Review: Unseen Academicals

[angelophile]

I've been hitting a few new releases over the past week or so - I've finished Terry Pratchett's latest and am onto the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel. But first about the Pratchett.

Unseen Academicals is the latest Discworld novel and, like Making Money, The Truth and Going Postal other recent entries in the series, it focuses on the idea of taking a modern concept - in this case, football - into the Discworld setting.

The trouble is that it becomes clear very early on that the book doesn't really know what it wants to do. Is it an intelligent comment on individuality vs tribalism? Is it a funny book about the wizards attempting to learn football? Is it a romance story? Is it an introspective on being the best you can be, no matter where you came from? The answer is: probably.

And the trouble with trying to be so many things is that it ends up not being anything much. Oh, it's funny enough, but with too many characters and plotlines fighting for attention - it starts off being about the wizards and they soon end up being more like cameos by the end of the book with their plotline forgotten as the new (and, frankly, blander) characters take over. The new characters, Glenda, Juliet and Mr Nutt and so forth are from the same stable that brought forth Moist, Christine and Pteppic and a number of other characters that strike me as being equally unmemorable. There's loose ends that never get resolved, details that don't quite ring true to characters/scenarios from previous books, and stray bits of story that just don't fit in anywhere.

Then there are the cameos, be they the Librarian, Rincewind, Sam Vimes or whoever, who circle into the story's orbit without contributing much, often act vaguely out of character and don't appear to be there for any reason other than being there. Vetinari's appearance is worth the price of admission for the scene where he gets drunk but I'm not sure when he got to be so chatty and gregarious.

Although the book is enjoyable, Pratchett doesn't really seek to break the mold or take things to the next level, like he did with Nation. It was a book I found all too easy to put down - while usually I'd finish a Pratchett novel in a couple of days, this took almost a week to get through. It's not bad, it's just not that great either - sadly, part of the course for recent Pratchett.

Comments

[kirke-novak.livejournal.com]

I remember the days when I was hyperexcited about Pratchett's novels. These days, I'm more like "there is a new book? really? um... yay?" Non of the last books managed to captivate me the way the old one did.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

There's still some good ones. The Watch ones have been pretty good, with the possible exception of Jingo, as have been the witches novels, but generally speaking those with new characters have lacked the spark some of the older books managed. I think the trouble is it's got too formulaic sticking in Ankh Morpork all the time. Some new settings would be nice, in combination with new characters and plots that aren't simply the "take a modern concept and introduce it into the Discworld."

Of course, the Monstrous Legion filled those quotas and I thought it was one of the worst Discworld books, but no harm in trying.