Pros: Excellently written with an entertaining flourish and an insightful message.
Cons: None, this novel was amazing.
The Bottom Line: This novel is hysterical and thoughtful. If covers lots of topics, and covers them in a smart, highly entertaining, manner. Pratchett is now on my short list of favorite authors.
Guildencrantz's Full Review: Terry Pratchett - The Truth
I received this book for Christmas when my father gave it to me. What caught his attention was the purple and yellow jacket of the hardcover book. Of course he preceded to read the jacket and saw that Pratchett was being compared to Kurt Vonnegut, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Douglas Adams. He also saw that the book was about censorship. Because of my interest in this subject and because the three mentioned authors were among my favorites, he bought it. So I got the book as a gift.
Well I finished reading the novel quite a while ago, but I just couldn't figure out exactly what I would say. I was just to blown away by this magnificent novel to say more than "It's really good, read it." Since that makes a lousy review I held off. Now I feel like I can actually say something.
First I must note that the similarity between Douglas Adam's quirky descriptive style and Pratchett's descriptions are amazingly similar. They really are the same style. It's a wonderful style that states the obvious, relies on reader expectations, and plants assumptions into the readers head just before blowing the assumptions away. Anybody who has read the works of Adams should definitely look into Pratchett's novels.
What clearly sets Pratchett apart from Adams is that while Adams uses a Sci-Fi version of Earth (and regions beyond) Pratchett created his own fantasy world: Discworld. This fantasy world is the basis for all the Discworld novels (of which The Truth is the 25th novel). This is an amazing world that is flat, rests on the backs of four giant elephants who stand on the back of a turtle swimming through space. Makes sense doesn't it? Well it does when you consider it is inhabited by the normal hoard of elves, dwarves, undead, and humans that are found in every fantasy novel. Discworld's inhabitants just have more color.
Well in The Truth we find that we are in Ankh-Morpork, a large city divided by a river. It's got some really crummy neighborhoods and is full of the scoundrels that can make a story really entertaining. Actually it's in one of the less than wonderful places where the story begins: Dwarves have developed a printing press with moveable type in a city where most printing is done from engravings.
With the new printing press, and the speed as well as reduced price to print that comes with it, a local scribe can now make his letter of events, which he sends out to dignitaries in other cities, into a newspaper to be distributed within the city. Of course this starts up the big debates about the freedom of the press. What can be printed? Who can be quoted? What rights do the police have? Well all of this is asked, and well responded to, in The Truth.
Since the engravers guild now feels threatened, another paper also pops up. This paper is the trash paper. While the first paper focused exclusively on real events and making reports about what has happened, this new paper just has a man in a basement making everything up (this is the part of the novel which asks: How much of what you read can you trust? And it acts as the example of how foolish people can be.)
While this is the main intellectual meat of the novel Pratchett has the paper following a story about the Patrician of the city trying to steal from the city funds. In this we meet a werewolf, see a talking dog, and find out that there is one of the most odd groups of homeless people in existence (who happen to help make points about who can be trusted as both workers and sources of information) living right in Ankh-Morpork. Pratchett even throws a mysterious source, deep bone, into the mix (okay, so he's the talking dog, but talking dogs don't exist).
All the characters and all the descriptions make this novel read very easily. I am a deathly slow reader, but I flew through The Truth. I was completely amazed by the magnificent humour and bizarre situations that Pratchett is able to set up. Of course the way that Pratchett sets up the discussion of freedom of speech is quite amazing as well. This is definitely a great entertainment book with a statement that is clearly made. Now I say to you: "It's really good, read it."
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