The Carpet People

I enjoyed Terry's revision of his 1971 novel The Carpet People. The book challenges the reader to imagine a world full of tribes within the scope of a carpet, challenging I say because despite all the familiar aspects of what it might be like to be minute and living deep in the hairs, the tribes grow vegetables and fruit from dust, ride horses and other animals, make campfires and forge weapons. The world of the Carpet is full of kingdoms and peoples, with the perilous Fray hovering (or hoovering) above them at all times. The story entails an uprising of the mouls and snargs who lurk in the underlay as the various tribes and kingdoms of the Carpet find unity in defeating the threat which has arrived to overcome them. However the Carpet People is about more than just warring peoples, it concerns the transitory nature of empires, the evolution of technology in an environment of found-objects, and most importantly the hypertextual characteristic of storytelling with an emphasis on outcomes. What I like about it as a contrast to Terry's other work is that in a little under three hundred pages Terry gives us a complete world, a complete history with complete saga to go with it. The humour is less contrived than what I've noticed in some of his other books. Terry himself has said that he felt sometimes he was writing a string of jokes with narrative in between, I thought the Carpet People, although brimming with buffoonish mirth dispersed the gags wisely throughout without it soaking up the storyline.