Unseen Academicals

[mothwing]

• As is always the case with the more recent books I felt rather apprehensive towards this one. My worries were rather unfounded. It is not a masterpiece compared to many of the books he wrote in the late nineties which I loved, but it does work, and the characters he introduces are charming.
• Romeo and Juliet and football. Yes.
  
• Lady Margolotta. I really like her, but I think I liked her more as an éminence grise. I am not quite clear on why she needed to be bested by Glenda, but she is as charming as ever.
• Lord Vetinari seems to suffer from a spell of Villain Decay, or there is a lot more to Glenda than meets the eye, whose character puzzled me.  
• I love Madame Sharn and Pepe and all their gender complicatedness.
• Dwarf fashion. Dwarf fashion!  Glittering pick-axes just in case the dwarf in question spots a seam and just can't help herself! Hyperfeminine assecories self-confidently invading a traditionally hypermasculine culture. Take that, femmephobia.
• Speaking of which, what does bother me is the recurring coincidence of being dense as a brick and unbelievably stunning. I am about to forgive him because of the utter awesomeness of his other female characters as well as the fact that she is not the only woman who is good-looking, while she is definitely one fo the few dense ones.
• It's always good to see Ridcully again.
  
• Ponder <3. Although it's sad to see that he managed to liberate himself somewhat from the Archchancellor, I rather enjoyed their original relationship.
• Nutt. I'm fairly meh about him apart from in his function as a love interest for Glenda. They are so cute together.
• Trevor. Equally meh.
• Repetitions, gnuh. I wonder what went wrong there. Would it really have hurt to cross out a few "I am an Orc"s or "but I promised my old Mum"'s? These lines were repeated so often that they really annoyed me towards the end.

Comments

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I am too unfamiliar with the stereotypes to notice that, probably. The shout-out to Romeo and Juliet worked well for me to capture the ridiculously strong antipathy between fans of opposing teams, and I didn't get much else apart from that because I don't get football.

I do find it interesting how nostalgically attached some British authors are to their terracing and the resulting pushiness from the fans - both Terry Pratchett and Nick Hornby eulogise it in their works and bemoan it's passing.