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bluejayreads's review against another edition
4.75
The Industrial Revolution sub-series of Discworld books has tended to be one of the more challenging ones for me. It doesn’t have one primary character like the Rincewind or Tiffany Aching sub-series, or even a cast of primary characters like the Witches or City Watch sub-series. The Industrial Revolution books are grouped not by character but by theme – some new invention or concept comes to the Discworld and makes things just a little more “modern.” Which just adds to the challenge, because I really enjoy the weird magical whimsy of the earlier books and I’m not sure a change for the modern is necessarily a change for the better.
But now that I’ve said all that, the good news about Going Postal is that none of these things actually bothered me. The modernization aspect wasn’t a huge issue for me because the clacks has been around long enough for me to get used to it, and Moist von Lipwig’s assignment of getting the old postal service functioning again had enough history and tradition tied up in the building and institution that it didn’t feel particularly modern. And the character thing wasn’t a huge issue either because even though Moist is a new character, he was fun and entertaining right off the bat. He is very much a con man who suddenly has to deal with the fact that he is now an “honest man” with a government job – but that doesn’t stop him from having an arsenal of con man tricks up his sleeve. And he has very few compunctions about using them in support of his new job, because he may be a con man but he’s got a challenge in front of him and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t give it his best shot. The fact that being successful at this will keep him on Lord Vetinari’s good side is a bonus.
Plus, I loved the concept of the post office. There were so many scenes I just eagerly devoured because the post office was weird and wonderful and full of opportunity and I just want to go there and get it all cleaned up and functional again. I love a good organizing challenge, and the post office, gone largely to ruin and full of decades of undelivered mail, is exactly that. (That aspect of it didn’t get resolved quite how I’d hoped, but I can still dream.) I’m a sucker for big, weird, long-abandoned buildings, and while the post office is technically not abandoned, it still fits the bill.
And this is all without even touching on everything new we learn about the golems, the drama and crimes happening in the leadership of the Grand Trunk clacks company, the wild world of pin collecting, Moist’s instance on always increasing the stakes leading him into some absolutely wacky situations, and more. There’s a lot going on in this book, a lot more than you would anticipate in a story about a con man operating a mostly-defunct post office. (Although now that I write that out, maybe exactly as much as you would anticipate in that kind of story.) It’s funny, it’s wacky, it’s zany, it’s clever, it’s entertaining, it has just enough dark and/or serious moments to anchor the story without making it too dark and serious. An entertaining, enjoyable Discworld book. And I’m looking forward to future ones – I’m pretty sure Moist features in at least one more Industrial Revolution book, and I’m excited to see what shenanigans he gets up to next.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Confinement, Death, Excrement, and Murder
Minor: Mental illness
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