Monstrous Regiment: the finest Discworld novel?

boing
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Hey! I can’t believe nobody argued that Wyrd Sisters is best! No love for Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg? I don’t mind Ankh Morpork, but for me the most fun is in the mountains…

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I feel that the DEATH series is somewhat underlooked, and a shame too, Mort is absolutely amazing as is Hogfather.

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Nah; Cory doesn’t do that sort of thing.

[Ahem]

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I totally agree. As I may have mentioned up-thread, my whole family has been reading the entire series since fall, and after looking at the L-space guide, we all started with the Watch novels. (Some of them being re-reads for me.) It was a great place to start.

From there I went to the Death books, only one of which I’d read, and then the Witches books, which I’d read none of. Either of those series would be good starting points too, but the Watch worked great for all of us.

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Laurie R. King has a book called A Monstrous Regiment of Women, part of her series where Sherlock Holmes is married to Mary Russell, a bluestocking much younger than himself.

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I agree Raising Steam was disappointing, but there was a lot to like about Unseen Academicals. Considering that most people couldn’t write something equal to Pratchett’s worst novel, the fact that he wrote Raising Steam seven years after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis makes him pretty much superhuman.

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Only if you include “The Light Fantastic”; TCOM ends on a cliffhanger…

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I’ve got to agree with you about Raising Steam. Frankly, it didn’t seem like a Pratchett book at all.

In Raising Steam, all the familiar characters have lost their distinct personalities; Vetinari in particular seemed to be as completely out of character as possible. It barely had a plot, let alone the multiple plot lines which show up in his best books with a tricky denouement resolving them all. Further, contrast its reverent attitude to Progress with the skeptical attitude in most of his books, but particularly in Moving Pictures.

I’ve got to assume that the readers and critics who praised it, like Cory, were reading with lenses tinted by their love of Pratchett’s other books and by general admiration for the man, but much as I like his books that one doesn’t hold up for me.

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