A Night in the Lonesome October

A Night in the Lonesome October – Roger Zelazny, 1993

Having dealt with the immensity of The Book of the New Sun last week, and with this being the last post before Halloween, I thought it was a perfect time to look at perhaps the best Halloween book ever written: Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October. 

Snuff is watchdog and faithful companion to Jack, who wields a knife, and they have come, in the last days of September, to a small village outside London. Others too, soon take up residence. There is the cackling Jill, who flies through the night on her broomstick, and her cat Greymalk. There are Morris and MacCab, bodysnatchers, and Larry Talbot, who becomes a good deal more lupine at the full moon. There is the Mad Monk Rastov and Owen, the Welsh druid. The Good Doctor, along with his hunchbacked associate and a third man, a huge, hulking figure, arrive at an old farm house, while the sinister Count prefers a disused crypt. All these varied persons have an animal associate with them, and all are come to take part in the Game. Some are openers, and will, at the full moon on All Hallows Eve, attempt to open the doorway, that the eldritch elder gods may return, while the closers work to ensure this never happens, but, for much of the story, no one knows who is on their side, and who is against them. And all the while, the Great Detective and his trusted companion dog their heels, determined to solve the mystery of what will happen on a night in the lonesome October. 

All rights Gahan Wilson

As I stated in my review of Zelazny's Lord of Light, his trademark as a writer, along with some sparkling prose, is his way of taking established mythologies, sifting them through his own imagination and crafting superlative tales. This time he delves into far more modern legends, those of the quintessential horror stories and classic monster movies, grisly Victoriana, the Cthulhu Mythos and the Sherlock Holmes canon. His spin is to give centre stage to the player's animal comrades, making their interactions, their alliances and enmities the focus of the book and relegating the icons of book and film to supporting characters and cameos, referred to, but only appearing intermittently. It is therefore, Snuff, Jack's dog, who is our narrator-protagonist and Zelazny's writing of the canine is a delight throughout as Snuff's voice walks a perfect line between wry and satirical. The book can be uproariously funny at times, particularly when Zelazny lampshades horror tropes: 'The master's blade flashed, the woman screamed and there was a rending of garments...Why his list of materials required the edge of a green cloak worn by a red-haired lady on this date at midnight and removed while still on her person, I am uncertain. Magical rotas sometimes strike me as instructions for lunatic scavenger hunts.'1. As the novel goes on, however, and the situation becomes more critical, Snuff's relaxed, deadpan narration means that we understand immediately how dire things are without Zelazny needing to force a sudden, dramatic change in tone: we take it seriously because our wry, understated narrator is taking it seriously. 

As well as the obvious homage to the horror genre, there are more nuanced overtones of the spy and detective story, as Snuff carefully manoeuvres his way through the Game, swapping information and forging temporary alliances while trying to solve the central mystery – where the ceremony will need to take place. An even subtler nod comes in his relationship with Graymalk, which has all the frisson and wit of Bogart and Bacall at their finest, albeit in a rather more understated, English manner. Zelazny also uses their growing respect and understanding as a stand-in for the one that develops between Jack and Crazy Jill, and therefore he only needs to allude to several shared carriage rides and meals, and, with Snuff and Graymalk's repartee in mind, we already have a full picture of their relationship. 

All rights Gahan Wilson

The interactions between the animals is also heightened by the fact that when the legends do appear, Zelazny writes them as just that: legends. Indeed, the way that I refer to them in my summary is how they are referred to throughout: the names 'Frankenstein', 'Dracula' or 'Sherlock Holmes' are never mentioned. Zelazny is uninterested in delving into their psyches or presenting a new interpretation; they are there to be excellently written archetypes. When Snuff first encounters Holmes, he remarks 'As a watchdog, I could appreciate the mode of total attentiveness he assumed. It was not a normal human attitude. It was as if his entire being was concentrated in the moment, sensitive to every scrap of intelligence our encounter furnished'2, which is such a unique way of exactly representing Holmes' abilities. Likewise, Dracula, who appears most infrequently of all, carries with him more than the required menace, as Zelazny makes it clear that even Snuff is intimidated by the Count, though he prefers to use the word 'impressed'3. Indeed, the only established figure who receives much characterisation is Larry Talbot, whom Zelazny develops from the ever-helpless victim of his lycanthropic curse into a more capable figure and worthwhile ally to Snuff. 

