Book review: “Raising Steam” by Terry Pratchett

In April, 2014, right after Terry Pratchett’s 40^th Discworld novel Raising Steam was published in the U.S., I read it and reviewed it on my website.  And loved it.

Now, I’ve read it again, but my feelings are more complicated.

That first time, I was in love with everything Pratchett.  I’d interviewed him for the Chicago Tribune in 2000 and found him to be a short gnome of a man, delightfully funny and thoughtful in person and even more wonderful as a writer.

He created stories that were filled with wit, social commentary, silliness, deft perceptions, puns and a zest for life. And, since that interview, I’d been reading his books, both Discworld novels and his others, in no particular order, just as they came to hand, enjoying them immensely.

Like every other Pratchett fan, I knew that, in late 2007, he’d announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.  And, I suspect, like every other Pratchett fan, I was in denial.  The books, as far as I could tell, continued to be fun and thought-provoking, and who knew when his illness would really begin to affect him?

Well, it was.  As Rob Wilkins details in his clear-eyed and loving biography Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes, the writing of Raising Steam was a nightmare because of Pratchett’s increasing disabilities, resulting in a bulky, ill-fitting manuscript that was only completed with the editing help of Philippa Dickinson.  In retrospect, Wilkins calls it “a missed opportunity.”

On March 12, 2015, Pratchett died at the age of 66. The 41^st and last Discworld novel The Shepherd’s Crown was published that summer.

 

Reading the books in order

There weren’t going to be any new Terry Pratchett books, so I decided to go back and read all 41 Discworld novels in order.

It’s been a richly enjoyable experience, and one of the best aspects of the exercise has to do with the links from one novel to the next. The Discworld books are standalone books. Yet, Pratchett often had the previous book or an earlier book in mind when he was writing a new one.  For instance, Raising Steam builds upon the emancipation of goblins in Snuff (2011) as well as on the Koom Valley Accord which Watch Commander Sam Vimes arranged in Thud! (2005).

So, coming to Raising Steam after reading the previous 39 books, I was primed to spot such connections, and that made the book much richer.

On the other hand, because I’d read so many of Pratchett’s pre-Alzheimer’s books, I also noticed that the first half of the book dragged.

 

A lot of talking

There was a lot of talking but not much action, and most of the talking had to do with the creation of a steam locomotive and then of railway lines linking Ankh-Morpork with other major (and minor) cities.  It was clear that Pratchett was fascinated by the invention of a new technology as well as by that technology’s ramifications throughout Discworld society (and, by extension, in our world).

If this part of the book lacked tension, friction and intensity, it did have wit and the quirky characters I’d enjoyed so much back in 2014, such as Harry King, who made a fortune on emptying the city’s bodily wastes from cesspools, and Moist von Lipwig, a self-described scoundrel whom Lord Vetinari, Patrician (i.e., tyrant, albeit a reasonable one) of Ankh-Morpork, uses to get things done because he’s so charming and something of a survivor.

(I think of him as a much better grade of survivor than Rincewind, the central character in Pratchett’s first two Discworld novels, whose survival mechanism in all cases is to run away.  Moist is so much more cunning.)

The tempo picks up and then turns into a gallop when fundamentalist grags (dwarf religious leaders) carry out a coup in the vast network of underground mines in Uberwald while the Low King, Rhys Rhysson, is at an international summit in Quirm, twelve hundred miles away.

It is essential for international stability and world peace that the Low King get back immediately to put down the rebellion, and Vetinari tells Moist in no uncertain terms to get him there via the new railroad even though the line to Uberwald isn’t finished.

So, it’s a race against time — and against many attempts by the grags and their minions to stop, wreck and/or blow up the train. Moist accomplishes the task with more than a little deering-do and even courage.

 

A last goodbye?

The fast-paced, adventure-filled second half more than makes up for the slow first half of Raising Steam.

But there was another pleasure that I savored throughout the novel — the appearance of at least two dozen characters from the many years of Discworld books.  Some, like Moist and Harry, are on stage on almost every page.  But there are others who make just quick cameos or are only mentioned.

It occurred to me, while reading Raising Steam, that Pratchett might have realized that this was going to be his last big novel — The Shepherd’s Crown is tightly focused on the Chalk, an area near Lancre — and decided to say good-bye to as many of his characters as he could fit in the story.

