home | Psychology of Video Games | contact | about | RSS 
« Movie Review: Casablanca (1942) |Main| Summer 2010 Photo Dump »
Book Review: Moving Pictures May 8, 2009
...at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things.
In other words, "I'm feeling a bit boxed in by this genre I'm working because it prevents me from using some of these ideas I've got." He goes on:
Outside the boundaries of the universe lie the raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas.
Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in.
Or, "So I'm going to do it anyway. Just roll with it."
And to be sure, it's not hard to roll with it. We get to see Victor Tugelbend, professional wizardry student at Unseen University turned "Holy Wood" actor and accidental savior of the Disk. We get to see the trolls a bit more fleshed out (so to speak) as a race, and Pratchett has a lot of fun playing off their stony nature. And, perhaps best of all, we get Gaspode the Wonder Dog, a flea-bitten mutt possessed of speech and above average intelligence, but no good way of making many people recognize it. Gaspode the Wonder Dog is awesome. I want to get a dog just so I can name him "Gaspode."
And of course as you might expect we get tons of clever parodies of classic Hollywood movies, some of which rely on hundreds of pages of setup. In particular there was a bit at the end that sublimely mashed up King Kong and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
So, I'd probably rank this near the bottom of the Diskworld books that I've read so far, but that certainly doesn't mean that it's not good. It's just not AS good. And, as usual, it's pretty quotable:
He gave Gaspode a long, slow stare, which was like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest.
She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.
By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.
Azhural raised his staff. "It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork," he said. "We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes...[It's a Blue's Brothers reference]
Comments (0) |
Permalink | 
File under:
Books
Tags: Book Review, Discworld, Moving Pictures, Terry Pratchett
