Saturday 19 June 2010

UNSEEN ACADEMICALS BY PRATCHETT (BO0K REVIEW)

With world cup fever in full spring it was no surprise to see this, Pratchett's 37th book in the adult Discworld series, being so heavily promoted in the supermarkets. I haven't read a Discworld novel for some time but I picked this one up largely because of the football connection - or foot-the-ball as it's called here.

The last Pratchett book I really enjoyed was Going Postal and I don't follow the series the way I used to, but this one is well up to the standard of the best the series can offer. Of course it's not all about football - a lot of it is of course but along the way the author manages to satirise most aspects of our celebrity culture. I also liked the fact that the wizards of the Unseen University play such a big part in this book - Pratchett's wizards never fail to entertain.

The author is suffering from Alzheimer's and someone else had to type this book up for him to negate the effects of the illness and it's heartening to see that he is still producing quality work. I saw a documentary recently on the author and it showed him at a book reading, where after a few pages it suddenly made no sense to him - it was heartbreaking but on current form the author has lost none of his ability to produce a good story.

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