All rights Gahan Wilson

Zelazny's writing is more restrained here, allowing his dryness and wit to come to the fore, though the pared-down style does not limit the ingenuity at work. Snuff's backstory is alluded to in a single sentence, 'I like being a watchdog better than what I was before he summoned me and gave me this job'4, and an entire article at Tor.com has been rightly devoted to the economy and wit of that sentence.

There are also illustrations by Gahan Wilson, which are odd to say the least, but do contribute to the overall eccentricity of the book. Plus he draws an excellent Lon Chaney Jr.: 

All rights Gahan Wilson

Though it may have less substance than some of Zelazny's other work, this light-hearted homage to a far more modern pantheon is also much more fun to read. The structure helps; thirty-one chapters, plus a prologue, one for each day of October, slowly building from brief, two-to-three page chapters, through the artful politics and drawing of battle lines to the fateful confrontation. I am aware that some fans will try to re-read the book every October, only reading the relevant chapter each day, and I applaud their restraint, as once I begin, I find it is such a glorious read that it's very difficult to stop.


Criminally, this wonderful book is out of print, so if you want a copy, Amazon's your best bet!


1 Zelazny, Roger. A Night in the Lonesome October, Orbit, 1994. pp. 31
2 pp. 46
3 pp. 145
4 pp. 2

The Review Hub: Night Must Fall

So, a couple of weeks ago, an opportunity came up to be a critic for The Reviews Hub, reviewing professional theatrical productions in my area. Needless to say, I leapt, and this morning, my first review - of the classic thriller Night Must Fall - was published online. I will not be reproducing my reviews here, but will provide links to their site, and hopefully, some of you will check them out!

Please do take a look: http://www.thereviewshub.com/night-must-fall-exeter-northcott-theatre/ 

The Book of the New Sun

The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe – Book 1: Shadow of the Torturer 1980, Book 2: Claw of the Conciliator 1981, Book 3: Sword of the Lictor 1982, Book 4: Citadel of the Autarch 1983

So a couple of times now, I have alluded to a mighty SF/F text that I have slowly been making my way through, and now, here we are at last: Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, one of the most extraordinary, mind-spinning epics I have ever encountered. Less well known than other SF/F writers, he has the distinction of being what one might call an author's author: Michael Swanwick has stated that Gene Wolfe is 'the finest writer in the English language alive today'1 and Ursula le Guin, Neil Gaiman, Patton Oswalt and George R.R. Martin have all showered praise upon Wolfe. The New Yorker itself described Wolfe as a 'genuis' and perfectly summed up New Sun's prestigious status: 'For science-fiction readers, “The Book of the New Sun” is roughly what “Ulysses” is to fans of the modern novel: far more people own a copy than have read it all the way through'2. Having actually finished both Ulysses (no, I'm bloody well not reviewing it!) and now The Book of the New Sun, the comparison is apt. Both are extraordinary pieces of writing that pushed the envelope in terms of their respective genre and left an indelible mark on the canon that followed them.

Right off the bat, I must state that in my limited experience of Gene Wolfe I have learnt one thing: Gene Wolfe does not write to be read. He writes to be re-read. Indeed, the Ulysess comparison is also highly accurate in that they are both difficult, often baffling, texts, far easier to start than to finish and if you do finish, you are left with a feeling that you've read something very good and very clever, but that will require rigorous re-reading before you work out just how good or clever it was. Gerald Jones, writing for the New York Times, declared that The Book of the New Sun 'does not make for easy reading'3, while Neil Gaiman, another Wolfe super-fan, has even produced a wryly written list entitled How to Read Gene Wolfe, of which number three is 'Reread. It's better the second time. It will be even better the third time'4. Indeed, a mere two pages from the end of The Book of the New Sun, Wolfe himself writes through Severian: 'Have I told you all I promised?...Before you assume that I have cheated you, read again'5. This, I have not done, mostly because, taken as one huge story, The Book of the New Sun is almost exactly 1200 pages in my editions, so my apologies if I obviously did not pick up on some key information, or have misunderstood something that should have been clear. When I re-read, and I certainly will, I may post subsequent thoughts (or I might spare you those!). 

