The Day The World Went Away – The Shepherd’s Crown

Us witches don’t mourn for very long. We are satisfied with happy memories – they’re there to be cherished.

What would it be like to witness your own funeral? I must admit this rather adolescent train of thought occasionally creeps into my adult daydreaming but I doubt I am the only one. What would people say about you? If you had a choice, how would you sum up your life to your friends and family? What would everyone’s reaction be when your final song is played and it’s “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell” by Iggy Pop and the Stooges?

It comes as no surprise that there is an elegiac air to The Shepherd’s Crown, the final book in the Discworld series. As we embark over the jump just be warned that from that point onwards, there will be a lot of spoilers. This post will still be here when you have read the novel.

OK?

Your Favourite Discworld Novels (sort of)

After sticking my neck out by trying to place the Discworld series into some sort of order, it’s your turn. Well, kinda. I have been grateful to each and every one of you who has taken the time to read, share and comment on my articles. I have also been fascinated to see what you have been reading. It has given insight into which Discworld novels you rate, and which you are less keen.

I have put together a top 41 of the most popular posts about the Discworld books on Pratchett Job, which includes my clunky attempt to explain why I have been doing this thing in the first place. You can read it after the jump, along with my Peter Snow on Election Night style analysis.

Rating the Discworld – part four

It’s staggering how good every single one of these books are. You could argue that each belongs in the top slot. You’d drive yourself mad doing so but you could. Separating these was incredibly hard – Pyramids looks too low down the list but what the hell would I replace it with?

Rating the Discworld – part three

We’ve hit gold this week. Every single book from here on is top tier Pratchett. From what I have learned since starting this project, Pratchett fans are split into two camps; those who favour the earlier, more fantastical Discworld, and those who prefer the marriage of magic with technology. I’m very much in the latter camp.

Rating the Discworld – Part Two

 Last week I looked at the lesser Discworld novels. There were few stinkers there, but unsurprisingly the post-Embuggerance novels belonged at the lower end of Pratchett’s work.

This week, we are into much better territory. There is not a bad book among these. They may have flaws and some may work better than others but you could safely hand any of these to a Discworld newbie and they’d enjoy it.

Rating the Discworld – Part One

Ranking is brilliant. I know there are high-falutin arguments about the subjectivity of art and how your opinion should be no more valid than anyone else’s because of the unique way each and every one of us sees the world etc etc etc.

No.

‘[THIS] is better than [THAT]’ is at the heart of what we read, what we watch and what we listen to. Finding someone you agree with, and talking through what you loved about something is fun. Finding someone you disagree with, and finding out why they found joy in something you didn’t is arguably even more rewarding.

The End of the Line – Raising Steam

“Let me tell you, the world changes with every generation and if we don’t learn to surf on the tide then we will be smashed on the rocks.”

Bugsy Malone is a very strange film, and probably an odd one to start a post about a novel on the railway industry with. It’s that rare thing for me, a musical that is deeply enjoyable and a film I have watched more times than I can remember.

It also has a killer ending, where a shootout is abruptly halted so that everyone, good guys and bad guys alike, can make up and have a bit of a song and a dance. It’s sentimental, it kinda flies in the face of what you have just been watching and feels somewhat strange. But it works and that’s why it reminds me of Raising Steam.

Death Trip – Snuff

“And now the world is a better place, commander. You have no understanding, Vimes, no understanding at all of the deals, stratagems and unseen expedients by which some of us make shift to see that it remains that way. Do not seek perfection. None exists.”

Since we first found him in the gutter, Samuel Vimes has been as important to the Discworld as one of the four elephants that supports it. Through him, Pratchett has taken us through the changing face of Ankh-Morpork, how it has dealt with race, power, rule of law and sexuality. The early days of the city facing a threat from a dragon are long ago. Now Ankh-Morpork has a working telegram and financial system, with its mixed species police force a paragon of harmony for the wider Disc.

Moon Witch Cartridge – I Shall Wear Midnight

“It’s like a disease,” Miss Proust said. “It sort of creeps up. It’s in the wind, as if it goes from person to person. Poison goes where poison’s welcome. And there’s always an excuse, isn’t there, to throw a stone at the old lady who looks funny. It’s always easier to blame somebody. And once you’ve called someone a witch, then you’d be amazed how many things you can blame her for.”

Terry Pratchett’s young adult fiction doesn’t spare the reader. His first, Amazing Maurice, was a maelstrom of horror, with cannibalism among that thrown at the reader. It was completely unflinching and quite brilliant for it. I Shall Wear Midnight opens with something equally horrific; a young girl has been beaten so severely by her father that she miscarries. Tiffany has to step in and save Mr Petty from brutal mob justice, before saving him a second time from hanging himself.

Taxman – Making Money

‘You use words, and I’m told you do it well, but words are soft and can be pummelled into different meanings by a skilled tongue. Numbers are hard. Oh, you can cheat with them but you cannot change their nature. Three is three. You cannot persuade it to be four, even if you give it a great big kiss.’

When I wrote about Going Postal a few weeks back, I was taken by how remarkably prescient it was in anticipating the financial crisis of 2008. To its credit, the novel wasn’t a strict ‘public = good, private = bad’ treatise. Under the auspices of Moist Von Lipwig, ‘confidence capitalism’, as I am dubbing any enterprise being led by a trickster, was the most responsible way of reinvigorating decrepit businesses.

The groundwork for Making Money was laid quite heavily in Going Postal, with the novel ending with the Patrician in dire need of someone to run Ankh-Morpork’s mint. That someone is Moist, whose ability to attract trouble is almost Rincewindian.