That’s probably magical thinking on my part, given the many difficulties that Wilkins describes in the writing of the book.

 

A crowd of Discworlders

Either way, Raising Steam was a way for me to get a good-bye glimpse of those characters, such as:

• Watch Commander Sam Vimes (page 169): “Moist was unsure about how much Commander Vimes actually disliked him.  After all, the man was so straight that you could use him as a pencil, which Moist, on the other hand, despite the success of the Post Office and the Royal Bank and even the wonderful new Mint, was still seen by Vimes and many others as bent as an old spoon and certainly up to no good.”
• The Nac Mac Feegles, a kind of fairy folk with red hair and skin heavily tattooed and covered with blue dye (178): “Tak [the Dwarf god] even finds it in his heart to suffer the Nac Mac Feegles, possibly for their entertainment value…”
• Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully of the Unseen University and Lu-Tze, a History Monk who travels the Disc making sure “history happens the way it ought to,” (101): “Ridcully smiled: “Mister Barnstable, the old man to whom you refer is a master of every martial art ever conceived.  In fact he conceived most of them himself and he is the only known master of deja fu.  He can throw a punch into the air and it’ll follow you home and smack you in the face when you open your own front door.”
• Sergeant Fred Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs, two members of the City Watch, (81) addressed by a woman, “Excuse me, young man”: “It had been a long time since Sergeant Colon had been a young man, and as for Nobby Nobbs, although it was generally agreed that he was the younger of the two, there was some doubt about whether the term Homo sapiens could be applied to him; the jury of Ankh-Morpork was out.”
• Ponder Stibbons, the one geeky person at the Unseen University who knows what’s going on (124), speaking about the new railroad engine: “ ‘It’s simply mechanical,’ said Ponder Stibbons over tea in the Uncommon Room at Unseen University. ‘It just looks magical.’ ”
• Rincewind (126), taking a ride on the railroad: “Even Professor Rincewind, who spent most of the journey hiding under his seat in the firm belief that locomotion was exactly the kind of thing that usually led to certain death, conceded that trains could come in very handy when one wanted to get somewhere, or, more importantly, away from somewhere, quickly.”
• Captain Delphine Angua von Überwald, the most notable werewolf in the City Watch and the girlfriend of Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, a 6’ 6” dwarf (54): “As Adora Belle Dearheart looked at the wreckage in the gathering dusk, she was not surprised to see a very large and handsome wolf approaching at speed and, unlike most wolves, carrying a package between its jaws.  The wolf disappeared behind a haystack, and shortly afterward out of the haystack came a handsome female, only marginally disheveled, wearing the uniform of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.”
• Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler (213), who, in a “very persuasive” way, had sold a rider pills against railroad sickness: “Moist couldn’t help but smile and said, ‘I imagine he was. Madam, Mr. Dibbler is at best nothing more than a charming scamp, I’m afraid.  And I’m quite certain his nostrums will be nothing more than expensive sugar and miscellaneous substances.”
• Vetinari (38) talking to Moist about railroads: “Moist looked at the Patrician’s grey expression.  He had articulated the term “rail way” in something like the voice of an elderly duchess finding something unmentionable in her soup.  It had total disdain floating in the air around it.  But if you watched the weather of Lord Vetinari, and Moist was an expert in the Patrician’s meteorology, you would notice that sometimes a metaphysical cloudburst might very shortly turn into a lovely day in the park.”
• Death (180), speaking to a grag henchman who tried to sabotage the Iron Girder, the first locomotive, only to be fatally steamed: “The dwarf waited, unable to move, and a somber voice said, PLEASE DO NOT PANIC. YOU ARE MERELY DEAD.”

 

Thunderbolt and Young Sam

And then there are those characters who show up for the first time in Raising Steam and who, in an alternative universe, will appear in other future Discworld novels.

Alas, in our universe, they won’t: Mr. Thunderbolt, the Troll lawyer who is “diamond through and through”; Dick Simnel, the inventor of the railway; Mrs. Georgina Bradshaw, the Discworld’s first travel writer; and Of the Twilight the Darkness, a goblin version of Moist himself.

And, of course, all of us Discworld fans will never see Young Sam, the seven-year-old son of Vimes, grow up.

Who knows what adventures Pratchett would have wrought for him?

We’ll never know.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

3.12.25

(the tenth anniversary of Pratchett’s death)