Book review clean-up

[kalquessa]

Am woefully behind on book reviews. As a result, these will be rather short and incomplete. I start forgetting things about a book almost as soon as I put it down, so there's no point in trying to frame complete thoughts about these.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Prachett:Yay for Prachett! Hilarity abounds, especially for those who have read Tolkien

Comments

[mollyringle]

I read The God of Small Things a number of years ago. Oddly, I don't even remember the twincest--must have blocked it out of my mind--but in general I came away with an impression of "Interesting place to read about, but highly relieved I don't have to live there." Bit of a bummer all around, too.

I say that with the remains of Indian delivery food here on my desk, of course. So I'm a fan in some ways...

[kalquessa]

Yeah, the book, in general was a downer. Its main themes seem to be "People have created evil arbitrary laws about who can be loved and how, and those laws should be broken, only when you break them, your life starts to go down the drain" and "really, it's all going down the drain, so why not?"

But Indian culture/food/scenery is fun. As long as I don't have to put up with the associated down-sides of anything like malaria or mud or bacteria-heavy living conditions. Hurrah for vicarious living!

[carbonelle]

Have you read anything by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni? Her book The Conch Bearer for children is a decent fantasy, but what I really loved was Mistress of Spices.

[kalquessa]

Mmm, both sound delicious from their Amazon summaries. Have added them to my wishlist.

[ayoub]

Vetinari is awesome :)

Guards! Guards! Is a great book :)

[kalquessa]

Yay for the correct spelling! I could not for the life of me remember what it was, and googling was no good.

[ayoub]

Vimes becomes a bigger and better character as he appears in more books.. The Fifth Elephant teaches you a lot about him :)

[kalquessa]

So I've heard, though I liked him quite well in this book, as it is. Im my brain he is played by a youngish Russel Crowe. This may be because he reminded me a bit of Jack Aubrey toward the beginning of this book.

[terrylj]

When evangelizing for Pratchett, I've frequently said that "Guards! Guards!" is not as good as the rest of the Night Watch books.

I recently re-read it and realized that I was phrasing that completely wrong. It is just as good as the rest of them. It's just that the characters grow and change a bit, and I like them better the more they develop, so they feel a bit off to me in that first book after I've gotten used to them the other way. But if you look at in terms of overall character development, it's really an awesome book.

Or, to condense: I agree!

[kalquessa]

I think I know what you mean. *laughs* We get so attached to these guys, don't we? *schnoogles them*