Review: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
I finished one of my Christmas books from bellanna in the early hours of this morning. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett, is a great story of a con artist given the choice between death for previous crimes, or reviving the Ankh-Morpork post office. Moist von Lipwig chooses the post office of course, otherwise it would be a very short novel. Reading the hanging scene near the beginning of the book was a bit grim in the light of Saddam Hussein's recent demise.
The Discworld continues to develop - the art of semaphore and sending messages by flashes of light and dark has grown into the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company who can get a message from on side of the central continent to the other side, thousands of miles away, in a few hours. Their success had been the downfall of the post office. It was nice to see previous main characters in Ankh-Morpork, especially the City Watch, given a more back seat view of the narrative so von Lipwig could hog the limelight.
I know from previous interviews that Terry Pratchett likes to make little notes all the time of future ideas, and I could see one being signposted - a chess like board game of Trolls vs. Dwarfs called "Thud!". This is the title of the next Discworld novel, which I will be reading after "Hey Nostradamus!" by Douglas Coupland.
The Discworld continues to develop - the art of semaphore and sending messages by flashes of light and dark has grown into the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company who can get a message from on side of the central continent to the other side, thousands of miles away, in a few hours. Their success had been the downfall of the post office. It was nice to see previous main characters in Ankh-Morpork, especially the City Watch, given a more back seat view of the narrative so von Lipwig could hog the limelight.
I know from previous interviews that Terry Pratchett likes to make little notes all the time of future ideas, and I could see one being signposted - a chess like board game of Trolls vs. Dwarfs called "Thud!". This is the title of the next Discworld novel, which I will be reading after "Hey Nostradamus!" by Douglas Coupland.