All rights to Orion/Millennium publishing

The Book of the New Sun concerns Severian, a young apprentice in the Guild of Torturers, who lives in the Citadel, a vast construct of towers rising above the city of Nessus, the largest settlement in the Commonwealth, a land upon Urth, our own planet many millions of years in the future, long after humanity has risen to colonise the stars and fallen again, so much so that the great deeds of the species are little more than legends. In Shadow of the Torturer, Severian is banished from the Guild after he falls in love with one of their 'clients', a young woman called Thecla. Thecla is imprisoned in the Torturer's oubliette by order of the Autarch, ruler of the Commonwealth who is regarded by the people as somewhere between king and god because she is believed to have information about Vodalus, the leader of a force rebelling against the Autarch. Severian has, unbeknownst to any but them, already saved Vodalus' life, and provides Thecla with a knife to commit suicide with, rather than be submitted to the further ministrations of his guild. For this he is banished, and sent out to become the jailor/executioner of a distant city called Thrax, wearing only his black robes and armed with the sword Terminus Est, a parting gift from the master of the guild. In the course of his travels he falls in with a troupe of actors, meets and is betrayed by, a woman called Agia, is forced to fight a duel, encounters Dorcas, a woman who it appears has risen from the dead, and most importantly, gains, by seeming accident, a mystical jewel called the Claw of the Conciliator. In the second book of the series, The Claw of the Conciliator, he finally reunites with Vodalus, who, by use of drugs and unwitting cannibalism on Severian's part, inserts what remains of Thecla's consciousness into Severian's mind. Severian rejoins the acting troupe to perform at the House Absolute, the underground residence of the Autarch himself. In The Sword of the Lictor, Severian finally arrives at Thrax, but it is not long before his mercy once again makes him an outcast; this time fleeing into the mountains, he encounters a young boy who bears the same name as himself, and a two-headed man who claims to have once been king of the surrounding area, before leading a force of island dwellers against a giant who lives in a castle. And finally, in The Citadel of the Autarch, Severian experiences the war being fought on the Commonwealth's borders, re-encounters Vodalus and Agia, before coming face-to-face with the Autarch, ultimately succeeding him. Each book is followed by a short appendix by Wolfe, explaining his attempts at 'translating' Severian's manuscript, adding another layer of complexity to the shifting, dreamlike text that is The Book of the New Sun.

If the story of a figure walking over the snowy peaks and through dense forests, underneath an old, red sun, clad in a black cloak that leaves his chest bare, armed with a mighty sword and a mystical jewel, fighting monsters and two-headed men, bedding beautiful women and meeting aliens, and finally becoming the ruler of the land, sounds an awful lot like an appalling pulp novel of the Robert E Howard or Edgar Rice variety, then this is entirely deliberate. Just as Tolkien reached back into earlier narrative traditions, that of Norse mythology and Old English poetry, and reshaped them to his own needs, Wolfe does the same, borrowing tropes and aesthetic details from the pulp fantasy magazines of the twenties and applying them to an infinitely complex narrative. This is done mainly through weaving a densely layered labyrinthine narrative, but also by his vivid world building and extraordinary diction. Wolfe places us within the world, and leaves us to intuit for ourselves the fact that their sun is red, the ins and outs of the rigid hierarchical social systems and that the decaying civilisation is millennia after, or possibly before our own, only providing details once you are already brain deep in the mire. This intuition is made considerably harder by Wolfe's eclectic language, digging deep into the complete English lexicon, using words such as 'fuligin' for the colour of Severian's black robes, 'destrier' for the huge and impossibly swift horses of the world, and 'exultant', 'armiger' and 'cacogen' to name various social strata.

Of huge importance in discussing the novels is that they are told entirely in the first person, narrated by Severian – and it is important to note that this is not Severian the torturer's apprentice narrating events as they happen to him, but Severian the Autarch looking back, and telling the story of his ascension. We are assured time and time again that Severian never forgets anything, that indeed 'From my earliest memory I remember all'6,yet we also quickly learn 'I realised for the first time that I am in some degree insane'7. which immediately puts the reader on their guard. We are kept acutely aware that we are being told by a ruler the story of his rise to power, only ever being told what he wants us to know – the details of his guild are always kept suspiciously secret for instance – and that even if he is being as honest with us as he is capable of being, his may still be a very warped version of events. The gap between Severian's account and any supposed 'truth' widens when we discover the extent to which Thecla is still a conscious part of his mind, to the point of occasionally breaking into the narration, changing who the 'I' being referred to is, without Wolfe giving us any immediate notification. This effect is exacerbated towards the end of the final book, when Severian becomes the Autarch by absorbing the consciousnesses of all the previous Autarchs, as he did Thecla’s. As Peter Wright states, 'The gulf between plot and story, between the apparent and the real, alerts the reader to the fact that Wolfe is playing a complex and contrived textual game that facilitates a number of methods of interpretation.'8

