Bookish Thoughts

Thief of Time  is a lot sillier than I remember it being. It's not exactly a bad thing. But I remember loving this book, and this time around I only liked it. It was fun and funny. But the past few books have had a depth that this one lacked. So I ended up feeling a bit let down. The thing this book is missing is the biting social commentary that I remember as such a hallmark of the Discworld  series. Of course, it took years for the books to evolve from the silly adventures of Rincewind to the much more hard-hitting advancement in Ankh-Morpork. They're all satire, but some of them are a whole lot lighter than others. The past few books have been heavy, though. Pratchett was tackling more complicated issues, holding that distorted mirror back up to our world and demanding that readers take a good look around. And so Thief of Time  feels like a bit of a regression. It's a good, solid book. But by Discworld standards, it is merely okay. There's a lot to like here. Su...

After yet another re-read, Hogfather remains one of my favorite comfort-reads. It's one of the best Discworld books, with a strong through line about the power of belief and starring two of the best characters: Death and his granddaughter, Susan. The interesting thing about this book is that it actually works better on re-reads. It takes a while for some of the plot threads to come together and for he various reveals to be made. Which can make it incredibly confusing in the beginning. But once you know the basic point of the story, everything slots neatly into place. The mystery may be gone, but many of the early scenes take on a new richness and humor that more than make up for it. Even better, I'm still picking up on things that I either missed or forgot the first time through. It takes a while for the Discworld books to get this dense and rewarding (and some of them never really do), but it makes the series so worth it. This book works well on it's own, but it wor...

Terry Pratchett's 26th Discworld novel, Thief of Time , has almost the same plot as one of my favorite episodes of Angel. Sort of. It's the end of the world (this happens almost as much on the Discworld as it does in the Buffyverse). This time, it happens to be caused by a clock that freezes time. So once it starts to tick, it never will again, and neither will any other clock. Everyone will be be stuck in a single moment that lasts forever. The details are different, but the stories are similar enough that I went to look up which one came out first. It turns out both were released in 2001, so this is a bit like Leibniz and Newton coming up with calculus at the same time. Okay, maybe this plot isn't quite as genius as calculus. But it's certainly enjoyable. Time paradoxes and apocalypses are always fun. This is definitely one of my favorite Discworld novels so far. Of course, the Death books tend to be among my favorite so there's no real surprise...