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Whats everyone reading?

Started by Paul faplad Finch, 30 March, 2009, 10:04:36 PM

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Dark Jimbo

My Discworld (re)read reaches Guards! Guards!

When I last read this series, as a teenager, I somehow contrived only to read one Watch book - and it was the second book, Men at Arms - so this was another completely new to me. Needless to say, a fantastic read. Eight books in and Pratchett just seems almost a different author to the man who penned the slightly messy Colour of Magic and its two faltering follow-ups. This is where Ankh-Morpork takes its place among the all-time great living, breathing fantasy cities.

My one real annoyance was that the utterly adorable 'Ankh-Morpork encounters Carrot Ironfounderson' plot is completely sidelined about a third of the way in by the more conventional 'Vimes versus the dragon' main plot. Carrot himself rapidly gets a little lost in the narrative, but then I know we'll get to see more of him in the next book, if nothing else. To be honest I could have stood to spend a lot more time with the Watch characters full-stop, one of the most genuinely likeable cop teams I've ever come across, but demands of the plot don't really allow it. Thankfully it's a great, great plot, rooted deeply in fantasy genre tropes but subverting them at every available turn - the big twist, where [spoiler]the dragon itself becomes King[/spoiler], is a barnstormer, and makes for a really thrilling and fascinating third act. Plus there's lots of Librarian, too, always a joy!
@jamesfeistdraws

TordelBack

Yup, Vimes and the Watch are my favourite Discworld story-focus, edging out even Granny and Tiffany Aching.  As you say, Guards Guards feels like it's written by a different writer to its predecssors, or at least one who has graduated from hey-this-fantasy-pastiche-formula-certainly-seems-to-be-shifting-copies to I-think-I'll-write-what-I-want-to-now.

Dark Jimbo

Quote from: TordelBack on 12 April, 2017, 12:31:05 PM
Yup, Vimes and the Watch are my favourite Discworld story-focus, edging out even Granny and Tiffany Aching.

I'm a bit mystified by the reading of my teenage self. I read to roughly the halfway point of the series (book 18, 19?) but only read one Watch book and one Witches book! Cannot remember for the life of me if it was a conscious decision or not - but I loved the two Watch/Witch books I did read!
@jamesfeistdraws

Tjm86

Last year I did a thematic read of Discworld, the Guards books, the Witches books, the Socio-cultural books (money, steam, journalism), the Death books.  Thoroughly enjoyed that until I realised that there are a couple of overlaps e.g Susan Sto-Lat turns up in the Thief of Time which I didn't really think of as a Death book.  Recently tried to re-read Strata and Dark Side of the Sun.  Once you get past the first gag they're pretty poor really.  Interesting from the point of view of seeing how a writer evolves.

Dark Jimbo

Unless there's a set of characters you particularly don't get on with, I think a chronological read's the best way to do it. The world really evolves organically, and as you say there's an increasing amount of character crossover.
@jamesfeistdraws

Tjm86

Very true, that said, it is also interesting to see how the characters evolve over the course of their respective books.  That's the beauty of Pratchett.

Theblazeuk

The Gnomes books are good too, and the Johnny books (even if Only You Can Save Mankind will be incredibly dated now!). Not tried the Carpet People since I was a kid... remember it being less humorous. Never got on with Dark Side and Strata - enjoyable enough but I remember thinking 'Discworld is so much better and I'd rather re-read Hitchhikers).

Tony Angelino

Unfortunately I could never get in to Terry Pratchett. I read about the first three or four Discworld books, thought they were okay but just never felt the need to go back after that. I even considered getting them on audiobook but found out they were being read by Tony Robinson who can be a bit dull at times.

I listened to all the Joe Abercrombie books on audiobook. They were read by Stephen Pacey (formerly of Blake's 7) and they were incredible. He could just do so many different voices and bring each character to life.

Definitely Not Mister Pops

The early discworld novels aren't great. They're just satire on the fantasy genre, a pastiche, a buncha scenes taking the piss outta fantasy tropes poorly stiched together. Discworld doesn't get good until Pratchett establishes the main players and builds rules in which the stories take place. Once the satire moves from general fantasy satire to specific themes, it's trancendential. The novels with Granny Weatherwax and Sam Vimes (later Tiffany Aching) are some of the best books you will ever read.

Neil Gaiman stated it perfectly. Pratchett was a very angry man. Vimes represents his anger at the system, Weatherwax, his anger at humanity's failures in general.
You may quote me on that.

The Adventurer

I wonder how Dredd and Vimes would get along...

THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

O Lucky Stevie!

Quote from: Theblazeuk on 20 March, 2017, 12:08:29 PM
Yet to check out his latest, Normal.

Normal takes an element of Injection into a completely different direction.  It's a short locked room mystery set inside a psychiatric institute for Tofflered-out futurists which Stevie found simultaneously profanely funny & existentially chilling.

Sweary & recommended.
"We'll send all these nasty words to Aunt Jane. Don't you think that would be fun?"

edgeworthy

Quote from: The Adventurer on 13 April, 2017, 03:38:23 AM
I wonder how Dredd and Vimes would get along...
I would imagine that Blackboard Monitor Vimes would be the only person in the universe with the nerve to arrest Dredd for acting outside of his jurisdiction. Even with a fleet of justice department battlecruisers hovering over Ankh-Morpork.

(And Joe Dredd would probably actually surrender, to prove a point, and be in custody for about 30 seconds, before being released on his own recognizance!)

Tony Angelino

I picked up the first issue of VAMPIRELLA by Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton, published by Dynamite.

I've never read a Vampirella comic before and know nothing about the character but thought I would give this one a chance.

I shouldn't have bothered though. The artwork is fine but the story was just terrible. Unless you are a Jimmy Broxton fan/completist don't bother with this.

positronic

Yeah, too true. Jimmy Broxton's artwork is quite good. Too bad he's wasted his time on this rambling, shambling, mess of a story, which (apart from a few introductory pages in issue #0) has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Vampirella as a character. A big big miss.

positronic

#6044
Judge Dredd: Origins TP - I know I'm several years behind the curve on this one. It was absolutely great. It's such a joy to see Carlos Ezquerra's artwork rendered in full-process color. The assembling of various details of the history of the Judge system and the Atom War which led to the Mega City One setting of present-day Dredd was probably long overdue. If anyone's curious to know more about background characters like Judge Fargo or President Robert L. Booth, this is the one to read that sorts everything out, and while the story does indeed get round to Dredd's actual origins, it's less Dredd's story ultimately than it is Fargo's and Booth's. No spoilers here for anyone who hasn't read it, but it turned out for me to be fortuitous that I had just re-read (for the first time in 30-odd years) The Cursed Earth (Uncensored), as Origins does indeed reference some specific details from that extended story arc. Wagner mostly weaves all the bits & pieces together deftly, and leaves us with a real 'stinger' of an ending.

Most of the story-within-a-story is being narrated by Dredd to a group of other judges, and if I had any caveats at all with the story, it's only that it isn't entirely clear how some of the details of events (in which he did not participate, or were before his time) are known to Dredd. Some of the sources are clear or could probably be presumed, while other details were secrets known only to the actual participants, so it's not entirely clear how the information being related came into Dredd's possession. So apart from that, and not thinking about the number of nuclear warheads it would take to devastate 80% of the North American continent, and the attendant ash cloud and nuclear winter which would inevitably follow... you just have to let it go as part of the basic premise for which there's no accounting. None of which should significantly detract from anyone's enjoyment of the story, I would think, so overall this gets 10/10 on the megascale.