"You mean I could choose certain death?"
"A choice nevertheless, or perhaps an alternative. You see, I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based."
The thirty-third book of the Disc starts off with a rather interesting protagonist. It’s not often our main character is hanged in the first few pages, after all…
The unfortunately named Moist von Lipwig is a very successful conman. Although not quite successful enough to avoid the gallows in Ankh-Morpork. After his near-death experience at the gallows, the Patrician gives him the option to either get the postal service running again or have a similar experience minus the near portion.
Unsurprisingly, he accepts the job offer, and equally unsurprisingly, he immediately flees Ankh-Morpork. He is quite a crafty character, so he had many hidden sources of cash to aid in his flight, something he has done many times over the years as a confidence trickster. This time, however, he has failed to realize that the Patrician has remained in power in the largest, most unruly, and most diverse city on the Disc largely through being many steps ahead of everyone else, when Mister Pump, a golem that is assigned as his parole officer, eventually catches up to him and brings him and his horse back to the city.
The post office is a mess, and the two remaining employees live in its basement. Old mail is strewn all over the building and pigeons that have stayed on are not helping the mess or the smell. There are some 'gentlemen' renting the old pigeon coop on the roof. The last several postmasters all ended up dead in a series of bizarre incidents, which is why Moist believes the Patrician chose him to run the place: he’s technically already dead and expendable, but we also see that he also wanted someone who was crafty and willing to be a bit underhanded to get things done.
Our postal employees consist of the elderly junior postman Tolliver Groat and the pin obsessed apprentice postman Stanley Howler. Tolliver is an odd character that is addicted to weird natural cures and fears taking baths, but is also hiding the real situation they are dealing with, making him nervous when Moist inquires about why things are as they are. Stanley appears to be on the autism scale, with his cleanliness addiction (in stark contrast to Tolliver’s lack thereof), almost single-minded fascination with pins, and willingness to go along with Groat in following the regulations to the letter, even though they haven’t delivered an actual letter in years.
Initially, Moist wants to escape once his ankle heals, so he visits a free golem placement agency where he meets Adora Belle Dearheart. Adora is a cynical chain-smoker who dresses severely, but she’s also attractive and despite her firing crossbows at him, Moist finds himself fascinated with her. Their relationship is one of those enjoyable ones that isn't all hugs and kisses, but works out well to the enjoyment of the reader. She also can really cause some damage with her four-inch heels, something she used when she needed to on one particular occasion. We find out that part of why she is 'spikey,' as Moist likes to call her, is that her family has strong connections to the clacks, and one that has caused tragedy for them due to that connection.
The clacks are amazing but they are also a mess. The Patrician is unhappy that they went from being down an hour a day for maintenance to not being down until they breakdown and are therefore down erratically and for longer periods when they fail from that lack of care. And the reason it’s like this is due to the usual culprit, greed. The inventor and original creator of the technology that makes the clacks work had to give up his rights to the company he built to those that are more interested in making money than providing a valuable service. A group of men led by the nasty Reacher Gilt are behind this whole scheme. Crooked to an extreme degree, they reflect the corruption of the ultra-rich all too well.
Reacher Gilt is what would happen if Moist, who was mostly a small-time conman, decided to play the same cons that Moist executes with glass diamonds, sob stories, and a bit of simple forgery, but with companies, banks, and hiring people who delight in charging money to hurt other people. Moist never feels evil, even if Mr. Pump takes issue with his grifting past, but Reacher Gilt is a nasty piece of work. Moist is no saint; he did run several different cons over the years, but he may as well be one compared to the vicious and avaricious Reacher.
People are unhappy with the ramshackle state of the clacks under its current management; messages being delayed and prices going up despite worse service. And now with the post office being run by a man like Moist, they adapt to the situation well enough to the point that many of them prefer the post office over the clacks, and even invent the hobby of stamp collecting, a hobby that Stanley takes up with zeal, dropping his former love of pins. Not only do many old postal workers and their descendants come back, Moist hires several golems to deliver the mail, including Anghammarad, a golem that is easily nineteen thousand years old! Golems are great workers and quite dog proof to boot, so are ideal letter carriers. Moist is so good at being charismatic after years of running scams that he becomes quite the hero for his role in bringing the post office back as well.
The competition between them comes to a head late in the book, once we've learned more of the history of the clacks and how bad things have gotten. There’s a kind of hacker culture that has sprung up around the towers and from former linesman. It reminds me of the old computer hackers in movies from the 80s and 90s, and how nerd culture embraced the early days of personal computers. UU gets involved in this competition, and Mustrum Ridcully gets to be his usual self, to the delight of the reader. He doesn’t take kindly to some of the men that own the Grand Trunk clacks company, men I already strongly disliked due to their direct association with the reprehensible Reacher Gilt, and he is more than pleased to put them in their place when they are all at UU for a special event.
This book is another brilliant gem. It not only defends the idea that some institutions need to be for the people instead of simply for profit, but it also points out that most technologies are not the villains, it’s the people who abuse them for their own gain that are the real evildoers here. Moist was the perfect man to fix the post office as the public sector needs people that are willing to fight for their institutions and not just let the private sector turn everything into a profit-making machine for the rich. A fantastic read, and one of the very best of an already exemplary collection of stories.
4 restored postal services out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
"Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?"
"What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter." (Man, this one is more on the nose than usual!)
"Steal five dollars and you're a common thief. Steal thousands and you're either the government or a hero."
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
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