Small Gods, Terry Pratchett (1992)
In my ongoing, non entirely chronological reading of Terry Pratchett, this appears to be roughly around the point where he started to ramp up as a novelist: while I enjoyed all of the Discworld books before this (though I don't seem to have gotten to Moving Pictures, Reaper Man, or Eric yet), I can't remember any of them having those moments of knock-the-breath-out-of-you wonder that good Pratchett does. Small Gods does, some of them at the expense of material in the earlier books which Pratchett goes back to critically: Om goes up to the heavens and kicks around gods playing the same sorts of games with humans that drove The Color of Magic.
Structurally, Pratchett does some interesting things with repetition: the several episodes where dead souls set out across the desert, and the eagle.
Terry Pratchett fascinates me. It seems like really prolific authors more usually evolve from writing good books to mass-producing bad ones; Pratchett just gets better.
Structurally, Pratchett does some interesting things with repetition: the several episodes where dead souls set out across the desert, and the eagle.
Terry Pratchett fascinates me. It seems like really prolific authors more usually evolve from writing good books to mass-producing bad ones; Pratchett just gets better.