The twenty-eighth book of Discworld is all about a sapient cat who runs a pied piper racket with a tribe of intelligent rats and a young flutist named Keith. They do well with this racket until they run into some trouble in Uberwald at a town called Bad Blintz.
Maurice is a cat in similar situation to the dog Gaspode from earlier books in that he has had sapience thrust upon him, although he isn’t sure why at first. The rats he works with eat some strange stuff, so he can presume that’s why this tribe of rats is also sapient, although we don’t learn why Maurice is also stricken with such thoughts until further in the book. He abstains from eating anything that can talk, although the rats don’t fully trust him.
The rat tribe is full of individuals that range from Hamnpork, the grizzled leader from before they were able to think and speak, to Dangerous Beans, who is young, impressionable, and wants a better future for all rats. In between those two extremes are many others, such as Darktan, who leads the trap disposal squad, although some we get their names but not much more about them. My favorites are Peaches, who works directly with Dangerous Beans and Sardines who wears a straw hat and dances.
They are able to convince a supposedly not-terribly-bright boy that has a talent for the flute to be the piper for their scam. We don’t even learn his name until they meet Malicia, a girl of similar age to Keith, whom they run into early on in Bad Blintz, a town where something odd is going on. Something not just unusual, but quite evil as well. Malicia loves books so much that she treats everything as if it’s in a story, which isn’t how things always go. She is the mayor’s daughter though, so she has some clout despite her unusual mannerisms. She is not always happy with how the book doesn’t follow what she considers proper narrative, and makes her feelings well-known.
After meeting the town’s unsavory rat catchers shortly after they arrive, Maurice’s traveling pied piper scheme begins as normal, with the rats splitting into squads and moving out to upset people and to remove traps and neutralize poison, but they find things are not right almost immediately. The buildup to why Bad Blintz is like this occupies a large chunk of the book and is done very well. I was so curious as to what was causing the situation, and the reveal did not disappoint, although it was repulsive.
The relationship between Keith and Malicia is great fun. Malicia is an odd one, but she’s also enjoyable and Keith exerts himself more strongly as the book progresses. When we first meet him and we don’t even know his name, he feels almost like a piece of furniture instead of a full-fledged character, but he quickly rises to the occasion when he needs to, and proves himself to be cannier than anyone, even his rat friends, expected.
Maurice is one of those Daffy Duck style characters that you can’t 100% trust, but he’s there when the chips are down. He has one very admirable scene in the book that immediately followed his lowest point, and his status at the end of the book was brilliant and completely in character for our clever feline friend. Barring Maurice’s excellent situation, the end is good but a bit odd. I do like how Keith ends up almost as much as how Maurice does, and I felt the plotlines wrapped up to an amusing conclusion and a satisfying read.
This book is intended for young adults, but it gets dark at times, especially when dealing with the evil things that haunt this town. It reminds me of some of the less familiar animated specials I saw as a kid, so it’s not so dark that it’s oppressive and since it’s from Sir Terry, there’s a lot of humor here as well. In my copy of the book, there’s a snippet from Sir Terry about the main villain of the book, and how it relates to roundworld and some disturbing things that have happened here. Some of this I knew to a point, but some I had never heard of. Terry’s negativity towards cruelty is part of why I love his books, and he makes it patently obvious in these comments as well.
I did enjoy this one quite a bit, as Sir Terry’s style always shines brightly for me, but due to its subject matter and the fact that it feels disconnected from the Disc, although it uses it as its setting, it could be any pseudo-European town where this happens, so it isn’t up there with his true gems. Still a good read though, and it certainly fits the young adult category it is meant for.
3.375 rats that have developed sapience out of 4.
There is a movie for this book under the same title. I have not seen it, but the general consensus among fans of the Disc is that the movie isn’t bad, but in an effort to make it friendlier for young children, they’ve filed down the sharper edges of the story.
Some fun quotes:
People were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant.
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.
"Keith is not a promising name-start," said Malicia. "It doesn’t hint of mystery. It just hints of Keith."
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.