I wanted to discuss The Shepherd's Crown and it doesn't look like there's a dedicated Discworld thread yet so hi. Does anyone want to come cry with me?
I am currently listening to it via audiobook while I work! I am maybe halfway through it. Spoiler NOOOOOOOO NOT GRANNY WEATHERWAX PRATCHETT WHYYYYYYYYYY. *Incoherent sobs* One thing that sets Discworld out from other fantasy worlds is that it grows organically. Changes happen and then stay happened. It's interesting to see how Snuff and Raising Steam's effects on the world play out. Although I sort of feel that goblins are becoming too... Like. Mary Sue-ish? I dunno. It feels like a lot of emphasis is being placed on them. Maybe it's because I've started reading the books as they come out post Thud!, and Pratchett's been focusing on the goblins for a couple books. I'd probably feel the same way about dwarfs if I had to read the books with them in order.
Spoiler: obvious This was a good ending, insofar as any ending to Discworld could have been good, which was not very, but it's like Granny's death, in a way -- if it had to happen, I'm glad it happened this way. I think Pratchett's prose style kind of deteriorated over the last few books -- all the voices sound too much the same, it's like someone giving you a very long summary of a Discworld book and not the book itself, which may be a side effect of the fact that he was dictating rather than typing -- but given he was fighting a literal brain-eating disease the whole way, I'm not inclined to be too critical. Granny Weatherwax was one of his greatest creations, and he gave her the end she deserved. Keleviel, I can see how you would make that point about goblins -- I don't mind goblins per se, Pratchett introduced new concepts all the time and the History Monks could only do their best -- insofar as goblins are a way for the Discworld books to hurtle into the modern age. The last few Discworlds had an... uncritical attitude to modernity that bothered me, including this one. "Oh, look, we used to all fight each other, but thanks to the clacks and the steam engine, we've solved war and we're removing race prejudice in a generation. There will definitely be no nasty side effects." I like the middle books' approach to technology more (The Truth and The Fifth Elephant particularly, but also Going Postal and Making Money). There was something utopian about Raising Steam that rubbed me the wrong way, like the inverse of the early books' "new technology will summon Cthulhu." I guess that's why I feel there's something tragic about losing the elves forever. Like the barbarian kings in The Last Hero, this was the fairies' last hurrah. Nanny Ogg would smack me for saying it, but -- I think she would miss the King, too. And Nightshade's death... it had to happen that way, I think, if an elf had learned to be good it would have undermined everything that was awesome about Lords and Ladies and The Wee Free Men, but if she'd been bad all the way we wouldn't have felt bad about losing Fairyland. Still. Granny is dead and the Queen is dead. Long live the railway. Surprisingly, I held it together all the way through the epilogue. It was the footnote to the Afterword, where they describe at least four outlined books he never got to write, that finally made me tear up a little. ETA: "I've never thought of myself as a man, Mistress Tiffany. I don't think I'm anything. I'm just me." Geoffrey = canon nonbinary wix? ETA2: So Agnes got to be a witch and a singer, like everyone said she couldn't. I'm glad. I suppose she's had a lot of practice being two people at once.
