Quick book note: Monstrous Regiment

[redbird]

I just read Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment. It's a good book, and I like Polly and Maledict and Sgt. Jackrum, but I'm wondering whether it's me or Pratchett who's changed: I only laughed out loud once, and that was at one of the footnotes.

This time out, we get a religion that's stupid even by Discworld standards, with a god whose list of Abominations includes the color blue, leading his followers to try not to look at the sky. Vimes and Angua turn up, briefly, but I get a feeling Pratchett may be tired of Ankh-Morpork.

Comments

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

Pratchett. He as been slowly getting more serious and a bit darker through the entire series. And he may be getting tired of AM, as the last 3 stories have been set outside of the main settings with just brief connections to the earlier stories.

He also may be suffering a bit from what happened to Superman decades ago - he kept becoming more and more powerful, leading to more and more powerful villains to be credible threats, until it was difficult to come up with a real threat. The Watch has become larger, trained, and organized, Grannie Weatherwax has been showing increasing abilities to some extent as well. Real challenges for the old characters is getting more difficult.

AS for stupid religions, I think it is difficult to compare a new one to those you're familiar with, you're used to the stupidity of those you've been exposed to for years.

a whole unknown world

[cthulhia]

to fill out.

100s of characters that, for some of us, require no explanation, but still have to be briefly summed up in every new book. (although, DEATH was not properly introduced, so maybe he is working past that now.) Makes it easier to just use mostly new and unknown characters, until a story cries out for one of the existing cast.