Reviews and Comments

I've never spent so long on a Disc book, that's saying sth about how messed up this month has been. Which is also why I'm a bit unorganised in my thoughts on this one, cuz quite a lot of the pages are read half asleep and the climax got cut into several reads because I fell asleep ..... I almost have never done that before.

But I get the metaphor about Koom Valley. Let me just say again that the fantasy part of Discworld series is not the magic or the wizards or the species, it is how every species has got a tribe leader that is really civil and liberal and modern and progressive and wants the people to live better. It's unimaginable how a people like the dwarfs, trolls or humans could get such a person to be their political leader (well Vetinari probably assassinated his way up, so the others might have done so too).

Sam Vimes's family life is really enviable. I want a Sybil for myself. I don't think Pterry could do better than Night Watch about how Vimes guards the darkness inside himself. I feel the Summoning Dark is half like Soul Music, half the Beast. But I understand the constant watching, the guarding. The unable to trust yourself. Okay I'm off to read Where's My Cow?.

(why does a review have to have a title)

To be honest, I feel he saved the best best of social commentary to the last 20-30% (as usual, really), the previous part is only lighthearted nudge nudge in comparison. And plot. I have hoped it could be more sparsely distributed, but I am very glad that he got to it after all, and correctly. Especially, where the women, who had to dress as and act like men for survival and for career, became really man-like in all these years and acting just as harsh on women as men did ('I promote the women if they are better than men!'); and where the women soldiers got tried, then got dressed up as mascots as the generals had no hope in hushing it up anymore so they patronised them and paraded them, then sent back to old life. I am also very glad to see the girls grow more ambitious and courageous and capable than when they started. They got to the bigger picture during the events. So happy. But it is a very hard, bleak, dark war story to read, especially at this time, what with the news. Pterry had really got into writing war situations ever since Jingo, innit. Jingo, fifth elephant, night watch, then this. and maybe interesting times. and if I'm being linient, small gods and last hero.

I should go see that interview of pterry talking about this book that I saw on youtube recommendation, but that interview on Thud! also applies to Monstrous Regiment, and ALL political/social situation he had ever written. He said, what Vimes (and I agree that other main roles of the respective books) did was to buy some time, time people could use to take a breath, to make a different decision (not exact quote). Because it doesn't stop with throwing the ring into the volcano (exact quote), a handshake is only a handshake, but a handshake can be a symbol (this is also what he wrote in Fifth Elephant), it is a chance to change.

I think this must be why in almost every book where people chose the change, they started to work day and night for a hundred years and it was still not enough but they were still working ...

I'm gonna skip doing quotes on this one for now.

It is indeed a young adult book. But she's only nine so of course it can't be the same level of sophistication as Nation or Amazing Maurice. It continues (more or less) Lord and Ladies, and feels really like an intro to Tiffany starting her witch career. But she is a Witch, just like Agnes has to be a Witch too. The witchcraft chooses you... (?) It feels very Narnia, and at some points Alice in Wonderland.

I ... I didn't start Discworld expecting it to be so much pain. How could he put so much Aching on a nine-year-old (?). But Pterry did write every one (except the wizards, whom I assume he didn't like either)(apart from Ponder and maybe Rincewind) with their own pain in life, their struggles, darkness, doubts, and ... and then there is Thief of Time, and there is Last Hero (well Last Hero is not very living-life, but just a little not-dying).

Did the first round of reading last January, and now has come back to this as I'm following the publication order. I didn't realise I didn't shelf Thief of Time before? My username sake book! If there is a book I can give more than 5 stars for, it would be this one. Second time is even better, as I can now see the foreshadowing and indicating of things from the beginning. And even without the structural tricks, ToT is still the best showing of life and the many balances and fights in it. And there is always the most special simile for me with the procrastinators.

It is a hard one to read, I guess; the metaphors are crazily multilayered and nuanced. But that is also what makes it the most fun, not the mention the deadily romantic final 5% of the book, the closure of the story.

I was talking to a friend earlier, during which I realised, how the stories/motives in the Disc books can resolve mostly happily is rather dependent on the fantastic fact that, the authority in the Disc, e.g. the gods, the men with power such as the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork and the Commander of the Watch, the best witches, the dwarf king, the noble vampire lady... are all fundamentally Nice People. This is a fact that I don't see how can become true in the Roundworld reality....

I probably have to skip the quotes for ToT, I underlined too much.......it's embarrassing to put that many out, and it would be practically piracy ((((

This time it's Disc Australia where Rincewind went and another land was trying to cope with this anomaly of an intruder out of his place. Pterry was throwing in a lot of Aussie customs here, sadly I'm not very familiar with them and probably can't spot them all (the annotation file is so long, I'd need some time to read through it xD). UU old wizards are again laughed at for their ridiculous and chaotic manness. Ponder, a new addition to the faulty since probably Soul Music, has more involvement here and acts like a somewhat normal bystander and provides more contraty opinons and views to it. But still, it's more like the first few wizards book than the last one Interesting Times, it's the journey-oriented kind of adventure-fantasy, so it's not as impressive on me. Speaking of, Interesting Times has more fun, probably because the not-Rincewind plot is provided by the Barbarians and The Red Army, not the UU wizards, and that brings more structure than random annoying arrogance of old men.

