Paperback
Fantasy Fiction
2000
Terry Pratchett recently passed away. My wife and I are huge fans and have been diligently reading through his work. We had two copies of The Truth so we read it together; our own little book club.
The Truth is a stand alone book in the Disc World series, but it does have a lot of characters from some of the big story lines. The reader follows William De Worde, son of Lord De Worde. He goes from writing a small newsletter to nobility once a month; to creating Anhk-Morpork's first newspaper. He hires a group of dwarves, a vampire and Sacharissa Chrisplock. Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip are new in Ankh-Morpork. They have been brought in from out of town to take care of some business without involving the local Guild of Assassins. A rival "newspaper" crops up with "news" that is made up. The Patrician, Lord Vetinari, has been caught in attempted murder. De Worde vows to learn The Truth.
Pratchett is a master story teller. I found myself reading 30-50 pages at a time burning through the humor with a smile on my face. In this book he added a bunch of pop culture references to gangster movies like Pulp Fiction and Scarface. I imagine there were others that I missed, this seems to be different from his other books, but was fun to see.
3 Intellectual/Emotional - Pratchett's books are for entertainment, but always seem to have a bit of social commentary as well. One of the most appealing things is all the characters are endearing. Even the "bad guys" are people you care about.
5 Style/Readability - I love Pratchett. His books are so much fun and easy to tear through, but they are witty and unexpected. He is among my favorite authors.
3 Long Term Impact - Pratchett is quite famous in the UK. He has gained popularity in the US as well. I only see that rising as time passes.
11 out of 13. I find it hard to rank Pratchett's books. Almost all of them are above a certain level of greatness and I wouldn't want to have to sort them out. That said, this isn't the place to start reading his work, because a part of the story is seeing a bunch of characters from other books being pulled in as side characters of this book. I would start with Guards! Guards! or Going Postal.
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