 

All rights to Orion/Millennium publishing

If this is sounding unbearably heavy, there is also a fair smattering of humour, sometimes due to witty dialogue – Jonas in particular tends to use phrases like 'I'm going to tell you what all housewives sooner or later tell their husbands: 'Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers''9. More often, however, there is a wryness to the narrative itself that counterbalances Severian's earnestness; the two-headed titan Typhon, who, after being accidentally resurrected by Severian, captures the torturer and boasts how he 'was autarch on many worlds. I shall be autarch again, and this time on many more'10 is easily dispatched by Severian within pages. Deeper still, there is the growing feeling that our unreliable narrator himself is even more clueless than the reader, which makes Severian's philosophic diversions awkwardly entertaining for the reader, as we begin to realise he knows less about what is happening than we do.

As I have stated, these are only some of my first impressions. There is so much, so densely packed into 1200 pages, that it will probably only be on a third or fourth reading that I can get anywhere close to understanding The Book of the New Sun. There are things that, having read more about the novels since finishing, I will appreciate the second time, such as the photo of the moon-landing that Severian sees at one point. There are also references that I will almost certainly never fully understand, particularly Wolfe's use of his Catholic faith, although even I recognise the messianic flavour of the Conciliator's legend and the parallels between the torturers' festival of Holy Katherine's feast and real-life celebrations surrounding saints. Perhaps Alison Flood, writing in the Guardian, describes The Book of the New Sun the best: that the 'whole thing is dreamlike in quality, unfathomably large in scope, deliciously, slyly puzzling'. For myself, reading Gene Wolfe's masterpiece has made me understand far more Neil Gaiman's fifth piece of advice for reading Wolfe: 'It's a knife-throwing act, and like all good knife-throwing acts, you may lose fingers, toes, earlobes or eyes in the process. Gene doesn't mind. Gene is throwing the knives.'11

Link to Orion Books page where the SF Masterworks The Book of the New Sun is available: https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781473211971

1 http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intms.htm
2  http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-genius
3  http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/22/books/inside-elsewhere.html?pagewanted=all
4  Gaiman, Neil. How to Read Gene Wolfe in The View from the Cheap Seats, Headline Publishing Group, 2016. pp 118
5 Wolfe, Gene. The Book of the New Sun Volume 2: Sword and Citadel, Millennium, 2000. pp. 608
6 Wolfe, Gene. The Book of the New Sun Volume 1: Shadow and Claw, Millennium, 2000 pp. 20
7 Vol 1. pp. 36

8 http://ultan.org.uk/review-botns/

9 Vol 1. pp. 370

10  Vol 2. pp. 212

11 Gaiman, N. How to Read Gene Wolfe. pp. 118

A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness (From an original idea by Siobhan Dowd) – 2011

Copyright Jim Kay & Walker Books, 2011

TRIGGER WARNING: References to cancer treatment, death from cancer and grief.

Our second Carnegie Medal winning book in two weeks, A Monster Calls is in itself the product of two previous Carnegie Medal winners; Patrick Ness, who wrote the book, and Siobhan Dowd, who had the initial idea, and had been planning to write it, before her death from breast cancer in 2007, at the age of 43. Her death, and more importantly, her knowledge of her impending death lie at the deepest heart of this book, a book that is all about hiding, withdrawing and denial.

