Ravenskya's Full Review: Terry Pratchett - The Truth
Reviewing Pratchett is always hard, I absolutely adore most of his books, and his literary cannon is huge. I have been reading all of the Discworld books in chronological order and have finally arrived at “The Truth,” the twenty-fifth book in the series. “The Truth” introduces the character of William de Worde, a young son of a noble who chooses not to follow in his father’s footsteps, rather attempting to make his own way in the world. Late one night the local rumor that Dwarves have found a way to turn lead into gold comes to light right in front of de Worde. Lead can be turned into gold if you use the lead to make a printing press, and manage to find an excellent writer like de Worde to start Ankh-Morpork’s first newspaper.
As with all of Pratchett’s books, we have the evolution of the newspaper over a matter of a week rather than the hundred or so years that it took in our world. Soon there is competition across the street with headlines like “Woman gives birth to snakes” and “Man abducted by Demons.” William de Worde however, is obsessed with truth, stories come flooding in, and soon he has hired Sacharissa as a story writer, and Otto the vampire as a photographer. I have to admit that the first time Otto takes a picture for the paper literally cause me to snort my drink out through my nose, and tears to come to my eyes from laughing so hard. I think that scene is one of the funniest moments I have ever read in a book. Sacharissa is the daughter of an engraver who becomes quite the excellent reporter, and ends up being key to the discovery of the truth at the end of the book. Otto, a vampire from Uberwald has joined the temperance group and given up the red stuff, not that he doesn’t have his moments, but he tries so hard to keep himself under control.
William’s struggle as the head of the newspaper suddenly is flung into high gear when the Patrician is accused of murder. At this point the book begins satirizing the Watergate scandal complete with the anonymous tipster who is never seen (though readers of other discworld books will figure out who the tipster is fairly quickly). The guards, specifically Vimes, figure heavily into this book as they go about trying to discern what actually occurred with the Patrician. This book has one of the stronger plots in a Discworld book, rather than the humor coming from the plot, the plot is rather serious and the characters involved are the source of the humor. I personally find this to be a much better book than some of his earlier works because it feels as though it has more control over itself and doesn’t sacrifice for a joke except in some minor areas involving the bad guys.
Speaking of the bad guys, we have Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip… the bad guys from the Looney Toons, you know the ones… the big dumb guy and the little wise a__. They have been hired by a group of “concerned citizens” to set up the Patrician… these concerned citizens are of course, from the upper crust of society with a very defined idea of who should actually be in charge (preferably someone very dumb who will do what they tell him). I personally did not enjoy the bits with Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip (who has a cursing problem and an obsession with trying to get high, even though it’s never stated outright). I found them to be rather tedious though I know others would find them to be the most humorous part of the book. For those of you who either read these with your children or let your little ones read discworld books (we listen to many of them on audio CD while on road trips, our children think they are hysterical). I don’t know that I would hand this to a child under 12… possibly under 14. The main reason being that Mr. Tulip snorts anything he can get his hands on, though most of the time he’s completely unsuccessful, having snorted mothballs, flour, flea powder etc, I’m not sure that I’d want my kids hearing that (my kids are 7 and 10).
As a whole this book is brilliantly funny and the satire is genius. This will be funnier to people who are familiar with the press, particularly writing for papers and those with a pretty good idea of how Watergate played out. Although I considered making this a four star book because of my dislike for Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip… the fact that the scene with Otto made my drink exit my nose bumped it back up to a five star book. I highly recommend it to Discworld fans and those who are considering becoming Discworld fans.
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