My Weekly Book

Having belatedly got round to reading Night Watch, Terry Pratchett’s kind-of latest novel – at least, his latest Discworld novel in paperback, there, that should cover it – I find myself feeling a bit discomforted, as I seem to be the only person in the whole world with even the slightest feelings of ambiguity about it.

Mr Random, as I write, is giving a fulsomely positive opinion. Everybody who submitted a review to Amazon loved it, without exception, and many thought it was the best Pratchett, nay book, that they had ever read.

So I feel a bit like one of those teens in a peer pressure experiment, because I thought it was good… but not that good. I thought I detected a certain didacticism of tone, some jarring notes during those “beast within” passages. I found the quality of the writing awkward in places. I would be very interested to know what anyone who has actually been a police officer thinks of it all.

This is because its predecessor, The Truth involved journalists. Now, Mr T Pratchett, and Mr Random and myself are all (in the sense that once you are, then you always are) journalists. (Actually, I put fingers to keyboard and wrote an actual feature today, for an actual newspaper, but that’s another story altogether). That book was one long string of hilarious journalists’ in-jokes – like the sub-editor who doesn’t give a damn what a headline says, as long as it exactly fills the space available.

As far as I am aware, Mr Pratchett has never been a policeman. Not that I am saying for one moment that you should only write about things you have experienced – if that was the case, I would have been out of a job a decade ago. But he makes a lot of mileage out of “a copper is symptomatic of the human condition” argument, and I found much of it to be a lot of sweeping generalisation that didn’t ring true.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Terry Pratchett. Night Watch, its 26 Discworld predecessors, the Bromeliad Trilogy and assorted odd volumes, bits of merchandise and graphic novels are occupying more than their fair share of shelf space in this flat – up to and including the three china Clarecraft witches that stare intimidatingly at us every time we go into our office. The books get re-read quite regularly on a kind of rota basis.

It is pretty unarguable that Pratchett can get flaky – Lost Continent, subplot of Reaper Man, Hogfather – but that at his best he is a genius. My 21-book desert island selection includes Small Gods, and I could nominate anything up to half a dozen running it very close. I thought Jingo and The Fifth Elephant were a magnificent return to form, and quite a way beyond that and I recommend anyone who hasn’t read The Last Hero to go out and buy it now, right this very minute.

It’s just that I refuse to put Night Watch up there in the same category, tight, well-handled plot, excellent characterisation, fascinating insight into past lives of existing characters and competent handling of difficult time-travel theme notwithstanding. And I’ll tell you another thing. Pratchett once complained that Granny Weatherwax had got away from him – she was unbalancing the books because she was too powerful. I fear Sam Vimes has gone the same way, and that this might prejudice opportunities for his appearance in the future.

Mind you, Monstrous Regiment sounds good. It apparently features A New Character – one Polly Perks, a feisty young woman who sticks a pair of socks down the front of her pants, and goes to join the army. Out in paperback soon, I hope.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2004 at 11:30 am and is filed under 2004 - Books read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.