Interesting Times (Terry Pratchett, 1995)

Cover blurp:

Mighty Battles! Revolution! Death! War! (and his sons Terror and Panic, and daughter Clancy).

The oldest and most inscrutable empire on the Discworld is in turmoil, brought about by the revolutionary treatise What I Did On My Holidays. Workers are uniting, with nothing to lose but their water buffaloes. Warlords are struggling for power. War (and Clancy) are spreading through the ancient cities.

And all that stands in the way of terrible doom for eveyone is:

Rincewind the Wizard, who can’t even spell the word ‘wizard’ …

Cohen the barbarian hero, five foot tall in his surgical sandals, who has had a lifetime’s experience of not dying …

…and a very special butterfly.

I am, what one could call, an old school nerd. All I care about are old operating systems, ancient editors and old SCIFI¹ Ah, and some text based game where you are a cute “@”. Of course I like Pratchett.

I started reading him years ago in the only way acceptable - chronological². And I had a few years long pause. Now, after a series of reading only technical books I am returning to fiction.

Interesting Times is an ok-level Pratchett book. It’s not close to his best, it’s not close to his worst³.

This time Rincewind has to travel to Counterweight Continent and help a rebellion. There he reconnects with old acquaintances - Twoflower, and Cohen to Barbarian.

The problem is that there is not much more. We’ve got a lot of Chinese things, which is new. But the story itself is extremely straight-forward. Nothing memorable happens. I finished it 2 days ago, and already I would have a problem recollecting any standing out moment. I still remember moments from other Discworld books a decade after I read them!

But Terry’s writing makes me not care and just enjoy the journey. He is able to make a boring story interesting, and his characters are always great. I was reading the book while putting my son to sleep, and I almost gave him a heart attack with a laughter attack. This alone makes it worth it!

Not the best place to start with Discworld (the best is, of course, Colour of Magic) but as n-th book in the series it’s very enjoyable.

I give it a 3.75/5.

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