skygiants

Lords and Ladies, oh gosh, Lords and Ladies. A reasonable proportion of the Pratchett books I've been trucking through have pleasantly equalled my expectations, but I think I had literally forgotten how good Lords and Ladies was. Not that I didn't remember it as good! I just didn't remember it was that good.

Here are the top ten things that are great about Lords and Ladies:


10. Once again, all of the important battles and shifts in power dynamics happen between women. That's just HOW THEY ROLL in Lancre.
9. That being said, Shane Ogg the Perennially Ridiculous and Jason Ogg the Somewhat Less Ridiculous both get to be legitimately awesome.
8. On a related note, Ridcully is unhelpfully soppy and lovestruck and it's taken exactly as seriously as it deserves. (I am actually really sad that Ridcully and Granny never get to meet again in the series, I would read a million books in which they fight crime, or possibly each other, while having belligerent sexual tension. YES I WOULD. You can't judge me, YOU TOTALLY WOULD TOO.)
7. And he got the Librarian to Lancre by telling him they had shelves and shelves of UNCATALOGED BOOKS! THIS HURTS THE LIBRARIAN IN HIS PRESERVATIONIST SOUL.
6. Being engaged to a king doesn't have to be about sitting around doing embroidery, and being kind and sort of soppy doesn't have to mean being weak.
5. Nanny and Granny are the best of teams. The challenge in the square! That may well be my favorite scene, hands down.
4. Granny Weatherwax IS A STONE COLD BADASS
3. Nanny Ogg is a SEXY badass.
2. Magrat Garlick is a soppy, kittens-loving, ARMOR-WEARING ELF-SLAYING BADASS QUEEN
1. No, actually, even after Magrat put on her shining armor, hoisted her weaponry and went charging off to rescue her prince, Granny Weatherwax is STILL THE MOST BADASS OF THEM ALL, FOREVER AND ALWAYS

Guys, I am excited for Maskerade and for Carpe Jugulum, I know that these are books I also love enormously, but right now I'm just sort of like how does it get BETTER?

I couldn't find my copy of Witches Abroad, so I had to hold off on this review until I could steal it from Boston. Which I now have done!

Witches Abroad used to be one of my favorites, and I still really like it on the reread, but - hmmm. The first half -- in which Magrat, Granny and Nanny careen around the countryside being TERRIBLE TOURISTS and accidentally disrupting fairytales -- does not do it for me like it used to, I think mostly because I am more sensitive these days to privileged people careening around being terrible tourists. So for me, that section of the book mostly went like this:

NANNY: Listen to me practice my terrible fake French!
GRANNY: All this foreign food is DISGUSTING and UNHEALTHY. WAITER! TAKE AWAY THIS THING I ORDERED.
BECCA: This is not fun, this is like traveling with my elderly relatives @___@
MAGRAT: It's not fun!
BECCA: Right!
MAGRAT: So let me tell all of you how you're doing EMPOWERMENT wrong due to this fake Eastern martial arts philosophy I've been studying . . .
BECCA: SIGH.

(Though I did forget that Gollum popped up for a cameo! That did make me laugh.)

I also don't reeeally understand why fake New Orleans is in the middle of fantasy Transylvania, but once the main plot started to get going, I sort of forgot about all that and just enjoyed watching Granny Weatherwax be completely badass.

I was also struck, as I neared the end, by how -- maybe more even than any other Witches book until Tiffany Aching comes along -- this is a book completely centered around dynamics between women. The main power struggle between Lilith, Granny and Mrs. Gogol; the complicated professional-friendship-ish dynamics between Granny and Nanny and Magrat; everyone's attempted mentorship of Ella . . . I mean, there are a few men running around, but one of them is a zombie, one of them is a cat, and one of them is a frog, and none of them are really shaking the plot much. It's all the women, motivated by other women. So that, actually, is pretty cool.

Vacation messed me up, so I am one cycle behind on my Terry Pratchett reread, but this should not imply any lack of enthusiasm for Moving Pictures because, you guys, I LOVE Moving Pictures. I have always loved it, probably far more than its deserts, and I don't know why this is.

