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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Literary Society of Berkeley
Rating: 3/5
Pages: 515
Started: 6 September 2024
Finished: 28 September 2024
Summary:
Nutt is a wax-dripper who works in the dungeons of Unseen University, a school where wizards do a lot of vague magical experiments and not a lot of teaching, where an Orangutan lords over the library, and where meal times happen approximately every two hours around the clock. What no one at the university knows: Nutt has a secret and dangerous past, memories of which are blocked behind doors in his mind, put there by an immortal and extremely powerful Lady. When the wizards of UU are challenged to a Football match, the intelligence, strength, and power which Nutt gained from his mysterious past will be vital to the university's victory.
Glenda is the head cook of the Night Kitchen. She makes pies well--very well, astoundingly well--and she's quite satisfied with her life, especially since Juliette, her beautiful best friend, keeps her company in the kitchen. But when Juliette is offered a chance at fame as a model of Dwarf-made chafe-less chain mail, Glenda begins to realize that safety, propriety, and pies are not the only important things in life.
Thoughts:
What a wacky book. I do not think I would have finished it had I not been reading it for my book club, but I am glad I had a reason to stick it out. Pratchet is a very challenging author to read, since he includes so many strange details in every scene, and some of them do turn out to be very important. But about halfway in, I got accustomed to the amount of focus required to understand the book, and ended up really enjoying the end. Pratchet's satire is very effective, insane and random enough to be entertaining but clear enough that you can see how every character or plot point is a commentary on some real-world issue (example: the wizards were clearly a satiric exaggeration of the bureaucracy within real-world universities) and it's fun to parse through all the layers of both plot and symbolism. The book's ending was just the right amount of satisfyingly predictable, with some unexpected surprises thrown in, and all the characters got very fitting endings. Although I am not sure if I will have the motivation to read more Pratchet on my own, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a 500-page giggle.