Conor is having nightmares, and when he wakes from them, the old yew tree outside his window comes alive and becomes a monster, that says it has come to get him. Conor however is unafraid. He has seen worse and cannot be frightened by so simple a threat as a monster. The monster, bemused, states that it shall return four times; on the first three occasions it will tell him a story, and on the last, he must tell it one. The next morning, we see Conor suffer through school and return home, to find his grandma there again, talking with his mother about Conor coming to live with her, and, to Conor, intruding on the fragile world he and his mum have together. Fragile, because, thanks to references to medication and chemo, we realise very quickly that Conor's mum is seriously ill. The monster returns that night, and tells Connor a fairy-tale in which nothing is as it seems at first. During his stay with his grandma in her pristine house, while his mum goes back into hospital, the monster appears again with a second slippery tale, which ends in the monster, with Conor's assistance, destroying a bad man's house, and when the vision of the monster fades, he has destroyed his grandma's sitting room. The last story comes at school, as Conor's feelings of isolation and invisibility peak and he, with the help of the monster behind him, violently confronts his playground tormentor. Finally, however, the last medicine his mum was to be tried on fails, and the monster appears demanding Conor's own story, his own, deeply buried truth: not just that his mum is dying, but his own, conflicted reactions to it and the far more terrible monster that his denial has formed in his nightmares.

Like The Amazing Maurice last week, A Monster Calls is deeply concerned with the importance of story. Unlike The Amazing Maurice, A Monster Calls also bears the burden, though it wears it as lightly as it can, that it may be functioning in children's lives in a similar way to the monster's stories in Conor's. Although the stories that the monster tells contain parallels to Conor's life, when, after the first story featuring a not-so-wicked stepmother, in whom Conor sees a link to his grandma, Conor angrily questions 'Is that supposed to be the lesson of all this? That I should be nice to her'1, he monster laughs at him and demands 'You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons?'2. It is a brilliant touch on Ness' part, and an important point to make, particularly for all those children reading the book who may be in a similar situation to Conor: this book is not an instruction manual on how to cope with grief. However, just because the monster's stories, and indeed A Monster Calls itself, are not in any way didactic, does not mean that nothing can be learned from them, and the basic, underlying message, as within all great stories, is that life is, by its very nature, complicated. In telling simple stories that highlight the difficulty and the complexity of life, what the monster does is make Conor, who is withdrawing and beginning to shut down emotionally, think more empathetically, to care and to feel again. In giving Conor a way to grasp the complexity, it allows him to question all the things he has assumed and internalised; his anger, his grief and his guilt.

Of course, there is the question of whether the monster is really there. There is, obviously, the interpretation that the monster is Conor's subconscious externalising the part of him that allows him to work though what is happening with his mum, although one wonders how a young child would know all of the references to furnish his subconscious with when the monster claims 'I have as many names as there are years to time itself! I am Herne the Hunter! I am Cernunnos! I am the eternal Green Man!'3. It is to Patrick Ness' credit that he walks a line perfectly between making it almost obvious that the monster is Conor's way of processing what is happening and injecting the text with just enough other-worldliness to suggest that just maybe, something ancient and powerful really is there to help Conor. However, his greatest achievement in A Monster Calls, is to ensure that we very quickly become uninterested in the monster's origins, and aware that they do not matter; what matters is Conor's path from denial to acceptance. A book so directly about powerful, primal emotions could easily slip into sentimentality, and it is to Ness' credit that he keeps all of the character's emotions and interactions achingly raw and believable. Take, for instance, the moment where, having fought for most of the story, Conor and his grandma agree to make peace. It, like much of the book, is awkward and uncomfortable, and we are left in no doubt that there will be many more clashes in the future, but it is finally acknowledged that although they are 'not the most natural fit'4 'we are going to have to learn'5. Whether the monster is real or not is ultimately unimportant, because what overwhelms the book is the reality of Conor's emotions.

Copyright Jim Kay & Walker Books, 2011

The other element of the book that must be mentioned is Jim Kay's phenomenal artwork. Jim Kay won the Greenway Medal, the companion to the Carnegie Medal which is awarded for illustration, for A Monster Calls, the very first time that both awards have been won by the same book, and Kay's win is as richly deserved as Ness'. These are not simple illustrations, adding some nice, but unessential, emphasis to the text, and done away with in later editions. No, these are the soul of the book, establishing and maintaining the raw, gut-wrenching tone in a far more instant, visceral way than even the best writer can. Over half the pages have some detailing on them, and there are nearly fifteen double page drawings, where Jim Kay's magnificent work can take centre stage. I could not imagine the story without them, and I really wouldn't want to try.

