The Truth

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret

Terry Pratchett writes excellent vacation books. The Discworld novels are fun, funny, and light. They're quick and easy to read, but don't require too much thought. And, since Pratchett puts breaks in the text every few pages instead of dividing the stories into chapters, they're easy to consume in any size chunk you want. So whether I have an hour to hang out on the hammock, or five minutes while we're waiting for everyone to gather in the kitchen, I can dive right into a Discworld novel and not worry too much about getting interrupted in the middle of the action.

The Truth deals with the invention of the newspaper in Ankh-Morpork. William De Worde has been sending out a weekly, handwritten newsletter to a few nobles around the city who are willing to pay $5 an issue to keep up to date on the goings on of Ankh-Morpork. But when the dwarfs invent a printing press, William quickly finds out that he can print his newsletter daily, sell it for tuppence, and still profit.

While all of this is going on, the nobles of the city are conspiring to replace the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari. They use a look-alike to frame him for attempted murder and then quickly instill someone much more controllable in his place. It's up to William, his fellow journalist Sacharissa, and their vampire photographer Otto to get to the bottom of the plot. Unfortuntely, a tabloid newspaper springs up overnight and William discovers that the people are more interested in sensational stories about women giving birth to snakes than whether or not a politician is innocent.

One of the funniest scenes in the book, in my opinion, involves the ridiculous vampire photographer. He's part of the vampire equivalent of alcoholics anonymous and hasn't bitten anyone in over three months. He has instead poured all of his energy into photography in an effort to distract himself from the bloodlust. Sadly, he's allergic to the camera flash and has a tendency to explode into a pile of dust whenever it goes off. Just a minor occupational hazard, you know how it goes. Since he's technically immortal, it only takes a drop of blood to revive him. So he begins to wear a vial of blood around his neck as a precaution. Everytime the flash goes off, he explodes into dust, the vial falls to the floor and breaks, the blood mixes with his remains, and he is healed. The image is endlessly hilarious to me.

I enjoyed this book a lot more than the last couple I read. It's sort of a City Watch book, but mostly deals with a brand new cast of characters. That was a refreshing change. Gaspode, the talking dog, also figured into the story quite heavily as a secondary character. He may be one of my favorite characters, so I was definitely glad to see that.

All the commentary on the intersections of politics, the media, and the police was really interesting, too. William wielded a lot of power by simply writing everything down. But his methods clashed with The City Watch quite a bit. All in all, it was a very fun vacation read.