Just finished, gotta talk about it. Here's the place to do so.

I think I read this with the wrong mindset - I was looking for one of the more 'parody' Pratchett, so was expecting a thick accumulation of soccer jokes, rather than the rather more subtle and thoughtful (and less narrowly focused) book this was.

Interested to hear more about your thoughts on the LotR angle...

I can see that the 'multiple endings' could be taken at having a go at the movie 'Return of the King'.

In LotR it was Sauron who 'twisted' Elves (?) to create Orcs and yet on the Discworld it was Humans who made the Orcs. Does that put us on a par with one of the ultimate bad guys?

I did like the way that football at the start was as much, if not more, about the crowds (the Shove, chanting, colours, rivalry) than about the sport itself.

And Havelock got drunk! Falling down (well toe-stubbing) drunk! Who'd have thunk?

I wasn't quite able to appreciate all the jokes, not being a sports fan (and not acquainted with soccer).

A fun Pratchett book, certainly (always is) but not one of my favourites.

A swansong and, sadly, rather out of tune.

There were perhaps 50 pages where I smiled and the parody of Andrew Marvell's poem 'To His Coy Mistress' actually raised a laugh.

I started the book with the mindset that maybe I wasn't going to enjoy it - generated by the recent disappointment of Nation - but there was nothing there to change my mind.

Regarding the Tolkien angle: off the top of my head (corrections welcome), it was Morgoth, long before the War of the Ring era, who corrupted captured Elves to create the original Orcs; presumably Sauron could have repeated the process had he needed to, but I can't bring to mind any reference to his having done so. LotR does however have its suggestions that Saruman used Orc-Mannish interbreeding to create the 'fighting' Uruk-Hai.

Series-wise it's an interesting decision for Pratchett, certainly: it recalls the very earliest books, when Discworld was primarily a fantasy genre-spoof rather than primarily social satire.

Message edited by its author, Oct 18, 2009, 11:04am.

Have to say I was disappointed. Loved the beginning, but it just didn't go anywhere. We had the same story (unlikely new character must save the city! Vetinari's machinations depend upon him/it!) as in Going Postal and the abomination that was Making Money (and, lets face it, Moving Pictures, The Truth, Feet of Clay, Thief of Time etc). We have beautiful-but-dim girl (again), plain-but-brave-and-intelligent girl (ditto – normally I like this one, but it's getting predictable) and we have Discworld-minority-of-the-moment saving the day. Think Men at Arms and werewolves, Feet of Clay and the golems, think The Truth and vampires, think Making Money and clowns, think Going Postal and banshees (ok, not so much ‘saving the day’ as providing some ethnic colour, but you get my point) … The whole Glenda/Nutt thing was a rehash of Miss Drapes/Mr Bent. (Ok, I know it's a classic story, but the details here are just too similar. With Nutt it was a ‘cupboard’ he was afraid to open, and with Bent it was a wardrobe. Both happened in the presence of the plain-etc girl, who supported him through it. Both caused a transformation into something terrible.)

I really wanted to like this one. And it's nowhere near as bad as Making Money. But it still doesn't manage to lift. It's as though he lost the plot halfway through writing it, and gave up trying to find it again.

(Edited because the original post truncated itself.)

Message edited by its author, Oct 20, 2009, 3:49pm.

I didn't love this one, either. Just finished it the other day and it's not my favorite. I really enjoy The Watch series and the Death series. I think Discworld is getting a few too many characters in it now, and so, as stated in the previous message, it's hard to keep them all interesting and unique. I'd prefer another story with Susan and Lobsang than another about Nutt and Glenda. However, I have enjoyed getting to know Vetinari a bit more in these later books. He's lost a bit of that air of mystique for me, though.