"Change is afoot in Ankh-Morpork--Discworld's first steam engine has arrived, and once again Moist von Lipwig finds himself with a new and challenging job"--
As the Discworld enters the age of steam, Sir Terry crafts a tale of intrigue, of rebellion, and of the magic of technology. The reveal at the end of the tale dwarfs the main conflict, but highlights Sir Terry’s open-mindedness to the changing world; we get to see more facets of lesser characters, with most appearing more rounded. As a learner of Welsh, I found myself reading with accents in places!
Remember Family Circus and how, occasionally, ten-year-old Billy would take over for the cartoonist, which was indicated by that day's strip being drawn in a primitive style, the way a child would? Raising Steam reminds me of that in some ways. I would go so far as to say that the person who wrote this is not the same Terry Pratchett who wrote [b:Hogfather|34532|Hogfather (Discworld, #20)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327948141s/34532.jpg|583655] or [b:Small Gods|34484|Small Gods (Discworld, #13)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390899426s/34484.jpg|1636629]. Whether it's Pterry succumbing to disease or an outright ghostwriter, I won't speculate. But this latest book feels like an intruder in the Discworld canon.
It starts out well: a young man has invented a steam engine and brings it to Ankh-Morpork to build a railroad. Harry King, with an eye toward his legacy, sees an opportunity to be remembered for something other than emptying the city's chamberpots, and agrees to back the railroad. Vetinari assigns …
Remember Family Circus and how, occasionally, ten-year-old Billy would take over for the cartoonist, which was indicated by that day's strip being drawn in a primitive style, the way a child would? Raising Steam reminds me of that in some ways. I would go so far as to say that the person who wrote this is not the same Terry Pratchett who wrote [b:Hogfather|34532|Hogfather (Discworld, #20)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327948141s/34532.jpg|583655] or [b:Small Gods|34484|Small Gods (Discworld, #13)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390899426s/34484.jpg|1636629]. Whether it's Pterry succumbing to disease or an outright ghostwriter, I won't speculate. But this latest book feels like an intruder in the Discworld canon.
It starts out well: a young man has invented a steam engine and brings it to Ankh-Morpork to build a railroad. Harry King, with an eye toward his legacy, sees an opportunity to be remembered for something other than emptying the city's chamberpots, and agrees to back the railroad. Vetinari assigns Moist von Lipwig (whom we saw in [b:Going Postal|64222|Going Postal (Discworld, #33)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388236899s/64222.jpg|1636617] and [b:Making Money|116296|Making Money (Discworld, #36)|Terry Pratchett|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405092022s/116296.jpg|144656]) to look out for the city's interests. So far, so good.
But about a third of the way in, the book hits a slump. Now the characters are flat and uninteresting. There's no conflict to provide motivation or advance the story. Allegedly there's pressure to get the railroad built on time, but all of the construction happens off-screen, and we don't see any real repercussions of this pressure. Problems crop up from time to time, but often they come out of nowhere and are resolved within a page or two. For instance, at one point it turns out that the engineers are working themselves too hard. Moist has words with them, and winds up ordering them to sleep. The end. This is the one and only time this came up.
Meanwhile, characters are different from who they were before. I can forgive the fact that Adora Belle seems to have gone from chain-smoker to non-smoker, but I have a harder time with Vetinari issuing direct threats. He normally makes his wishes known more subtly and, more importantly, arranges things so that he doesn't need to threaten people with prison
Spoiler(also, I'm sorry, but skill in assassination does not give one skill in melée combat with a shovel). Moist von Lipwig, the shyster, trickster, forger, and showman, has now discovered that he's actually a fighter. Other people have listed other discrepancies.
I stuck it out in hopes that the book would come out of its slump and redeem itself at the end, but no such luck. The bad guys are punished; the good guys are rewarded with medals (remember the ending of Star Wars? That). And, presumably, everybody gets cake.
And here we are, another two-star Discworld book. They're just kinda feeling like poor shadows of themselves these days.
Raising Steam doesn't have much of a plot, the characters feel cardboard, nothing much interesting or even humorous happens for 200+ pages. Just feels flat. There's no real mystery or crisis or moment where you wonder whether our heroes will save the day, and the social commentary seems formulaic at best.
At 80% through I wasn't even sure it would make it to two stars, but it picked up a bit toward the end.