Copyright Jim Kay & Walker Books, 2011

A Monster Calls is a superb example of what happens when a simple idea is perfectly executed, and is every bit as deserving of it's Carnegie Medal as The Amazing Maurice. It is a devastatingly powerful work, and one that works best when consumed by total immersion: I read the entire thing in a single, three hour long sitting, and would recommend doing likewise. There is now a soon-to-be-released film (Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMgm20Di9Wg) but so many of the harsh, uncomfortable edges seem sanded down, till what we are left with appears to be a fiery Ent and sentimentalism. This condemnation may prove to be uncalled for, but even an excellent film would have difficulty measuring up to the bleak intensity of Kay's art, the harrowing poetry of Ness' words, and above all, the baton that Siobhan Dowd – to use Ness' metaphor – gave them to run with.


Link to Walker Books where the book can be purchased: http://www.walker.co.uk/A-Monster-Calls-9781406339345.aspx

1 Ness, Patrick. A Monster Calls, Walker Books Ltd. 2011. pp. 73
2 pp. 73
3 pp. 44
4 pp. 209
5 pp.209

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett – 2001

Greetings all! My apologies for not having updated in the last month, but having finished a show, post-show blues combined with the onset of a good old-fashioned cold left me feeling really crap for a while – certainly not up to writing analysis of what I was reading. Far worse, due to how spaced-out I was, I wasn't even feeling like reading, particularly as I am currently in the midst of a mighty SF/F classic tome – which will be reviewed once finished – which requires a fair dose of concentration to keep up with most of the time. However, during the worst of the cold, I looked up at a shelf, saw a beloved book, lifted it off and began to read. That book was Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

If you do not already know it, then perhaps my introducing it as a book that I read while feeling ill and unfocused, compounded with the fact that it was released as a children's book, may give the impression that the book is a simple one, entertaining without being challenging. In a word, no. If you are even slightly familiar with any of Pratchett's work, you'll understand what I mean when I say that this is Pratchett on his very top form. Hogfather form. Witches Abroad form. Reaper Man form. The only allowance he makes for his younger readers is that although The Amazing Maurice is set on the Discworld (shaped like a disc, resting upon the backs of four elephants - oh, you know! Or you should!) it is an entirely self-contained story, not featuring any of the vast array of superbly drawn characters he had created over 27 (at the time The Amazing Maurice was published) Discworld novels. None, except of course a brief cameo from Mr ALL-CAPS himself (again, you should know!) but then again, if any story goes on long enough, he'll be a part of it sooner or later! This is the novel that rightly won Pratchett the Carnegie Medal, giving him just a small amount of the critical praise he had been owed for so long.

Bad Blintz is a town, somewhere in Überwald, a sparse, mountainous region of the Discworld, and into this town comes Maurice, a cunning, conniving alley-cat, and the tribe of rats who now travel with him. All of these animals have recently found themselves to be suddenly sentient and as the rats collectively deal with their new-found consciousness in different ways, they are convinced by Maurice to participate in a scam, based around the well known fact that rats infest towns, and pipers come and get rid of the rats. Along with them is their pleasant if rather dim human, Keith, who really only wants to be able to play his pipe in peace. However, in Überwald they not only encounter Malicia, the mayor's story-obsessed daughter who constantly re-invents the story of her own life as it pleases her, but slowly discover the evil at work within the town, embodied in Spider, a monstrous Rat-King, formed of dozens of rats with their tails tied together. Before they know it, the fledgling community is plunged into a war and looking to Darktan, their resident trap expert, and Dangerous Beans, the closest thing they have to a religious leader, for guidance, while Maurice is forced to confront the fact that being conscious may also mean having a conscience. And all the time, the threat of the real piper's arrival hangs over their heads...

Like many of Pratchett's best, at the heart of The Amazing Maurice is a fascination with story. As you may have guessed, the book is Pratchett's riff on the Pied Piper legend and, as always when Pratchett riffs on established folk-tales, he treats it as exactly that within Discworld. Not only is Maurice's initial scam inspired by his understanding of the power the story of the piper holds, but when the professional piper arrives towards the end, we learn he himself is trading off the legend, allowing the rumours about him to build from 'the council didn't pay him and he played his special pipe and led all the kids up into the mountains'1 to 'Over in Klotz the mayor kept the piper waiting too long and he played his pipe and turned him into a badger'2. When he is secretly questioned about this at the end, the piper simply states 'It always pays to advertise, kid'3 and even admits 'Half the things people say I've done even I didn't make up'4. While this is a gently satirical point from Pratchett about the gullibility and tendency of people to exaggerate, there is also a more serious point about the importance of story, which is why Maurice's plan to deal with the piper is better than Keith and Malicia's proposal; because it more narratively satisfying.

