[Review] Making Money and Mort, by Terry Pratchett

[digitaldiscipline]

I went on a mini Discworld binge in the run-up to vacation so I would have plane and hotel/pool/beach reading, and so I went with the three kickoff books for his grand arcs ("Mort" for Death; "Guards, Guards!" for the Night Watch, and "Wyrd Sisters" for them) and snagged "Making Money" because I was considering using it as a book club title for a group at the office, since, you know, I work at a credit union.

MORT is a fun introduction to the Big D, and an entertaining tale to boot, featuring derring do, daring dudes, and a couple of lovely satirizations of tropes, as is Pterry's wont. If you enjoy the Discworld stuff and somehow haven't read it, you will like it.

As the lattermost (maybe, I think?) of the Moist von Lipwig tales, MAKING MONEY drops the reader into a later-days version of Ankh-Morpork, where many of the machinations have already been machined, so it was a lot of adjustment for me, since I have only read a scant handful of the series thus far, and hadn't met any of the principals previously, but knew who they were by reputation and fandom exposure. It's kind of like a cheerfully Saturday-morning-cartoon version of Steven Brust's "Taltos" novels, with the rapscallion going straight, mostly.

Comments

[vatine]

I think there's von Lipwig in Raising Steam as well. But don't quote me on that, because I have only read it once and it was a long good while ago.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

There is. Everyone was making like he was a regular character and I was confused (having read a random number of the books), but Making Money is one I have not read, so that explains that!

[vatine]

He (von Lipwig) initially turns up in Going Postal, then expands his domain in Making Money, so he has priors...

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Ah. Going Postal is one of the other ones I haven't read.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

The first two Pratchett books I ever read were Pyramids and Guards, Guards. I laughed my ass off at both of them and don't think anything else he's done has measured up.

Or it could be a law of diminishing returns. Plus the fact that the only books in the series I like are the City Watch ones.