I don’t have much to say about Moving Pictures. I blazed through it after the recent, evidently spectacular, Game of Thrones episode in which lots of people die. It’s everywhere. So I figured it was time to take the plunge and read A Clash of Kings. But I had just started Moving Pictures…
Which is not one of Pratchett‘s best – of the ten Discworld novels I’ve read, it’s definitely not my favorite (Eric takes that one). It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Discworld novel, though: easy, light, fast, funny reading. I read it in four days, I think, because I was in a hurry. And it’s not bad.
This one’s about – you guessed it – moving pictures. A priest-of-sorts accidentally dies without teaching someone what must be done not to have monsters come out of this place called Holy Wood (one of the many Captain Obvious References in this novel). The alchemists figure out how to make trolls draw on film really fast, making silent films, and everyone goes out to Holy Wood to make or be in movies, which play in Ankh-Morpork in various theaters. And there are more and more references to famous movies like Gone with the Wind and such. As usual, things happen.
I hope I’m not getting jaded with Discworld novels – because they are predictable, which isn’t necessarily bad. Pratchett uses the same humor everywhere, and it is funny:
The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off.
A dog’s wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has it’s own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It’s like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.
That wasn’t my problem with this novel. I think my main issue is that almost from the beginning, I just wanted to be done with it, so I set percentage goals on my Kindle.
Meh.
Again, it’s good. There’s nothing wrong with this novel – my interests just lay elsewhere. That is one problem with Discworld novels, for me at least: they’re usually in-between novels that I read when I don’t know what else to read or when I don’t really want to read anything at all. That can lead to trouble, I guess. On to A Clash of Kings.
