jonn reviewed Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld -- 7)
All the king's camels
5 stars
This book is quite a strange one. It almost apologises for the power for the sake of greatness, talks a lot about the runaway effects and—most importantly—it is the first time Pratchett has played around with the "international" Discworld in earnest. I like that actually this book is very centrist, for he lack of a better word. I also liked the bit from @Didactylos review "narrative oscillates between absurd and deeply disturbing".
There are a couple of deep quotes that makes me appreciate this re-read and suggest that there's probably going to be one more re-read in my life. One about Artela, the late wife (or main concubine?) of the Pharaoh failing to remember not to swim in the river:
He missed Artela. There’d been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him. Maybe it …
This book is quite a strange one. It almost apologises for the power for the sake of greatness, talks a lot about the runaway effects and—most importantly—it is the first time Pratchett has played around with the "international" Discworld in earnest. I like that actually this book is very centrist, for he lack of a better word. I also liked the bit from @Didactylos review "narrative oscillates between absurd and deeply disturbing".
There are a couple of deep quotes that makes me appreciate this re-read and suggest that there's probably going to be one more re-read in my life. One about Artela, the late wife (or main concubine?) of the Pharaoh failing to remember not to swim in the river:
He missed Artela. There’d been a terrible row about taking a wife from outside the Kingdom, and some of her foreign ways had puzzled and fascinated even him. Maybe it was from her he’d got the strange dislike of pyramids; in Djelibeybi that was like disliking breathing. But he’d promised that Pteppic could go to school outside the kingdom. She’d been insistent about that. “People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.”
If only she’d remembered about not swimming in the river…
Which, to me is talking about the balance between the creative approach and appreciating the fact that standard approaches are standard for a reason.
And a couple of really punchy ones:
Dil shivered. “That’s no guideline, take it from me. What’s an engineer?”
“Oh, a builder of aqueducts,” said IIb quickly. “They’re the coming thing, you know.”
Dil stood up, a little shakily.
“I,” he said, “need a drink. Let’s find the river.”
And one which isn't too smart, but I missed it on the first read:
“I’m sure you’re capable of doing it yourself. You look like a man who does things himself, if ever I saw one,” she added sourly.