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dustydigger
Posted 2014-11-10 1:23 PM (#8850 - in reply to #6198)
Subject: Re: The Pick and Mix Challenge.		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		Terry Pratchett - Going Postal.The last couple of his books I read were Pyramids and Small Gods ,where there was too much religion banging in it for me,the humour barely hid the satire on religion.This book was great fun,and as a bonus had quite a lot of Lord Vetinari,the Patrician,in it.I really love his ruthless machinations! Apparently Pratchett himself has Alan Rickman firmly in mind as his perfect actor for the character,which is great,all that smooth urbane polite surface hiding ruthless mayhem! lol
Lord Vetinari ,Death,and The Luggage are my three faves from this series.
Roger Zelazny - Trumps of Doom. Book 6 of the Amber series,the first narrated by Corwin's son,Merlin,who resides in our world, content to bide his time until he will activate the superhuman strength and genius inherited from his father,. But that time arrives all too soon when the forces of evil from the world of shadow drive him mercilessly from Earth. Good fun,we see quite a bit of Amber,and the complex family relationships,but the original nine siblings are still being sadly depletedthey are always plotting to kill each other!
Walter M Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz.Please dont ask me for a logical review, it is beyond me. I am still digesting this complex work of art. I was expecting something in the downbeat plodding depression tradtion of On the Beach, or the coruscating biting satire of Heller's Catch-22, but this was way beyond them. Every shade of irony was there from the sly and gentle to the tirades of the last 40 pages, but always shot through with humour, and while it has no use whatsoever for man's hubris, greed and ambition, it respects the individual humans burdened by original sin, and the bleak thesis that man is forever doomed to build up then tear down his works is all pervasive. The very ambiguity of the book makes it impossible to see what exactly Miller believes. Is this a song of praise to the Catholic Church, or a criticism of it? Complex themes about faith and humanism, Church and State, the problem of pain, the thorny problems of knowledge, who should own it, disseminate it or curb it, warnings on mankinds swinging between fear and ignorance, then hubris and greed for power over the earth, are all there, shifting and subtle, with enough symbolism to keep a thousand graduates happy deciphering the clues for decades.... I give up trying to even make a judgement other than that this should be up there with Brave New World and 1984 as a classic of the genre.
Not for everyone, especially if you haven't a clue about Catholicism, or Latin. I get the feeling that every read would bring me new insights, and maybe altering my ideas of what the book is about. A masterpiece in my view.

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