest of Lancre’s four witches, turns out to have unsuspected depths. Granny Weatherwax, who they recognized as by far the most dangerous, is even a little more clever than they realized. Queen Magrat comes out of retirement to protect her daughter.
As for Nanny Ogg—well, they did a fairly solid job of handling her witcheries, but they weren’t quite so thorough with her role as head of the Ogg family.
Nor did they count on a phoenix turning up in Lancre, or the pictsies 112 known as the Nac Mac Feegle, or the growing dissatisfaction of Igor, their traditional and tradition-loving servant, with their newfangled ideas.
All of those play a part, along with an Omnian priest by the name of Mightily Oats,113 King Verence himself, and assorted others, but it’s mostly the witches who settle things.
In The Last Continent, we got a lot of events and inventions that didn’t particularly fit anywhere or lead to anything; in Carpe Jugulum, we have just as much innovation114 and just as much happening, but it does all fit in and go somewhere. We’ll be seeing more of Uberwald, more about vampires, more of the Nac Mac Feegle, and more of Igor and his family (all of whom seem to be named Igor) in later books. In this story, we see Magrat and Agnes maturing and Nanny and Granny developing. We see Granny discussing religion at some length with Oats, and summing up her beliefs on right and wrong thusly: “And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things.” While it’s always dangerous to assume that any character is speaking for his or her author, that summation seems to match Mr. Pratchett’s beliefs pretty closely, going by everything in the series so far.
Mightily Oats, as shown here, is an interesting character. He’s a follower of the Omnian Church, but the humane version that the Prophet Brutha left behind after the events of Small Gods, rather than the ferocious and militant church that preceded him.
A lesser writer than Mr. Pratchett might have presented the latter-day Omnian faith as an unalloyed improvement on the old, but Pratchett is better and truer than that. Instead he gives us an Omnian church that’s undergone hundreds of schisms, and an Omnian priest in the midst of an extended crisis of faith—Brutha’s reforms made it acceptable to question, which made it possible to doubt. The unity and strength of the old, dangerous, bloodthirsty Omnian church has been lost. Oats is a man hag-ridden by doubt.
Granny Weatherwax is not one to be troubled by doubts, and there’s a very powerful scene where she tells Oats why he should be glad she doesn’t believe in his god.
And then there are the Nac Mac Feegle, the little red-haired, blue-tattooed men with their barely comprehensible Scots dialect and their penchant for fighting and theft. The first impression is that they’re a cross between Smurfs and soccer hooligans, but they’re more than that. Right from this first appearance, it’s established that they live underground in matriarchal clans, with dozens of males serving a witch-mother called a kelda,115 who is absolutely nothing like Smurfette. They have a social structure that makes sense, in its own bizarre way. They’ll be back in the Tiffany Aching stories, several volumes later.
There’s also the phoenix—or phoenices;116 it’s clear that, mythology to the contrary notwithstanding, the Disc has more than one phoenix. While it has a role to play in the story, its part doesn’t seem entirely essential, and we don’t really learn all that much about it, except that it’s an actual bird and a bane of vampires.
As for the vampires themselves, these are the vampires of low-budget horror films, not of Rumanian folklore. Like the Hammer Studios version of Dracula, they’re relatively easy to kill, but they don’t stay dead. They dress in evening clothes, have gothic names like Lacrimosa and Morbidia, and have extensive hypnotic and shape-shifting abilities. The Magpyrs are rebels in that they would rather not have cobwebs and dust everywhere, and prefer doors that don’t creak, much to Igor’s chagrin. They do drink wine. They have rebelled against the foolish old stories, and, they think, triumphed.
But they’re still vampires—bloodsucking, undead monsters. It takes all the witches can do to remove them from Lancre, once and for all.
They do succeed in the end, though. Of course.
The next novel in the regular series will take us back to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and we won’t see the witches of Lancre again except as supporting characters in the Tiffany Aching stories. First, though, we have a curiosity—it’s a story of Rincewind and the faculty of Unseen University, but not exactly a novel. . . .
29
The Science of Discworld (1999) (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)
IF YOU’RE AN AMERICAN, you may well not ha
ve known this book existed; now that you do, you may well be asking, “What science? The Discworld doesn’t have any science!”
And you’d be more or less right. As the authors explain right up front, “Discworld does not run on scientific lines.” It runs on the power of story.
What this book does is intersperse a new Discworld story with essays on science—not some contrived Discworld science, but the science of our own world. A world which, it seems, the wizards of Unseen University accidentally created in a squash court, and sent Rincewind to investigate.
The story of the wizards creating and investigating Roundworld, as they call it, alternates chapters with actual science and history of science. Ian Stewart is a professor of mathematics at Warwick University, and Jack Cohen is a professor of biology there. They know their stuff, and write well, so the science chapters are good reading, and tie in well to the story.
The authors provide a sort of compact history of the universe, covering cosmology, astronomy, physics, and chemistry, but as you might expect, given their specialties, the science in the three volumes of this sub-series, especially the latter two, is heavy on biology, particularly evolutionary biology—and if you’ve been reading Discworld stories for long, it shouldn’t surprise you that Mr. Pratchett chose a biologist as one of his collaborators. Evolution, in one form or another, has long been a recurring element in the series. We’ve met a god of evolution, we’ve seen discussions of how natural selection has operated in producing the current faculty of Unseen University and the Disc’s remarkable crop of barbarian heroes, and we’ve had comments on the evolutionary value of tortoises learning to fly, on the survival value of stupidity in vampires, on the reproductive strategies of the phoenix, and on any number of similar subjects. Yes, evolution on the Disc is distorted by the intense magical field and the author’s sense of humor, but it’s obviously a topic near and dear to Mr. Pratchett’s heart.
The Turtle Moves! Page 11
