Book Review: The Discworld Graphic Novels by Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: The Discworld Graphic Novels: The Colour of Magic & The Light Fantastic
Publication Info: New York : Harper, c2008.
The Colour of Magic

• Originally published: Innovative, 1991
• Illustrated by Steven Ross
• Adapted by Scott Rockwell
• Lettered by Vickie Williams
• Edited by David Campiti

The Light Fantastic

• Originally published: Innovative, 1992
• Adapted by Scott Rockwell
• Illustrated by Steven Ross
• Painted by Mira Fairchild
• Lettered by Michelle Beck

Other Books Read by the Same Author:

• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
• Monstrous Regiment
• The Carpet People
• Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection

Summary/Review:

In this graphic novel introduces Terry Pratchett’s Discworld through an adaptation of the first two novels in the series.  The central character is the hapless wizard Rincewind who is charged with being the guide for Twoflower, the first tourist ever on Discworld.  The pair, along with Twoflower’s Luggage (a sentient chest that moves on tiny legs), have a series of adventures that play on the tropes of high fantasy and sword and sorcery stories.  Meanwhile the gods themselves and a powerful book of magic called Octavo have plans for them.

The adventures are ludicrous and fun and wonderfully illustrated. If there’s a flaw is that the story seems to skip around a bit making me wonder how much of the original novel’s story was abridged for space. Nevertheless, it’s serves as a delightful introduction to Discworld.

Rating: ****

Book Review: Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection by Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: Terry Pratchett: The BBC Radio Drama Collection 
Narrator: Full cast performances (see links from descriptions of each radio drama for the names of cast & crew)
Other Books Read by the Same Author:

• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
• Monstrous Regiment
• The Carpet People

Publication Info:  BBC Books (2019)
Summary/Review:

I’ve been meaning to read more Terry Pratchett, so what better way to start than with seven of his novels dramatized by actors at the BBC.  Most of these novels are set in Pratchett’s Discworld, a flat planet on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle.  The setting is similar to the medieval fantasy and fairy tale stories with comedic and satirical factors.

Mort (****)

Death, a recurring character in the Discworld stories, decides to take on the teenage Mort as an apprentice.  But when Mort prevents the assassination of Princess Keli he creates an alternate universe that threatens reality.  This is a really funny and clever novel.

Wyrd Sisters (**1/2)

One of the issues I had with these radio dramas is that the audio quality wasn’t always good and it was particularly hard to understand the Shakespearean stage whispers in this production.  That may have marred my enjoyment of this story about three witches and an acting troupe.  The play within a play  parodies elements of Macbeth, Hamlet, and other works of Shakespeare.

Guards! Guards! (***1/2)

This book introduces the City Watch, generally considered incompetent, but put to the test when a group of miscreants summon a dragon as part of a plot to put a new king on the throne.  Lead by Samuel Vines, and inspired by earnest newcomer Carrot, the  Watch rises to the occasion.

Eric (***)

A parody of Faust, thirteen-year-old demonologist, Eric Thursley accidentally rescues the wizard Rincewind from Dungeon Dimensions (a Discworld version of hell).  Eric is granted three wishes but they are fulfilled with “monkey’s paw” style consequences.

Small Gods (****)

The Great God Om manifests himself in the form of a tortoise to a simple religious novitiate named Brutha, who turns out to be the only human who truly believes in Om.  This book somehow works both as a skewering of religion but also shows the positive side of religious practice.

Night Watch (****)

Commander of the City Watch Samuel Vines is pursuing a dangerous criminal, Carcer, when they are both transported back in time.  Vimes must take on the identity of John Keel and mentor his younger self through the conflict that ensues.