And the thing is that it makes total sense that I love it now. It's about Hollywood and the birth of film! It actually does a pretty hilarious job of condensing and Discworld-izing all the myths about how the Lumiere Brothers banged their projectors on the ground, and lo and behold, Clara Bow sprang out fully-formed and became the It Girl! It has the race for sound technology, which I actually wrote a paper on this semester, and the celluloid fires, and the birth of on-screen advertising, and all these things that are completely hilarious if you are interested in film history - which I was not actually much at all until recently. So this cannot explain why it's been one of my favorites since my first read-through more than ten years ago.

This is the book that introduces Ridcully, who was one of my favorite characters as a kid, which may partially explain it -- although I always forget that this book is the one where that happens. (I don't think of Moving Pictures as a wizard book, I think of it as a standalone, but it totally is a wizard book.) In fact most of the permanent cast of lulzy wizards first appear here, with the possible exception of the Dean, since this Dean is staid and rule-abiding and every other time that the Dean shows up he is the wildest and most immature of ALL WIZARDS EVER. Anyway, I like the permanent cast of lulzy wizards, so maybe this is part of my abiding fondness?

And there is also the fact that the pre-climax slapstick orgy is completely hilarious and the high-speed broomstick-wheelchair chase gets me every time. Sometimes I am a very easy sell.

But I think the actual reason I like Moving Pictures so much is that it always feels to me like the creepiest Discworld novel. I mean, Pratchett has used eldritch horror before and will use it again, but the Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions don't really scare me so much. Ghost towns whose history you are doomed to repeat? Sleepwalking to wake strange things without any control over your own actions? The permanent movie theater where all your friends will sit staring glassily ahead forever, until the roof caves in on their heads? That creeps me out.

Anyone else agree with me? Other votes for creepiest Discworld book?

(Reread caveats: . . . oh dear, the treatment of the trolls is really awkward in this book, isn't it.)

Okay, so we all know that Guards, Guards is really wonderful, classic Discworld, astoundingly good. This is not news to anyone and it was not news to me when I reread it! Here are some things that did surprise me:

1. I always remember Carrot as being at least 50% the protagonist of Guards, Guards, but . . . he really isn't at all! After maybe the first third, Vimes takes over the book with such a vengeance that Carrot gets basically sent back to form a Comedy Trio with Colon and Nobby. But Carrot is so important in the later books that it's easy to forget, I think, that he's not actually all that important to this particular introductory story.

2. Relatedly, I sort of forgot that Carrot is only fifteen when he comes to Ankh-Morpork. All of a sudden the way that Carrot goes fairly quickly from being genuinely naive, idealistic, and completely unaware of his own charisma to being a kind of cheery grinning Machiavelli over the course of the novels makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE. (Have I mentioned that my last memory of Carrot is of him terrifying me? I will see how I feel when I reread the later books, but . . . just putting that out there.) Also -- is this the last time we get Carrot POV of any kind? Because I think it may well be.

3. This is not just the first book to establish the Guards -- it's also really the first book where Ankh-Morpork comes into her own, including class issues up the wazoo. I would like to formulate a theory that the Guards/Ankh-Morpork books are usually about class in the same way that the Witches books are usually about stories, but I'm willing to have that theory challenged.

4. Okay, this did not actually surprise me per se, but *removes critic hat* VIMES/SYBIL OTP AWW YEAH.

PS. But -- I can already tell this is going to be a theme through several later books -- man, guys, this book also reminded me how much I love Lady Sybil, and I miss her. I miss the lady who was out in the action, taming dragons with rolled-up newspaper, riding to the rescue in a fancy carriage, and generally being proactive and awesome. I love that Sybil and Vimes are adorably married, but I really wish that did not mean that almost all of Sybil's page time is spent being Mrs. Vimes. I want a Sybil book where Vimes' time is spent being Mr. Ramkin!