But to be fair I really liked the creator and the god of evolution parts. The essence of being. But ... what is the essence is also kind of subjective, but well, that's philosophy. It's always up for a debate.

Well favourite ones are Teddy Sparkles and Girl Power, only because I like fluff. These two are super sweet. First one, Missy's revenge on Scoundrels, is only showing Missy's evil method, with this sexist undertone, which is just okay. This one, the second one with the captured creature, the fourth with Venice and Griffin are all pretty standard. Teddy is fun because Teddy is annoying, Girl Power is fun because it's Annoying as in everyone is so annoying and annoyed () the last one is just so close to the end of Missy's end/series 10 finale that it feels heavy from beginning to end. But throughout the chronicles, I would say ... Missy is becoming nicer . Aw, Missy is really the best friend of the Doctor's, they are just so two sides of one renegade, not being puppet to their own people or anyone ... Of course they'd be together ... I never got into the Missy-Doctor thing before this but now I see some reasons ....

There's also a very nice line about the thought of expanding the country border, but I must stop somewhere.

Jingo is comparatively more messy than the other books around this time; groups are split and regrouped more often than usual, making the narrative a bit hard to grasp, and the mirroring a bit hard to summarise. But it is somehow necessary, because every one of these characters represents an attitude towards foreigners. When Witches Abroad was only running a light commentary on arrogant attitude when going abroad, Jingo is full out on trying to show as many aspects of racism and xenophobia as the story could manage.

(especially as Jingo is the western culture representative versus the desert natives, this makes such a nice pause from Dune (sorry). I suppose it's because in Jingo, there are a lot of characters who actually do respect the other races, and are trying to see everyone as equal, and even ( in the case of Sam Vimes) suspect/distrust his own people more than the foreingers, and generally, treating people as people and not tools. (I can't start to describe my despair every time when Lady Jessica thought, the Fremen would make such good army for us, good GOD.) As Irony, Dune would make good representation of white supremacy and chauvinism, but it is very discouraging for me to keep on reading ...... Jingo, on the opposite, has this hope that these actually okay people have a chance to stop the war and bring peace and do good. Even though these people still all have their flaws.)

Besides Jingoism, on Vimes and Ahmed, Jingo talks about the duty of the police. Pterry has been very distinct about a police force and a military force, now that I see it, Night Watch is indeed directly following this thread of thought. Generally speaking, he wanted to say being a police (I have to leave out the man due to the mixed species in the Watch) doesn't mean take orders from the authority figure, the leader of the government. Being a police means being the protector of the Law, which comes from a general Good, I guess. From the decency and clear-headness and fairness that come from a clear conscience. It is being the protector of the City, keeping the city people living well, keeping the peace. Even sometimes it means to go against your king, which certainly took some courage (and this is the one time, well, generally, Disc is the one thing where I don't mind a it-runs-in-the-family). I suppose the Prince was indeed taken down by a policeman the size of a country - first by Vimes, then by his own country's feelings.

In Jingo, the justice for Little Crimes was being compromised in the face of the Big Crimes, which made Vimes very frustrated. It is a compromise, and Vimes being the straightforward terrier that he was, felt very sad about it. The Juggling has to be left to Vetinari, who took it with great grace and skills and happiness, I imagine. Vetinari is a compromise after all. He is a much evolved character through the series, I wait to see what he will do next time I see him.

I hope the sky adaptation do it justice. It's mainly because sky adaptation of Going Postal is so ..... mediocre! I worry Maurice adaptation will be condescending because it's children's book subseries among the Disc, but Pterry is never condescending to children and that is why it is so fucking Doctor Who (x)

I didn't realise it was published the same year as Thief of Time, that explains why these two have the overlap of the emerging of the concept of a self, a Me, that sets you as an individual apart from a ... distribution. A state of safety only because you don't perceive danger and possibility and choice and all the stuff you could not do unless there is a self.

And then it goes to the theme of after discovering you are sth more, how to not descend to the basics, how to ... balance the basics and the higher ... let's say dreams. Rules that set you apart from beasts - oh then this is part of Night Watch concepts too.

Then it goes back to the hard work of peacefully building a co-existence through talk and organising, like in Small Gods. And manipulation and compromising, like Vetinari and Vimes. Pterry really did believe his methods I guess ...

Then it goes to a bit of the Going Postal showbiz, of selling illusions to comfort the public, yes manipulation, yes lying. And at the same time, some of them are just very aware of using stories (c.f. Witches Abroad). I think here in Dangerous Beans, he went from believing the dreams to realising the reality is not like the dreams, and then to it's not the same but there's no reason to stop making the reality approach the dreams ( in a realistic and ambiguously moral way ). And this I suppose is a often recurring theme in his books (Hogfather, Nation, Small Gods).

It's just hard. In a way ... maybe Pterry does calm me in my working, in that 'it's not perfect but it works, let's see this through one day at a time' and 'it's normal to feel lost and worried and scared and in danger and blaming yourself when you are looking at/leading into this unknown future'.

(but why David Tennant as Dangerous Beans! I feel he suits Maurice best. But Hugh Laurie is good for Maurice too, that I admit. I just feel ... Aziraphale is more Dangerous Beans. Crowley could be Darktan maybe? oh! David Tennant should be Sardines! (((((