Another Book I Read: Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
by Jason Edwards
3 weeks, 3 books so far, and hey hey hey, I’m almost done with week 4 and book 4. But Week 3: Unseen Academicals, latest in the long-running Discworld series. It’s a fantasy novel, it’s a series novel, and for those reasons alone you probably won’t read it. Or, for those reasons you will read it—my point is, this “review” will have nothing to do whatsoever with whether you read the book or not. You’re either already a Pratchett fan, or not. I could try to give you a general overview of why Terry Pratchett is one of the greatest writers of all time, but I don’t have the space here or the patience.
This time Pterry’s taking on Soccer, called football in his native UK. Pratchett’s oeuvre of late is this sort of quasi-satrical “magepunk*” treatment of some popular cultural element
. Ankh Morpork, largest city on the disc, has seen the development of Banks, Newspapers, and the Post Office in recent novels, and previous novels have looked at how a world run on magic would handle Moving Pictures, The Phantom of the Opera, women in the military, and rock n roll, to name just a few.
Either because they were newer to me then, or because he’s evolved as a writer, I like Pratchett’s older stuff better. I do like these new books too, don’t get me wrong. I like the satire. But I prefer the older, more fantastical, less magepunk stuff. It’s starting to feel a bit forced. In Unseen Academicals, Rincewind makes a token cameo, Death makes a token cameo, even The Librarian’s appearance seems a bit pasted-in. Mind you, this is in comparison to the rest of the discworld novels—even this latest work stands shelves above a lot of the sci fi, fantasy, and mainstream fiction out there for popular consumption.
I’ll have to admit, though, that reading this book on my e-reader may have contributed to my feeling things were justa bit disjointed. Pratchett doesn’t use chapters, per se, but he does use white space to separate sections, and my e-reader may have squashed some of those together, interrupting my flow. I am big champion for e-readers, (I’m going to write a fiery diatribe defending them, stay tuned) but it might just be the case that Pterry is best in real-book format. I’ll let you know when his next one comes out.
Or, I’ll dive into some of his other series work that I haven’t read yet. The man’s written a Metric Butt Ton of stuff, including young-adult books. I’m not here to compare Sir Terry to J.K. Rowling, but it would be rewarding for “kids” (that includes you, adults) who loved Harry Potter to go read The Bromeliad, The Johnny Maxwell trilogy, and the Tiffany Aching novels. These are guaranteed gold for book lovers.
*Magepunk– I made this up. If “steampunk” is looking at how modern times or the future would look/feel with Victorian-era technology at the core of all science, then “magepunk” is the same thing, except magic is the magic behind modern technology.