We're finally going to see the Agatean Empire of the counterweight continent. It was mentioned all the way back in The Colour of Magic, and occasionally since then, but this is the first Discworld book that shows us the empire directly.
Rincewind returns in this novel, the seventeenth of the Discworld books. Not willingly of course, he has to be dragged into things by the UU faculty, and he isn't happy about it, but he's back. And since we're also visiting the Agatean Empire, Twoflower, the world's first tourist, is back as well, although we meet him under less than ideal circumstances.
Cohen the barbarian, whom we first met back in The Light Fantastic, also known as Ghenghiz Cohen here and the Silver Horde, a group of geriatric barbarian heroes (Boy Willie, Caleb the Ripper, Ronald Saveloy, also known as Teach, Truckle the Uncivil, Old Vincent, and Mad Hamish) are also major players in this book of revolution in what would have been called "The Far East" back in the pulp days. We also meet the empire's version of C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Disembowel-Meself-Honorably Dibhala.
As one can likely guess, the silver horde is essentially playing the role of the Mongols here. But there's unrest in the empire as well. This is largely thanks to Twoflowers' travel memoirs, What I Did on My Holidays. The people of the empire see how things were over around Ankh-Morpork and other lands outside their known world and are fascinated by it. This doesn't sit well with the celestial bureaucracy, and even the red army of revolutionaries are extremely polite, since they've had centuries of obedience or face often gruesome punishments, making outright rebellion difficult at best. When Rincewind shows up, the staff at UU using magic to exchange him for a small cannon, the red army sees him as "the Great Wizzard" from the book. It's spelled that way since Rincewind has had his pointy hat with wizard misspelled on it for some time, and Twoflower has called him that in his memoirs, so the title sticks.
Rincewind is not exactly the best leader figure around, as one can imagine from the previous books he's been in. This leads to him being both admired and mistrusted by the various young folks that make up the red army. At least one of the young people, a girl named One Favourite Pearl, is only seven years old. Pretty Butterfly and Lotus Blossom are also young, although older than Pearl, and are also Twoflower's daughters. Pretty Butterfly is the most intelligent and cynical of the young revolutionaries, whereas Lotus Blossom and many of the others are in complete awe of Rincewind, but Butterfly is far more doubtful of his capabilities.
The empire is in turmoil as the mad Emperor is dying, and the five main families (Hong, Tang, Fang, Sung, and McSweeney) are jockeying for position, but Lord Hong is the most powerful, ruthless, and feared of them all. The Forbidden City inside the capital city of Hunghung is the palace of the emperor and where the families constantly plot against one another as they await the demise of the deathly ill emperor. This sets the stage for Lord Hong's machinations, the Red Army's too polite revolution, and the Silver Horde's plan to all meet at a point right around Rincewind, much to his chagrin.
Lord Hong is the book's main antagonist. This is fairly obvious from his early introduction, but we then learn that he's ruthless and highly intelligent, and that he and Twoflower have a history. Although since he's one of the most powerful nobles in the land, he doesn't even realize it till very late in the story. He's not as scary as Vorbis was in Small Gods, he's very much a typical Hollywood villain type, but he's still a good villain as one hates him almost immediately, and his plotting makes a lot of the events in the book work. The resolution of his place in the story was justified and gave me a smirk of satisfaction.
When the current UU staff grab Rincewind and cajole him to be sent to the counterweight continent or else, it feels out of place to me. Rincewind feels like old Discworld and the regular UU staff are very much a product of the new Discworld. Toss in the fact that the Lady and Fate are again playing a game with Rincewind and Twoflower, it very much feels like a continuation of the original two Discworld novels, but with his writing style improved over time.
The empire is a hodge-podge of Asian countries rolled into one and some of the speaking mannerisms feel very dated and would have been even when the book was first released back in 1994. Knowing Sir Terry, it wasn't meant to mock their cultures but to instead parody those older books and movies that did this kind of thing all too often. While the portions with the Silver Horde are generally entertaining, they do get into one aspect of pillaging that many will not be comfortable with, although it never actually occurs in the book. It's an enjoyable piece of Discworld, but not as fun as his best works.
3.375 polite revolutions out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
"They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money."
"Oh, no," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. "Not that. That's meddling with things you don't understand." "Well, we are wizards," said Ridcully. "We're supposed to meddle in things we don't understand. If we hung around waitin' till we understood things we'd never get anything done."
"Look, I don't mind summoning some demon and asking it," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "That's normal. But building some mechanical contrivance to do your thinking for you, that's... against Nature."
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We love comments! Just note that we always moderate because of spam and trolls. It's never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.