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A review by ssung
Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
3.0
this was... really hard to review. this took forever for me to get through, because the first half was so painful to read. pratchett's writing changed a lot over the recent few books (becoming more noticeable with snuff), no doubt due to his alzheimers, becoming far more wordy, and... i'm not sure how to put it, but sharp. angry. pratchett had always been very good at hiding the anger behind the humor, mellowing it with his cleverness and wit in his earlier books, but it was always there. it made for brilliant books, particularly right before and at the time of diagnosis - those were all my favorites - but these recent books it was hard to see the humor when the anger was so spiky sharp.
dialogue changes were the most noticeable in this book; i'd say that pratchett's greatest strength in writing was economy with words, particularly speech; everyone spoke clearly, rarely in monologues. this was not in play, however, for this book; the first half of the book was littered with speeches that took paragraphs. much of the story told, almost, not shown. once the story really got going and swung into the second half did the terry pratchett magic kick in for me, but it's bittersweet. the moist lipwig novels always had the most cameos of other discworld characters in the books, but raising steam covers an enormous swath - i think carrot might've been the only thing that wasn't referenced in the book.
dialogue changes were the most noticeable in this book; i'd say that pratchett's greatest strength in writing was economy with words, particularly speech; everyone spoke clearly, rarely in monologues. this was not in play, however, for this book; the first half of the book was littered with speeches that took paragraphs. much of the story told, almost, not shown. once the story really got going and swung into the second half did the terry pratchett magic kick in for me, but it's bittersweet. the moist lipwig novels always had the most cameos of other discworld characters in the books, but raising steam covers an enormous swath - i think carrot might've been the only thing that wasn't referenced in the book.