Tuesday 13 November 2012

Review: Hogfather


Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
eBook

My rating: 4 of 5 stars





The 20th discworld novel, Hogfather, was published in 1996. It's the 4th story around Death, who as always (almost) gives up his true profession to do something else.

It all starts with the Auditors, who are something like arch-enemies for Death and decide to get rid of the Hogfather to bring more "order" to the world. They are able to find an assassin creative enough to pull this off.
The consequences are: 1) Death takes up the role of the Hogfather, 2) Susan gets pulled towards her grandfather's job again, 3) free belief sloshes around, creating a number of interesting gods, fairies and so on, 4) this of course gets the wizards involved.
The showdown between Susan, the Auditors, Death and the Hogfather was a bit confusing to me, but at least I know who won.

Hogfather introduces some new characters and places, like creepy Teatime and the realm of the Tooth Fairy. There are also a lot of nightmarish creatures involved, which is just as well since Susan is a governess now and can deal with those. Oh, and Hex is evolving quite disturbingly...
Fun and entertaining as any Terry Pratchett, and worth the movie it got.


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Sunday 4 November 2012

Review: Feet of Clay


Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett
eBook

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Feet of Clay is the 19th discworld novel Terry Pratchett published, back in 1996. It's also the third book about Ankh-Morpork's City Watch.

Commander Sir Samuel Vimes has settled in his new life as the husband of the richest woman in town, who is also an aristocrat. He's not very happy with his new social circle, though.
Vimes puts a lot of work into the Watch, which by now also employs a number of dwarfs and trolls (to the dismay of Ankh-Morkpork's elite). My new favourite dwarf is Cheery Littlebottom, who is an alchemist. She's a female, but dwarfs don't regularly show their gender... Angua, who tries to hide the fact that she's a werewolf from the dwarf, encourages her, lending her lipstick, earrings and other things, which shocks the other dwarfs, normal people and - most of all - Captain Carrot. Somehow, she reminds me of Abby of Navy CIS, who is also not a regular specimen of the forensic scientist...
When two old men are found murdered, Cheery get's to investigate the murder scenes, but most of her work in this novel is focused on finding how the Patrician is being poisoned every night, despite being severely guarded. There are influential forces at work, who'd like to see him replaced with an easily to guide king.
Other things happening in Feet of Clay include the strange behaviour of the city's golems and Angua trying to break up with Carrot, for his own good. One of these days...

I've always enjoyed reading a good thriller, when you're kept in the dark about the identity of the murderer and are surprised at the end. Located on the discworld, this gets to be funny as well as exciting.
Feet of Clay is well worth the read, although you should probably have read the other Watch novels before, so you know the characters.


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