We're up to Wyrd Sisters! REAL GRANNY WEATHERWAX, how glad I am to see you!

Obviously I have an enormous love for Wyrd Sisters just by virtue of the theater and story meta . . . and also, okay, just by virtue of lulzy Macbeth parody, except when it's really effectively creepy Macbeth parody. (I am actually really sad that we never see Tomjon and the Dysk theater again in the books; I want to know how fake Shakespeare is getting on!) That aside, I had forgotten that this book is not just our introduction to Discworld theater, but Granny's introduction to it, and her determination not to let the power of glamorous stories win out over the power of things that are true is something that's going to be a common thread throughout all the witch books going forward. It's especially interesting because that's sort of the opposite of the standard fantasy trope, which is ALL HAIL THE POWER OF STORIES. Writers want to believe in the power of fiction! But as usual, Granny Weatherwax takes many stances that are sort of the opposite of what most of us would think, and makes us love her for it, because she is the biggest badass on the Disc.

. . . and now I really want to make someone write me Granny Weatherwax vs. Drosselmeyer. BUT ANYWAY.

What's also interesting is seeing the sort of awkward dynamic between the three witches here. This is a Magrat who doesn't know Granny and Nanny very well, and even Granny and Nanny aren't the team that they will be later in the Disc books. That's something that's sort of starting to build throughout the story here, which is pretty cool . . . even if what they do with it is move their entire town forward in time without asking anybody a;sljkdfds. NOT OKAY. It is also pretty nifty how, even though Magrat is the obvious protagonist for anyone to identify with (youngest witch coming into her own!) really I think she and Granny are pretty much co-protagonists. (Nanny is awesome, but she has it much too together to be a protagonist.)

But maybe I'm wrong! Actually I bet everyone has a different favorite Discworld witch, so I will throw the question out to you guys over at the LJ crosspost.

kate_nepveu beat me to the punch this week! Here's her combo post on Equal Rites and Mort.

I am going to be a bit more effusive than her, though! It's interesting, because I just spent the past few weeks talking about how the early Pratchetts are really quite decent and so on, and then reading Mort was like being hit over the head with how much I really love many of Pratchett's books, as opposed to cheerfully appreciating them. But it's so wonderful! Death feels like Death! Ankh-Morpork feels like Ankh-Morpork! (The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!) Etc.

The thing about Mort is that it's the book that definitively establishes the Discworld's Death as an endearingly bemused sort of anthropomorphic personification whom you just want to provide with a kitten and a hug - or at least a friendly pat on the shoulder, if you're too worried about bony elbows. He just tries so hard! At everything! (A special shout-out to his HILARIOUSLY AWKWARD wink-wink-nudge-nudge matchmaking, which made me shriek with laughter every time.)

The thing is, though, I want to talk about it as 'the humanization of Death' so I can point out the parallel character development with Mort, whose arc as Death's apprentice is about growing out of his utter teenaged gawkiness and naivete and into a full-fledged human being, but the word feels wrong, because although Death may be trying to become human he is never written as human; there is always that sense of otherness to him, and that is a line that Pratchett, I think, walks really well throughout the Death sub-series of Discworld. (If I'm remembering right, I actually think that for all his consistent efforts at vacationing, the short-order cook job is the closest Death will ever actually come to achieving humanity throughout the books, and . . . it's not all that close. But I could be wrong, and it's something else to keep an eye on.)

I also appreciate the bait-and-switch he pulls with Princess Keli and Ysabell, where it looks like he's setting up a fairly (and unfortunately) standard dichotomy between the spoiled, overweight girly-girl and the hardcore, unconventionally attractive Strong Female Character, and then, hey, wait! It turns out they're both awesome! WHO KNEW.

(As a sidenote, ( spoiler for later books )

Okay so I guess every other Monday around here is going to be PRATCHETT DAY! Kicking things off with The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic; two weeks from now will be Equal Rites and so on.

