Reading roundup: The Shepherd's Crown
57. Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown -- This is such a weird and difficult book for me to talk about, because first, there's the fact that it's the last Discworld book -- just reading the blurb on the rear inside flap, talking about PTerry in past tense, made me tear up. And then there's the book itself, which -- I really can't talk about this
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i absolutely see what you mean re: not having enough time to put all the technical advancement and more diversity into action in the organic way. i call it "cleaning house", the urgency and the - straightforwardness? more telling? of the last books - the desire to leave everything in order.
(and yes, geoffrey's plotline was the weakest in the whole book, and could've been excised without any problems whatsoever. but i figure he had to be in the world before the world was finished, and so, well. he can be).
but the rest, oh, yeah. oh, granny. i cried for hours over it, over the detached calm of it, over grief and washing floors (this is what we did; i remember sweeping the corridor about like... thirty minutes after grandfather died, because it Had To Be Done), over this farewell. over the dedication. this is a good last book, seed or no, and i can't believe that it's the last book, ever. damn it, universe.
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Yes, I can definitely see that -- a useful way to think about it (and... very fitting, given this particular book).
but i figure he had to be in the world before the world was finished, and so, well. he can be
This makes a lot of sense, and yes, I don't begrudge this, I respect this, even though Geoffrey doesn't really have a story.
Oh, I meant to say and keep forgetting to say -- the last Discworld thing I read before this book was A Blink of the Screen, and the last thing I read in that was "The Sea and Little Fishes" (the Granny short story), which I'd left for last. So in a weird way, the beginning of this book felt like the continuation/ending of "The Sea and Little Fishes", which worked remarkably well, and the the rest felt like a separate story ( ... )
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I still can't believe he's gone. :(
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Thank you! :) I like the way it turned out :)
I can't believe he is gone, either... But I'm glad we got this book as a good-bye at least...
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Exactly, an excellent way to put it! Like, whatshisname, the slightly Sue-ish boy with the goat, felt like he needed a bit more fleshing out, and he kept implying that there was something wrong with Nanny Ogg (like when she didn't notice that one of her ornaments had been moved), perhaps that her drinking had moved into straight-up alcoholism... It was strange.
Granny's card and Nanny's reaction and Ridcully with the letters... It was less like reading something sad in a book and more like losing an actual person.
Oh, no. Oh, oh, no. This, and your subsequent thoughts, actually got me teared up all over again. Like you, Snuff gave me a scare, and I did at least entertain the idea that he was setting up a death for Vetinari, but, again like you, I somehow never even considered the fact that Esme might not be eternal. And it was seeing all these calm, unflappable characters so absolutely floored, so at a loss for what to do - Mustrum Ridcully weeping, fergawdsakes, and Nanny Ogg suddenly being all alone, and that bit ( ... )
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...And on the other hand, there were bits like this. This was another place that felt unfinished - he needed to be dirtied up a bit, the way PTerry was so good at. Like, Esme wouldn't have been half so interesting if she didn't have to struggle against her nature to be The Good One, and some of my favorite Tiffany moments are when she thinks she knows best but really doesn't, or when she's pushing back against the attitudes of the people around her, or really whenever she was in any situation when she wasn't completely and unequivocally right. (Sorry, I seem to have developed a Geoffrey Thing.)
Young Feegles wearing their kilts too low, with underpants peeking out was fairly amusing.
Hey, at least we now have confirmation that they WEAR underpants! XD
I thought about it and decided I wanted something random, non-symmetric and with a lot of different bits, like a shamble.Oooh, excellent idea ( ... )
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there was something wrong with Nanny Ogg (like when she didn't notice that one of her ornaments had been moved), perhaps that her drinking had moved into straight-up alcoholism.
I remembered you mentioning that and so was on the lookout, and I think nearest as I can tell, it's not so much that Nanny has a standing drinking problem (I mean, she has a drinking... opposite of a problem, I guess, normally) and more that Granny's death was doing weird things to her. Like, those things all felt like transient effects of grief to me. But there really isn't anything done with that to confirm or disprove that hypothesis or any other, I feel like.
but, again like you, I somehow never even considered the fact that Esme might not be eternal. I'm very glad to hear you say that, because in retrospect it felt kind of dim not to have entertained that possibility, but I do think that's ( ... )
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