Welcome to Disc World! A complete flat world that is held up by four elephants, all of whom are standing on a turtle that is swimming through space. Disc world is the brain child of Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett is to the comedy genre what Stephen King is to the horror genre. Both authors start with ordinary things done by ordinary people in ordinary towns. Ordinary people under Stephen King’s imagination are heralds of horrifying experiences. Terry Pratchett on the other hand, starts with an imaginary world of vampires, Igors, witches, guilds (thieves, assassins, etc), wizards with their Unseen University, imps, golems, trolls, dwarfs, werewolves, and humans, living in a city named Ankh-Morpork and managed to make them seem like any ordinary city on earth. It is their ordinariness of the various denizens of Ankh-Morpork which makes them so captivating and funny.

Pratchett has made Disc World a mirror of ours and make our darkest ambitions look funny when exposed to the light of his imaginary world. Making Money (2007) is the latest in a series of Disc world books. My favourites are The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, The Last Continent, and Reaper Man. In Making Money, con-man Moist von Lipwig was offered the job of being Master of Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mint and be in charge of the Bank of Ankh-Morpork. The chairman of the bank is a dog! This is any con-man’s dream. It is being given the key to the bank vault legally. However there a few complications. Throw into the mix, the bank’s conniving family, the invention of paper money, the discovery of ‘golden golem’ and the manipulation of the master con-man of them all, you have a story worthy of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen (the movies).

 

A good 4 star read. .

 

|posted 1 December 2007|