I know a lot of people when recommending Pratchett books to their friends and acquaintances say 'DON'T START WITH THE COLOR OF MAGIC'. I do this too, because everyone else does it and sometimes I'm susceptible to peer pressure, and it's definitely not as strong as other Discworld books, and sheer anecdotal evidence seems to show that most people don't like it much. But long, long ago, my mom went to the UK on a trip and brought me back The Color of Magic, so that's where I started, and it didn't hurt me any!

There's a poll here about YOUR FEELINGS over at the LJ crosspost if you feel inclined to vote!

The thing about Color of Magic that I had forgotten in the years I had not read it is how much it is composed of VERY DIRECT PARODIES of VERY SPECIFIC THINGS. I don't remember whether I encountered the Pern books before or after Discworld, but man, the bit with Rincewind and Twoflower and the scantily-clad dragonriders is pretty much forty pages of the book straight thumbing its nose at Anne McCaffrey and going 'neener neener your naming conventions are silly!'

And this is totally fine, if you're a reader in the 1980's and you're very familiar with Pern and with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conan (I'm pretty sure Hrun is meant to be Conan, which is kind of hilarious given that the very next book on Cohen is in fact Conan) and you're not really expecting much more than a light romp on the theme of 'LOL naive tourist in Fantasyland.' If you have no idea what the conventions are to begin with that the book is mocking, then, like any parody in that vein, it's probably not all that funny. (I had never read a lot of those things in nineteen-ninety-whatever when I first read The Color of Magic, but I had probably read enough parodies of them to get that they were funny anyway...?)

Everyone lumps The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic together so in my head I do it too, but what actually startled me in The Light Fantastic (moving on) is how much closer that book already feels to Discworld-as-we-know-it-later. Having it be long-form helps - it's not a series of short pointed parodies like The Color of Magic, there's some actual legitimate worldbuilding going on, and a couple of tropes that also will be very familiar in later books. A villain whose evil is described as pure blank bureaucratic soullessness: check! Something sinister weakening the boundaries from the Dungeon Dimensions: check! We also get the first Discworld dwarf, who does not feel all that different from later cosmopolitan dwarves, and the first Discworld trolls, who do, but that is retconned away.

I also think Rincewind has kind of suffered in later books from what TVTropes would clal Flanderization - he does not actually come off all that badly in The Light Fantastic, and in retrospect it's kind of a shame that he gets relegated to quivering potato fetishist. Thoughts?

Other notes: The Color of Magic has a terrified water nun and a sexy dragonlady in straps of leather. The Light Fantastic has Bethan, rescued-sacrifice-turned-common-sensicle-girlfriend-to-an-eighty-something-superhero, and Herenna the lady bounty hunter, who explicitly wears very sensible clothes with no leather about her except for some equally sensible boots. It's not great, but it is an improvement! The Color of Magic also has a couple of mildly homophobic jokes related to the wizards that I never noticed before and which I will have to keep an eye out for to see if they continue or go away.

I've been rereading the Tiffany Aching books as a lead-up to I Shall Wear Midnight. (I've been wanting to do a full Discworld re-read, too. One of these days I will, but this is not that day.) I remember liking them all when they came out, but none of them had much sunk in the first time round and it's sort of startling how much I'd forgotten. For example, I did not remember at all how much The Wee Free Men is blatantly talking to Labyrinth. It's not just that the plot's the same - annoying little brother is kidnapped by fairies, formerly-unappreciative older sister quests through dangerous dreamscape to get him back - but there's the un-pretty fairy creatures; there's the obligatory fake "it was all a dream" scene where Tiffany wakes up in her room with all her own things and has to figure out it's a lie; there's a masked ball dream scene! A masked ball dream scene that might just as well have "my heroine will not be lured by puffy dresses and eighties hair, and let's not even mention the tight pants" scrawled in giant letters all over it. Yes, Terry Pratchett, Tiffany is not a dreamy adolescent girl, she's a whip-smart proto-witch with no nonsense about her, we know.

