On Embuggerance

AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.

The End.

Small Gods.Thief of Time. Feet of Clay. Pyramids. Maskerade.

The above, my five favourite Discworld novels, is all you need as a tribute. Pratchett’s body of work will live with us for a very long time.

One small consolation from today’s desperately sad news was to see my Twitter timeline light up with people talking about how much they loved Pratchett. It turns out I was far from the only one who owes him several heaving bookshelves and an inability to stop buying paperbacks.

I want to keep this short because if you are reading this, you are better reading Sir Terry by way of tribute. Or wonderful interviews between Pratchett and Alison Flood,Tom Chivers, Cory Doctorow or Laurie Penny.

I was due to post my thoughts on Jingo tomorrow but I don’t feel it’s the right time to do so. Normal service should be resumed next week.

I am considerably far ahead in my reading. I finished Thud! on a flight back to London this evening so a lot of my posts were written some time ago. I want to keep them this way – it would be unfair to Sir Terry to retrospectively sugarcoat them because he has passed on.

So when I publish Jingo, you will see how I consider it one of Sir Terry’s funniest, but not one of his smartest. A week later, when I hit The Last Continent, you will see me a bit bemused because Pratchett is So Much Better Than This. When I hit the post-embuggerance novels, I will judge them on their own merits. If Sir Terry wanted to write more novels, I will be glad to explore them like any other. To do so in any other way would be patronising.

I hope you stick with me. I’m very grateful to those who have so far. Once we get beyond Rincewind’s last novel as a protagonist, we hit Pratchett’s true golden age: novels saturated with humour, darkness, hilarity, books that push the reader and are much more inventive than they are given credit for. Not only that, they feature Pratchett’s own million to one shot for me – a novel featuring Rincewind that ranks among the Discworld’s best. The Last Hero was a COMPLETE surprise.

Rest in peace Sir Terry.