Bokrencension av Interesting Times

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Book Review

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: Interesting Times
Publisher: Gollancz, 1994

"This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world.
And Fate always wins"

Interesting times is the 16th book in Terry Pratchett's proceeding story about the Discworld and the fourth about Rincewind, the 'Wizzard'
The wizards live in Ankh-Morpork that is a city a couple of hundred miles from the Counterweight continent where the humans live. Most of the humans are not aware about that there is another world outside the 'walls'. But some of them are, and when it's time for the red army to take over the empire they send a bird with a message to the wizards, saying that they need 'the great wizzard'. The wizards gets quite confused cause they don't know wbat a 'wizzard' is, to answer such questions Hex had been built. That a hex is a spell or a curse is well-known, but it may be less obvious to non-computer types that 'hex' is also short for 'hexadecimal', a common number base used by programmers. And the fact that is's driven by thousands of ants running around makes it very similar to a computer.

Rincewind is sent to the Counterweight continent by the fact that he's believed to be 'the great wizzard' who is going to help the red army to take over the empire.
At the same time the Horde, which consists of a bunch of old men, are trying to 'steal' the empire. The members of the Horde are really old and they certainly don't look like being able to fight a whole army. But the truth is that they have had 'a lifetimes experience of not dying'.
All these actions starts simoultanelesly in well-separated threads and ends up in a total mess of compelling illogic and unchained whimsyness, that only Terry Pratchett can master.

Terry Pratchett's way of writing is a style that is very much his own. The way he puts the words into sentences, with a master's knowledge about the awkward silence and embarrassing pauses, makes the Discworld even more real than the real world.
You could almost say that his skill lies in what he doesn't write and his sci-fi fantasy is merely a genre of it's own.

As most people don't know who Terry Pratchett is I'm going to state some facts about him. He was born 28 April 1948 Beaconsfield, Bucks. His major source of education was Beaconsfield Public Library (though school must have been of some little help). After passing his studies there in 1959, he attended High Wycombe Technical High School rather than the local grammar because he felt 'woodwork would be more fun than Latin'. At this time he had no real vision of what he wanted to do...