Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2014
384 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man with a flat cap and a sliding rule. He has produced a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements - earth, air, fire, and water - and it's soon drawing astonished crowds.
To the consternation of Ankh-Morpork's formidable Patrician, Lord Vetinari, no one is in charge of this new invention. This needs to be rectified, and who better than the man he has already appointed master of the Post Office, the Mint, and the Royal Bank: Moist von Lipwig. Moist is not a man who enjoys hard work - unless it is dependent on words, which are not very heavy and don't always need greasing. He does enjoy being alive, however, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse.
Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs, and some very angry dwarfs if he's going to stop it all from going off the rails...
"Starred Review.As always, Pratchett's unforgettable characters and lively story mirror the best, the worst, and the oddest bits of our own world, entertaining readers while skewering social and political foibles in a melting pot of humanity, dwarfs, trolls, goblins, vampires, and a werewolf or two." - Publishers Weekly
"Most aficionados, however, will be on the look-out for in-jokes and references from previous novels - of which there is no shortage. Discworld's success, like that of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories, has never been driven by the plots... It is at the level of the sentence that Pratchett wins his fans." - The Times (UK)
"From the first, the novels demonstrated Pratchett's eye for telling detail and the absurdities of the human condition... He remains one of the most consistently funny writers around; a master of the stealth simile, the time-delay pun and the deflationary three-part list." - The Guardian
"A spectacular novel, and a gift from a beloved writer to his millions of fans... A tremendous synthesis of everything that makes Pratchett one of the world's most delightful writers." - Cory Doctorow, author of Boing Boing
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sir Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983.
In all, he is the author of fifty bestselling books. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Worldwide sales of his books now stand at 70 million, and they have been translated into thirty-seven languages.
Pratchett's latest novel, Dodger is out now. Other new publications include a collection of short fiction works, entitled A Blink of the Screen and The Compleat Ank-Morpork – a guide to Discworld's premier city, which includes a street map, trade directory and gazetteer.
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... Full Biography
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Link to Terry Pratchett's Website
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