A more serious demonstration of the power of story comes in the form of Mr Bunsy Has An Adventure, an illustrated children's book about talking animals who wear clothes and occasionally interact with humans, that the rats carry with them as an almost religious text. When Malicia accidentally reveals the truth about the book, dismissing it as 'stupid stuff for ickle kids'5, Dangerous Beans suffers a crisis of faith, devastated that what he believed to be 'a vision of some bright future'6 is actually just a children's story. Once he has emerged from his confrontation with Spider, the epitome of rat-kind’s despair and hatred, however, he counters the assertions that Mr Bunsy is just a lie, or a pretty story, with another idea ‘Perhaps it's a map'7.

If this process of evangelical belief, betrayal at the essential lies, then deeper examination of the truths mirrors the progression of a religious text within a civilisation, then Pratchett goes still further in showing the power of religion and faith within the rat's fledgling society. At the start of the book, the rats are beginning to develop the idea of the Big Rat Underground 'who made everything'8 - though of course, this being Pratchett, the essential absurdity in serious topics must always be noted, therefore the rats’ dismiss the idea of there also being a Big Human who made the humans as 'just being silly'9. It is these primal, new-born beliefs that Spider attempts to pervert with his claim that 'I am The Big Rat That Lives Underground'10, which Dangerous Beans refutes, along with Spider's cruelly Darwinian desire that the strong rats shall grow stronger, feeding on the weak, by stating that 'If there is a Big Rat, and I hope there is, it would not talk of war and death. It would be made of the best that we could be, not the worst we are'11. Given his role as the spiritual leader of the rats, Dangerous Beans is a somewhat messianic figure, yet it is Darktan who returns from the jaws of a mousetrap and bears 'the marks of the Bone Rat's teeth on him'12, and uses this reputation to anoint his followers with his blood, binding the terrified rats together into an army capable of surviving the night. In fact, though an actual sacrifice of a death so that another may live does occur, it comes from the most unexpected character, so I will not spoil it, except to say that it features one of the most poignant encounters with Death throughout the Pratchett canon.

None of this covers the wit and warmth, and only some of the depth and power of this wonderful book; it is a tale by Terry Pratchett on top-form and there's not much higher praise than that. No punches are pulled for his younger readers, although it is worth noting the brilliant stroke of Pratchett's, in writing for children, to subvert the things that they will be most familiar with – talking animals, Enid Blyton style adventures and a legend they will know. Of course, the subject of Pratchett's always precise, often affectionate and occasionally razor-sharp satire is not the story of the Pied Piper, but of life, from consciousness to civilisation; the rats are a microcosmic reflection of the human society above them. He also rigorously if subtly defends the place of story and of philosophers, storytellers and thinkers in the world. I will leave you with two examples from late on in the book: when Darktan and the Mayor talk together, both tired, irritable and the leader of their respective worlds, they begin to discuss Mr Bunsy, which the Mayor loved as a boy, and 'man and rat talked, as the long light faded'13 united by a story. And secondly, the thoughts Darktan, recently returned from near-death, has about Dangerous Beans, whom he had 'never talked much to'14, as he 'liked people who were practical'15: 'But now he thought: He's a trap-hunter! Just like me! He goes ahead of us and finds the dangerous ideas and thinks about them and traps them in words and makes them safe and shows us the way through. We need him'16.

Link to Penguin's website where the book is available: https://www.penguin.co.uk/puffin/books/1005046/the-amazing-maurice-and-his-educated-rodents/

1 Pratchett, Terry. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Corgi, 2002. pp. 230
2 pp. 233
3 pp. 242
4 pp. 243
5 pp. 161
6 pp. 48
7 pp. 257
8 pp. 90
9 pp. 90
10 pp. 204
11 pp. 209
12 pp. 263
13 pp. 266
14 pp. 179
15 pp.179
16 pp. 179