To avoid writing fight scenes...

[burntcopper]

I read Pratchett's latest, Monstrous Regiment. It's rather gorgeous, and has that streak of anger with the world that was in Jingo and NightWatch. About a girl who joins up to find her brother. From there... well, damn good. I'm not going to spoil you, go out and get your own copy. Oh, and Sam Vimes is in there, but it's not a Watch book.

What's amusing is they had an interview with Pratchett on Radio 4 while I was reading it on the book review program that they have on Sunday afternoons, after Desert Island Discs (Nick Hornby, if anyone's interested), Gardener's Question Time, and the Afternoon Play. Talked about how the concept of the Discworld is... well, we may live on a planet composed of shifting plates floating on a core of molten iron that orbits the sun, but we don't bloody well talk about it. And that funny is just a case of taking seriously a genre of writing that was never supposed to be serious. Examine the nuts and bolts and you have your funny. Because nothing's funnier than talking about the sewers of a fantasy city. And that a story is a matter of winding up your characters and letting 'em go.

Oh, and that folk songs are all about sex.

Comments

so looking forward!

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

It should be out here in America, then -- I'll go check Amazon. I'd planned to go by a bookstore on Tuesday anyway, so now I have a double reason to do so!