Book Review: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is funnier than Douglas Adams. There, I said it. Please hold your pitchforks until I’m done explaining myself.

It is unlikely that you’re a bigger Adams fanboy than I am. I mean, I wrote a whole novella, now a trilogy, singing his praises, sacrificing myself on that particular altar of worship, accepting the two-star rating that book now has. I love that book, because it’s my tribute to a man who brought me a great deal of joy and mirth in my youth. I will defend it all the way down to one-star, if necessary. And, no, I’m not even going to mention it by title. I don’t need more slagging, thanks.

Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, of course, share a lot of similarities. It’s no wonder that I enjoy them both so much. World-building. Dry, British wit. Silly characters with silly names in silly situations. Biting, backhanded, muted social commentary. They’re more similar than different, other than one wrote sci-fi, and the other fantasy.

Most of all, they make me laugh.

And it’s difficult to quantify humor. It would take a lot of work to determine if one or the other pops off .8 more jokes per page. That’s not really the way humor works, is it? The idea of counting jokes is funny, but actually doing it would be quite sad.

Nevertheless, there are a lot of reasons why I think my thesis statement is true. Subjectively true. True in my case. Subjectively.

For one, it’s a case of familiarity. I’ve read the five HHGTTG books multiple times. Watched the BBC series multiple times. Watched the BBC series multiple times on acid. Watched the film and wept. Watched the film again many years later, and was angry. And sad.

Nothing will ever recapture the amusement I received the first time I breathlessly read the first three books. It’s not that they fall flat upon reading them again, but it is likely impossible that they could elicit the same reaction more than once.

So Pratchett is a bit fresher to me, since I’ve only read a few of the Discworld books so far. Sheer volume is a good supporting argument. I am not going to run out of Discworld books any time soon. 

Both authors were also amazing forward-thinkers. They predicted more of the future than did most futurists.

But I think that, most of all, Douglas Adams evokes a lot more tragedy in my mind. He died way too young. He clearly wasn’t all that happy with the way things went in his career, toward the end. This is a matter of public record. By the last book, he felt somewhat bitter and resentful. A sadder kind of funny. He wanted to be known for more than the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, which sort of began to feel like it was being written at gunpoint.

Pratchett, on the other hand, exudes a shared sort of amusement in the Discworld books, as if saying, “Oh, people like these? Good, because I do, too.”

Both wrote outside of their most popular series, of course. Arguably, Adams had more success in that case, at least as far as I’m concerned. While Pratchett’s non-Discworld “serious” books are clearly very well-written, no doubt exhibiting the same mastery of plotting and character development, I…don’t want to read them. I want to laugh. I need to laugh.

I am not laughing as I write this. I wish they were both still here with us.

I adored The Colour of Magic. Absolutely loved it. I once jokingly stated once that it was being made into a movie directed by Peter Jackson. Pratchett’s reply to me was, “Not bloody likely.” It was actually produced a few years later, albeit not by Jackson. I never got an apology for being half-right, but I can live with that. Bruce Campbell owes me a half-apology as well for when I called Evil Dead 4. I’m happy just to have brushed elbows with them, in the digital sense.

Too bad that production, much like the HHG movie, seems to have vacuumed out 75% of what made it so funny. Oh, well. That’s why we read books, right?

But Making Money…wow. This one, I just couldn’t put down. Unlike Unseen Academicals, which I did somehow put down, and then lost for a number of years. Then it got put into storage, and I haven’t finished it yet. That’s not a statement on the content, just something that happened.

The characters in MM are just so likable and well-written, I didn’t want it to end. You know that feeling you get in a really good book? You want to know the whole story, and rush to the last page, only to regret running out of pages. Making Money evokes exactly that. Rincewind will always have a special place in my heart, but Moist von Lipwig is now my new favorite Discworld character. He’s a roguish fellow, but his heart is more or less in the right place. He gets bored by normalcy. He’s always getting into difficult or impossible situations, and then getting out of them again, impossibly.

Adora Belle, his often absentee girlfriend, is also a strong contender in the likeability sweepstakes. So beautiful, although I don’t remember any physical description. So bold. She is his ideal counterpart. Chain-smoking, foot-stomping, to-hell-with-convention Adora Belle stole my heart.

Lord Vetinari, who apparently appears in a number of Discworld books, is also amazing. He’s a tyrant, but he has his favorable qualities. Then just when you think he’s gone soft, he does something wretched.

The way Pratchett names his characters makes me laugh on multiple levels. They’re often ridiculous as all get out, but in the meta sense as a writer, I get a deeper sense of amusement at the very idea of someone naming characters with such a flair for the melodramatic. Even in a comedic novel, they seem over the top, telegraphing aspects of their character in a way no writer should practice. But in Discworld, they’re all perfect. The Lavish family? Of course! Topsy Turvey? Super! I really admire what he does in this area.

As to the subject matter and plot, Making Money is, again, perfect. And perfectly suited for me, the amateur armchair economist. Because it revolves around banks and monetary policy, a subject that is already absurd to begin with. He absolutely skewers our concepts of currency with salient point after point. The entire book (and how can I be reviewing a book without ever once talking about anything specific?) weaves a pretty complex narrative. No matter when you think the eventual outcome will be, you will find yourself wrong by the end.

When he’s not picking apart the curious relation between money, banks, and government, Pratchett finds time to work in some other cheeky commentary. One involves a transgender Golem, of all things. Masterful stuff, here. He manages to utilize the word and concept ‘fractal’, and even describes a physical economic simulator that has only recently been made a reality. That’s a lot of impressive stuff incorporated into a medieval world.

The man was brilliant. Far more brilliant than I have ever seen anyone give him credit for. Igor, both a race of people and a character, is another outstanding example of Pratchett’s ingenuity. I could read a whole book about these fellows alone.

I could go on and on about this one. But I won’t.

I read Discworld books as I acquire them, usually in some musty used bookstore* (Hello, Book Barn!)  or thrift shop. And that’s mostly fine. As far as I know, while there might be a preferred order, they seem to be written so that you can read them in any sequence. Imagine my delight in learning that this is a sequel of sorts to Going Postal, which I haven’t read yet. I can see now that I’ll need to order it, because I can’t leave it to happenstance as to when I get to read it. I want it on my desk yesterday.

 

* I don’t actually read them in the musty bookstores, despite my poor phrasing.

Note: Stuff it. If you read all the way through that, maybe you won’t be so blackhearted as to track this book down and ding it further. Narrator Molly Elston is so talented, I am always looking to put her work on display. So, here’s a little audiobook snippet of said unnamed book: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12036169