Of course The Wee Free Men stands as a book, and a very good book, on its own, but now I have to wonder if anyone's thought to switch Sarah and Tiffany and see what would happen. I mean obviously Jareth would crumble in about ten seconds when faced with Tiffany Aching, but I think Sarah might also do unexpectedly well against the Queen. I'm not sure she could manage Feegles, though.

(As a sidenote, I really want to rewatch Labyrinth now. Conveniently dictator_duck it turns out has never seen it, so I know what we'll be doing sometime this week!)

What delights me about A Hat Full of Sky on the other hand is not so much the plot, because really I don't think the plot's all that comparatively important (a supernatural thing takes over Tiffany's body and brings out all the worst selfish teenaged bits of her to look at and deal with, and yes, that's worthwhile, and I'd read the Tiffany book with just that plot, but we've seen that before). What's more interesting to me is the focus on communities of women - especially the way young women interact with the mentors who will always know more than them, and older women interact with the girls who will someday grow up to replace them, and how to negotiate your way to respect within that dynamic. That's different from outright intergenerational conflict and is something you don't see a lot in fiction, I think, and even less with women, and it's complicated and fascinating.

All of which is basically to say that I could watch Tiffany Aching and Granny Weatherwax team up to attempt to out-manipulate each other while saving the day all the time and never be bored.

I just went and checked my last-year's booklogging, and I appear to have gone all of last year without reading any Terry Pratchett! That may be a record for me since the young age at which I discovered Discworld (eight? Nine? Whenever it was, I cannot take credit, since my mom was the one who brought me back Color of Magic from a trip to England on the vague premise that she thought it looked interesting for me.)

Anyways, this year I seem to be making up for it, since after the Great Johnny Reread I became determined to catch up and in short order acquired Making Money and Nation.

( Book babbling - in short, enjoyed Making Money okay, really loved Nation )

Anyway, all this recent Pratchett-reading has sparked my curiosity, so: time for a bookpoll!

[Poll #1300910]

So I read Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring recently and it did not work for me all that well. All the same, it was interesting enough that I tried another of her books, Midnight Robber, and liked it quite a bit more! Midnight Robber is the story of Tan-Tan, a girl who grows up to embody the legendary figure (kind of like a Caribbean Robin Hood) on a world of exiles. What I really liked about this book: the emphasis on language as power, the transformation of truth into myth, and also the hints of really interesting worldbuilding in the two parallel worlds that the story spans. What frustrated me: once again, the pacing. Somehow Nalo Hopkinson always seems to be dancing around the edges of the stories I really want to see; in this book, she spends far too much time setting up Tan-Tan's angsty childhood and even angstier teenaged years, and then skips over a lot of her activities as the Midnight Robber, which were the bits I really wanted to read! There are also a lot of subplots and characters in the beginning who are never really picked up, which made the book seem slightly disjointed to me. It kind of feels like she's setting up for a sequel, but there is none in the works to the best of my knowledge; if there was, though, I would read it.

Following Midnight Robber, I dove back into some comfort reading with a reread of Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind and Johnny and the Dead, which . . . turned out to be not so much comfort reading. (For those who have not read: the Johnny books are a trilogy entirely independent of any of Terry Pratchett's other work, surrounding a boy who is apparently so ordinary as to be invisible, to whom Strange Things Just Happen. In the first one, the aliens in Johnny's videogame surrender and ask for safe-conduct home; in the second, Johnny starts chatting with the dead in the local graveyard; the third apparently involves a bomb, but I don't remember it at all and need to reread.) Not that I did not still love them on the reread, because I do, but - I actually think the Johnny books, for all they're labeled Children's, are in a lot of ways much darker than the Discworld books. Discworld tackles serious issues and is definitely not entirely upbeat, but there's still a level of escapism in the use of the brightly-colored fantasy world in a way there isn't in Johnny's dead-end town. The plots of these books are not the kind of fantastic events that save you from your humdrum existence; they're more likely to add on an extra burden of responsibility. Only You Can Save Mankind, especially, presents a pretty grim view on humanity.