Pratchett, Terry - The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

[oyceter]

I'm fairly sure everyone can guess why I picked this one up ;).

Rats! How could I possibly resist?

I'm not quite sure why this book is being marketed as YA while Pratchett's other books aren't, but oh well. Marketing is confusing.

I've also only read about two Discworld books before (Wyrd Sisters and Mort), so I'm not very familiar with Discworld. Luckily, this book didn't seem to require too much previous knowledge; though I'm sure some things would have been funnier had I known more.

Anyhow. Maurice the talking cat has got a great thing going with some educated rodents (aka, talking rats). They go into a town with their rather dim-witted boy, the rats go forth and make themselves a nuisance, then the town pays them all a great deal for the boy to pipe the rats away.

I think this is one of the books that might be funnier after I read it the second time. Sometimes it takes a while for this kind of humor to kick in for me. Frex, the first time I read Good Omens, I was thoroughly unimpressed; now I think it's the funniest thing in the world.

That said, the rats were very cool. I was't quite as fond of Maurice, but I adored the rats, from the little nearly blind visionary rat to the big rat leader, and I was particularly amused by the rat army (there's a Light Widdling Squad and a Trap Detecting Squad), and I was actually quite affected by the rat deaths and dangers! Er, ok, I probably would have been even if Pratchett had no skill as a writer whatsoever, just because... rats! But Pratchett makes the rats quite ratty and quite neat. I suspect I come about the book with a rather funny mindset though, given that I think rats are cute and domesticated, with furry, squishy tummies, like my rats ;). But there are some quite ferocious rats in this book! I think Fitz-rat and Fool-rat would do quite poorly here, given that their first instinct would be to run up to the humans to beg for treats.

Uh, yeah, I'm getting a little distracted from the book. Anyway, it's a book on a Pied Piper scam, complete with sentient rats! I was obviously predisposed to like this. (Although the sentient rats of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH are still cooler.)

Comments

[minim_calibre]

You MUST read more Pratchett, so you can meet/be exposed to more of the best little secondary anthropomorphic personification ever, the Death of Rats!

SQUEAK

I am quite serious. The Death of Rats rocks. Is he in TAMaHER? I had the baby before I finished that one.

[oyceter]

Dude! The Death of Rats appears in other books?! That is the coolest thing ever! Ever!

He was in TAMaHER, and I thought it was awesome and he squeaked in caps and it was cool!

[minim_calibre]

Yep! He makes his first SQUEAK in Reaper Man.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think they're doing the YA thing to get more readers - you'll note that there really isn't any mention of "Discworld" int eh book - if you hadn't read Discworld books before, you wouldn't realize there were any. It's the same with his other two DW YA books - there's some familair characters and locations in passing, but the main portion of the book doesn't have anythign to do with recurring characters from his marketed-as-Discworld books.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Hmm. There's a lot of Granny Weatherwax in A Hatful of Sky.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

But absolutely nothing that identifies her as having had a past in other books, or knowing anything about her other than what's in the book. You see her through Tiffany's eyes and experiences.

I don't think the term "Discworld" even appears in any of the YA books. If you encountered them first you'd have no clue that there were a whole bunch more waiting for you over in the adult SF/F section.

[oyceter]

Hrm, that does make sense. Yeah, the only thing "Discworld" that I really noticed was Death and the mentions of the Night Watch, and I wouldn't even have know those were Discworld things if I hadn't known from LJ.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If you want ratty things, you might want to read Reaper Man. It follows along sometime after Mort, and there's a wee bit of rattiness in it. Not scads and scads, but a bit.

[oyceter]

Joy!

I will look for that. Also, I loved Mort. I seem to have a thing for Death characters (though I am a wee bit fonder of Gaiman's Death).

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Death is wonderful. *dons Pratchett enabler hat* In Reaper Man, he gets fired. Then you may want to read Soul Music, to get introduced to his granddaughter, Susan, then after that, Hogfather. In Hogfather, the Hogfather (Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus) gets assassinated, and there's got to be an anthropomorphic personification to step in. And who does? You got it:

HO. HO. HO.

Hogfather's got a lot of Susan in it, which is why you ought to do Soul Music first, to know her.

[oyceter]

Hee! Thank for the recs!

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I think Pratchett's YA Discworld books are not quite as demanding as the others in terms of vocabulary or cultural knowledge, and a bit less overtly sexual in places. Even so, The Amazing Maurice is, I would say, darker in mood than many of his adult books.

[oyceter]

Hrm, gotcha. It did seem a bit darker sometimes (particularly the king rat thing).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I do think Maurice is funny, but I mostly like it as one of the very best "creating civilization from scratch" stories I've ever come across. The bit where the visionary rat re-evaluates the children's book they've been hauling around like a Bible and says, "Maybe it's a map" gives me the shivers. Also, I got very attached to the animal characters-- Maurice too, but mostly the rats-- so I was really emotionally involved.

Next you should either read Hogfather or The Wee Free Men or The Truth. Or one of the Vimes books, though I can't remember now what a good starting place is for those. The Rincewind books are skippable unless you're desperate, though I do love the Bursar and his frog pills.

[oyceter]

Oh that's nifty! I didn't even think about it in the "creating civilization from scratch" light, but it very much makes sense. I think that's why it reminded me most of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (which I adore, of course).

I was very attached to the rats and very sad when they were in danger. And waaaaah, the bad things that happened to them!

I have gotten recs for Hogfather after reading some of the other Death books, and since apparently the Death of Rats shows up....

I am predictable ;).