By Sir Terry Pratchett

Welcome back to the Discworld. This novel is one that I bought on a whim. At the time, I shared an Audible account with my parents, so I would pay my parents if I wanted to get an audiobook. Because we all loved Terry Pratchett, all those books were permanently half off, which lowered the bar on the amount of Discworld books that I read.

Housekeeping: this is less a series and more a collection. Something that I enjoy about Terry Pratchett’s work is the fact that while there will be series that follow a specific collection of characters, he will also make one book that is the only story from that person’s point of view. Here are three of those stories. We are beginning with: Moving Pictures, then The Truth and finally Monstrous Regiment.

“The alchemists of the Discworld have discovered the magic of the silver screen. But what is the dark secret of Holy Wood hill? It’s up to Victor Tugelbend (“Can’t sing. Can’t dance. Can handle a sword a little”) and Theda Withel (“I come from a little town you’ve probably never heard of”) to find out…”

This book was great to come back to. It is an example of what happens when an old idea becomes new, as well as a look at how a world of magic does movies.

For this novel, I have 3 thoughts.

Firstly, the wizards and Gaspode, the wonder dog. While there are other books before this one that include wizards, this is the first one where they are not the focal point. In previous books, we will see the wizards of the Unseen University and their in house politics as the driving plot of the book. But this is the first time that they are side characters, except for Victor Tugelbend, and their main point is to show the effects that Holly Wood is having. On the other hand, this is the introduction of Gaspode, the only talking dog. But the interesting thing about this is that Gaspode is a mangy mutt who looks nothing like the usual Laddy stand-in for what an intelligent dog looks like. Also, the fact that he is the only talking animal who didn’t get his voice from Holly Wood; he is just like that.

Secondly, Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler. This is someone who is mostly a background character selling sausages in a bun that only just counts as food, as well as anything else that he can do to make money. The fact that I am talking about here is that Dibbler’s drive for money pushes a lot of the direction that Holly Wood goes. After all, Thomas Silverfish just wanted to make educational films; it is a wonder what would have happened if Dibbler hadn’t shown up?

Thirdly, seeing is believing. A saying in this world but a fact of life in the Discworld. By this I mean that near the end we have Victor as the one who needs to be the hero, which he has no idea how to be. But everyone around him recognizes him from the movies, and the fact that they all think that that stuff is real gives him the power and courage to save the day. And what I love about this is in the Discworld, if you mix a bit of magic with belief, you can actuality change things.

Thank you for joining me, and until next week.

Happy reading to all, and to all a good night.