Pratchett, Terry - Thief of Time

[oyceter]

I think this is up there with Lords and Ladies and Hogfather as one of my favorite Discworld books.

The Auditors, having failed in their latest scheme to make the universe a neater and more orderly place, have hatched a plot to stop time altogether by getting someone to build a perfect clock. Meanwhile, Death has sensed something running amuck and summoned Susan for help, the History Monks are trying to deal with a thief who's way too good with time, and the clockmaker's helper Igor really just wants a good thunderstorm.

Unlike some of the other Death books, all the plotlines in this book were engaging, and I'm not sure if I had more fun reading about Susan trying to whap Death of Rats on the head, Lu-Tze teaching everyone about Rule One, Death trying to round up the Four Horsemen, Igor just trying to serve the first sane master he's ever had, or the Auditors attempting to analyze human behavior.

Everything ties together wonderfully, and though I wanted more of Lobsang and Susan in the end, the ending was highly satisfactory.

I was trying to decided how disgruntled I was about the History Monks being some weird amalgamation of Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan practices, but Lu-Tze is so awesome that I kept getting distracted. I also generally like how it pokes fun at the romanticization of Eastern religion and how Lu-Tze's Way is the Way of an innkeeper in Ankh-Morpork.

Also, literal death by chocolate!

Now I want to reread Small Gods and figure out what Lu-Tze was doing in there, since I'm pretty sure that was when he was trying to reconstruct all of history the first time around.

This was appropriately frightening and hilarious at all the right places, and I would love to see more of Lobsang and Susan in the future, but am not sure if we'll get a chance to.

Comments

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I was trying to decide how disgruntled I was about the History Monks being some weird amalgamation of Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan practices

Oh God, Pratchett does tend to be crap about this sort of thing. It's like how Klatchians are Arab/Turkish/N. African/South Asian steretype hybrids.

[deepad]

Totally agree, but then, darn it, Pterry manages to be so charming about it that, like Oyce, I end up getting beguiled by the characters.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Possibly because he's poking fun at western notions of how eastern regions work and not talking about any this-world eastern regions at all? I suspect that anybody who knows what the Japanese is for A Waste of Time, the problem-puzzle that runs in the daily paper, has actually done his homework.

[deepad]

Oh, he does his homework, the problem is more that he doesn't care to problemitise his world-building quite as much as I would like. The Agatean kingdom was clearly China, as was XXX Australia, so when he mashes up Indian curry and Arabian deserts to make Klatch, it can be a little irksome.

[oyceter]

I know! I am grumpier in the Guards books, just because it's more foregrounded, but Lu-Tze is just so awesome...

[(Anonymous)]

Just to defend my favourite author for a moment: Klatch is supposed to be a gigantic continent, so it would make sense that parts of it are more like India, others more like the Middle East. On the other hand, there does seem to be some questionable mix-ups. On the third hand, as someone else pointed out, all the cultures are mix-ups: Ankh-Morpork, for example, being a mix of London, New York and ancient Rome.

Also, since I know Oyce has complained about the lack of characters of colour in Discworld (something I personally don't agree with, since Pratchett has more characters of colour than pretty much any other fantasy writer I've read), how did you feel about

SPOILERS BELOW! (I don't know how to do spoiler tags here, sorry.)






Lobsang (and Jeremy) must be, though it's never actually pointed out by the authorial voice, East Asian in appearance, like the other monks, or at the very least mixed race. Let's look at the evidence:
- Lu-Tze is East Asian (I'll use the Roundworld ethnicities for the sake of ease); in "Small Gods", a nasty character calls him "you ghastly little yellow fool".
- Wen is very, very likely of the same ethnicity. Just look at his name.
- Time incarnates so she can be with Wen and have his children. If she incarnates as a Caucasian woman, that would make Lobsang and Jeremy mixed race. But why would she incarnate as a Caucasian woman? In my opinion, it would make much more sense for her to incarnate as a woman that Wen would find naturally attractive.
- Conclusion: Lobsang is probably as East Asian as any of his fellow monks, as is his "brother".

[END SPOILERS]



And this brings me to the fact that Pratchett doesn't necessarily want us to imagine all his characters as white just because he doesn't mention their race. You wouldn't know from reading "Small Gods" that *all* the characters in it (except the Ephebians, who presumably look like our world's Greeks) are brown-skinned. However, in "Jingo", Nobby makes an offhand remark about Constable Visit, from Omnia, has brown skin, and then you have to assume that Brutha and Vorbis did too.

[oyceter]

Well, I'd argue again that mixing up London and France still has a different weight than mixing up China/Japan/Tibet or India/Middle East/Africa, just because there is a lot more written in English about the former rather than the latter.

I also would say that while Pratchett does have characters of color, he doesn't have more compared to some writers I've read, especially since some other writers use them much better. Sometimes Pratchett's good-natured poking at racism irks me, because it's very clear that while he means well, he doesn't understand a lot of the institutional stuff. So yeah, I'm glad that he does have characters of color, but I'm still hesitant to praise him about his handling of race, particularly from what I've seen of the Guards books.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, yeah, you've read considerably more fantasy than I (judging from your book posts), so I won't argue with that. I was comparing Pratchett mainly to best-selling [Tolkien ripoffs] writers like Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan and others, whose casts are either all or 99% white, as far as I can tell.

Other media tend to whitewash out Pratchett's characters, too: the Josh Kirby cover for "Thief of Time" in the UK (don't look at the American covers, they're horrid!) shows Lobsang as the only Caucasian and blond History Monk, and Kirby's "Small Gods" cover shows all the Omnian characters being light-skinned (including Om himself. Yes, he put Om's epiphany in human form on the cover). On the other hand, Kirby did depict Mrs. Googol in "Witches Abroad" correctly as black, which I know wasn't readily apparent to some readers on this LJ.

Also, the recent TV mini-series adaptation of "The Colour of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic" had Twoflower played by White American Sean Astin instead of an East Asian actor. That riled me quite a bit. Does that mean that if they ever do "Jingo", they'll get white actors to play Achmed and the other Klatchians? But then, "Jingo" might have far too radical a message (i.e. "Arabs are people too") to be viable as a TV series at the moment.

-Chris

[oyceter]

Aiiieeee, yeah... that's one of the reasons why I haven't been reading as many of the Guards books...