A biography of the prolific, successful, brilliant, beloved, and all-around-amazing Sir Terry Pratchett, author of, among other things, the long-running series of Discworld novels.

It's very much a biography of Pratchett's public life and career; his personal life is really only touched on when it's relevant to those subjects, which seems entirely appropriate to me. And Marc Burrows does a good job with his subject. His writing is clear and readable, and he pays a bit of homage to Pratchett by including humorous footnotes which are, I'm pleased to note, actually funny, and which help to keep things interesting even in the middle sections which are mostly about publishing deals and such. I also appreciate the way he handles a particular trait of Pratchett's that makes the biographer's job noticeably more difficult. Namely that, master of narrative that he was, he consistently and unrepentantly edited his personal anecdotes to make for the best possible stories. Burrows is always careful to note when Pratchett's account of something doesn't match up with the actual timeline of events, for instance, but he does it without judgment and in a way that still lets us enjoy the anecdotes as Pratchett told them, leaving it up to the readers which version of events we'd prefer to take away with us.

He also offers up some decent, if of necessity not terribly in-depth, commentary on Pratchett's work, and while he clearly is a great fan, he's not a mindlessly uncritical one. Indeed, he's quite interested in the ways in which Pratchett's work matured over time.

Ultimately, while I don't think this is at all a must-read for Pratchett fans -- there probably isn't a whole lot in here that anyone who's paid much attention doesn't already know -- I found it a worthwhile one, nonetheless. It's also made me think I really should get back to re-reading the Discworld books, even if my TBR shelves are groaning under the weight of volumes still patiently waiting to be read the first time. And it's also made me miss him all over again, of course. GNU Terry Pratchett. ( )

Terry Pratchett is a British fantasy writer of more than 50 books and best known for the Discworld series. His book Good Omens cowritten with Neil Gaiman began as television series in 2019. Pratchett passed away from the effects of Alzheimer's disease in 2015. The book is probably best the someone who has read most of his books. I appreciate his creativity but like Douglas Adams' books the sense of humor is not to my taste. ( )

Marc comes across as a great fan of Terry's, yet isn't by any means oblivious to his less than positive aspects. The research is really detailed, and he's obviously put a lot of effort into trying to track down the truth behind some of the true stories that Terry told (well he his a story teller). He manages to give a flavour of many of the books Terry wrote so if you're not familiar with all of Terry's work you can pick and choose where to begin. There will in time be a biography from Terry's "representative on earth", Rob, but I don't think it's worth waiting for that one - you might as well get this one. ( )