Only You Can Save Mankind (**1/2)

The only story not set in Discworld, but instead in England during the time of the Gulf War in 1991.  12-year-old Johnny Maxwell is playing a video game about an alien attack, when the alien ScreeWee surrender to him.  In a reality-bending adventure Johnny is responsible for helping seemingly real-life aliens get back home.  This story seems to anticipate massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Breadfruit by Célestine Hitiura Vaite

Around the World for a Good Book selection for French Polynesia

Author: Célestine Hitiura Vaite
Title: Breadfruit
Publication Info: Auckland, N.Z. : Vintage, 2000.
Summary/Review:

Set in Tahiti, this novel is the story of Materena, a young woman in Tahiti who lives with her somewhat shiftless boyfriend Pito and their children.  At the beginning of the book Pito drunkenly proposes to Materena and she dreams about the wedding while wondering if he really meant it.  The book is episodic linking together vignettes of everyday life in Tahiti, usually with Materena being visited by family and friends who share their adventures.  The novel is mostly light and funny, but there’s an undercurrent of the reveal poverty and effects of colonialism (which manifests in the book primarily through the French police officers).  It’s a delightful and charming book and Vaite does a great job in creating the characters and their dialogue.

Rating: ***1/2

#FridayFictioneers – The Fair Pole

It was the bottom of the 5^th in an otherwise uneventful game between the Tigers and the Royals when fans in the right field bleachers noticed something out of the ordinary. A viral TikTok post summed it up: “Holy crap! The foul pole’s become sentient!”

In an interviews with KSHB News, the pole noted “When a fly ball hits me it’s a homerun so I’m actually a fair pole.”

Seeking greater fulfillment in life than watching baseball games and with a keen sense of right and wrong, the fair pole was later appointed a judge at the Jackson County Courthouse.

---

Friday Fictioneers is a weekly photo prompt flash fiction challenge on Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Addicted to Purple blog.  See additional stories by other writers here!

Book Review: Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

Author: Kira Jane Buxton
Title: Hollow Kingdom
Narrator: Robert Petkoff
Publication Info:New York ; Boston : Grand Central Publishing, 2019
Summary/Review:

This novel depicts a zombie apocalypse in the greater Seattle region of Washington as narrated by S.T., a domesticated American crow kept as a pet by a loutish man named Big Jim. When Big Jim and the other humans turn feral, S.T. must flee with his best friend, a dim but loyal hound dog named Dennis.  Thus begins a journey of discovery for S.T., raised since hatching to be human, to get in touch with his crow identity.  S.T. learns that his mission in life is to ally with wild birds to help rescue domestic animals who are at risk from both zombie humans and larger predators (including animals escaped from the zoo).

The crude humor of Hollow Kingdom reminds me a lot of the writing of Christopher Moore.  I felt the metaphor of humanity addicted to the internet and screens was heavy handed, and my interest started to lag in the last part of the book.  Nevertheless though it is a creative work of fiction with a unique perspective.

Recommended books:

• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Author: Bill Bryson
Title: A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
Narrator: Rob McQuay
Other Books Read by the Same Author:

• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• Notes from a Small Island
• In a Sunburned Country
• The Mother Tongue
• I’m A Stranger Here Myself
• The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
• Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
• At Home: A Short History of Private Life
• Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United…
• One Summer: America, 1927
• The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
• The Body: A Guide for Occupants
• Bill Bryson’s African Diary

Publication Info: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 1997
Summary/Review:

My fondness for Bill Bryson’s travel writing was shaken by revisiting The Lost Continent and discovering that it wasn’t anywhere as good as I recalled. So I’m happy to say that my favorite Bryson book, A Walk in the Woods, is still very, very good.  Granted Bryson’s misanthropic crankiness is still off-putting and there’s way too many fat jokes.  But Bryson’s memoir of hiking the Appalachian Trail is enriched by his research into the trail’s history, nature, and various anecdotes of hikers’ experiences.  His narrative is also improved by Bryson sharing the experience with his old friend Stephen Katz, who is endearing as much as he is the total opposite of the type of person you’d expect to hike the AT.

Recommended books:

• Grandma Gatewood’s walk : the inspiring story of the woman who saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery
• The Appalachian Trail Reader by David Emblidge

Rating: ****

Book Review: The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: The Carpet People
Narrator: Stephen Briggs
Publication Info: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Summary/Review:

This book was Terry Pratchett’s first published novel, written when he was 17, and then rewritten in 1992. The people in this story, a tribe called the Munrungs, literally live in a carpet.  Their world is a forest of hairs, they mine dropped coins for metal, used matchsticks for wood, and remove varnish from “achairleg.”  Their world is threatened by a natural phenomenon called the Fray, which is most like a vacuum cleaner.

After their village is destroyed by the Fray, the Munrungs journey across the carpet under their leader, Glurk.  They encounter other peoples including the Mouls, who worship the Fray, and the Wights, who know the future.  Together they need to work out a solution for mutual survival.  There’s a lot of humor here  about monarchy and bureaucracies as well as working in references to ordinary life in our world.

Rating: ***

Book Review: The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson

Author: Bill Bryson
Title: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
Narrator: Kerry Shales
Publication Info: BBC Audio, 2005 [Originally published in 1989]
Previously Read By The Same Author:

• • A Short History of Nearly Everything
  • A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
  • Notes from a Small Island
  • In a Sunburned Country
  • The Mother Tongue
  • I’m a Stranger Here Myself
  • Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
  • At Home: A Short History of Private Life
  • Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
  • One Summer: America, 1927
  • The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

Summary/Review:

Revisiting an old favorite of mine leads to wonder what I once saw in this book.  The Lost Continent is the first of the many travel books that Bryson wrote and the first one that I read way back in 1993.  I’ve included it on my Favorite Books of All Time lists but will have to reconsider that.  Bryson’s schtick is that he’s often cranky but in this book he’s just downright nasty and describes everyone he encounters as dumb.

Bryson (who may be a distant relation since I have Bryson’s in my family tree) grew up in Iowa, but as a young adult emigrated to England.  The premise of this book is his return to the United States and driving around the country to recreate the vacation travels of his childhood while looking for the amalgam of the American small town.  He finds that most towns have been eclipsed by strip malls and highways.  And he makes some good observations about why it is that some places can be made beautiful – Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Colonial Williamsburg – while the ordinary places are the drab and ugly right up to their edge.

I’ll have to review Bryson’s later books but I feel that he becomes less of a nasty misanthrope and more of a cuddly curmudgeon.  More importantly, he also begins to research the history of places he visits, interview local experts, and incorporate that into his travelogue.  At any rate, the last time I read this book was 2001, when I wrote a more positive review, so I will include that so you can see how my feelings have changed over time:

One of Bryson’s earliest travel books and maybe one of his best since at this point he’s writing from the perspective of an average person driving around America as opposed to the famous travel writer he’d later become. Bryson’s search for the perfect American small town is also very pointed in its satire and criticism. The view of an American expatriate has a special appeal to it.

Rating: **

Book Review: Jedi Academy by Jeffrey Brown

Author: Jeffrey Brown
Title: Jedi Academy 
Publication Info: Scholastic Inc., 2013
Summary/Review:

Jedi Academy is a story set in the Star Wars universe about 200 years before the movies, and features Roan Novachez, a farmboy from Tatooine selected to attend the Jedi Academy on Coruscant.  Drawing on elements of Hogwarts and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, this richly-illustrated early reader book follows Roan through his misadventures and struggles to fit in with more advanced users of the Force.  I think I was a kid I would’ve been annoyed by the many references to schools in our universe, but as an adult I’m less attached to pure canon to let that interfere with my enjoyment of some silly gags.  This is a good book, and the start of a series, for the young Star Wars fan in your life.

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Letters to The Hall of Presidents by Guy Hutchinson

Author: Guy Hutchinson
Title: Letters to The Hall of Presidents
Publication Info: Independently published (May 22, 2020)
Summary/Review:

I saw this as a bargain for Kindle and thought it might be cute.  It turns out that these were not actual letters written to Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents but a humor book where the author makes up letters from school students to the Presidents and their response.  It’s only 99 pages with a lot of illustrations, so I read it anyway.  The problem with this humor book is that there is nothing in it that is funny. In fact, I kind of hate it.

Rating: 1/2 star