Tag: sci-fi

The Carpet People and Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl vol 1


The Carpet People written by Terry Pratchett age 17 and Terry Pratchett age 43.

This book was originally published when Terry Pratchett was 17 and then once the Discworld series started picking up in popularity, they went to him and said ‘hey, we’re going to publish that book you wrote when you were a teenager’ and Pratchett wisely did what I’ve wanted to do with my old stuff: He rewrote the fuck out of it.

I’m pretty curious what the original one was like. In the author’s note he says that it was written back when he thought fantasy was all about kings and battles, and the book I read was a lot of musing on civilization and the difference in people. Also, everyone living in a carpet. The biggest city in it is the size of a period.

It’s a thinky book mixed around trying to survive an incoming group of people/animals called the Moul (which means ‘one true human’) who eat animals. Look at their name. In-between this, there’s a roving natural disaster called The Fray that is followed by Moul attacks. The Munrungs, a hunter tribe, must survive and generally find a nice place to live after Fray hits their home.

It’s a decent book, but I wish there’d been more women in general. There’s a good effort near the end, but more speaking parts/doing parts is always appreciated in a book.

In other news, on the recommendation of Ann Larimer and the fact that Pokemon Adventures won’t have another volume out until September, I ordered the 8-volume set of Pokemon Diamond Pearl Adventures, which is a different continuity (Pokemon Adventures follows the trainers of the game in order with their own adventures) and is a lot looser in writing and style than the main series.

But so far I’ve learned that Professor Rowan, who is not actually the main character Hareta’s grandfather and I have no idea how he has custody, is the worst person to have custody of a child ever. Please look at the pictures below to see what I mean.


Just gonna leave a toddler in the woods and walk away. It’s all good.

PS: Read Castle Waiting vol 2 by Linda Medley and it was glorious. Excellent comic.

Johnny and the Bomb


Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett

The last of the Johnny Maxwell trilogy! Johnny and the Bomb takes Johnny from helping videogame aliens (Only You Can Save Mankind), helping out ghosts (Johnny and the Dead) to straight up time travel. It all starts because Johnny was determined to help the local homeless woman after finding her in a bad case in an alley (first chapter spoiler: She had set off an unexploded bomb back in the ’40s).

It was definitely the best one of the series, which makes the fact it ends there kind of worse. The characters were getting all nice and developed and Johnny was finally developing a personality (but one scene especially proves it would have been better with him being a girl instead of a white guy looking on.)

There’s an emotionally painful scene in the book, involving Yo-less (who is black) and the racism back then, except it’s not the people who did it that hurt him so much as one of his friend’s reaction to it and it was rather on the nose.

Anyway, it was fun YA, but I still haven’t recovered enough to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane yet.

I read three Diana Wynne Jones stories last night when the streets flooded and I was trapped at my dad’s, but I’ll talk about that later when I’ve composed my thoughts vis a vis ‘how much is Earwig and the Witch to be blamed on the fact it’s a posthumous book?’

Only You Can Save Mankind


From ‘Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett, first in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy

I’ve been reading a lot lately and forgetting to, well, mention it. A lot of it’s been comics (I heartily recommend Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks, and of course I’m super excited they’re publishing the Ruby and Sapphire arc of Pokemon FINALLY. There is something satisfying I can’t even explain about seeing the games in art the way they were in my head. Also, the Ace Attorney comics are surprisingly pleasing! This has been a long sidetrack.) which aren’t as easy to review, but the books have been pretty good for the most part.

Read some Christie, Poirot’s Early Cases as well as And Then There Were None, both of which I really enjoyed. The second creeped me out pretty good in parts. The basic plot is, people are summoned mysteriously to a house and then they start dying.

Right before the above quoted book, I was reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo which is about a porcelain toy rabbit who is loved very much by a little girl, but doesn’t care about her. One day he’s lost at sea and ends up passing through the ownership of people he comes to care for very much and anyway, I had to shut that book down in the middle while I was reading because it made me start crying on an airplane. Considering I was also suffering from pretty bad food poisoning, I felt I’d alarmed my seatmate enough for that ride.

Kate DiCamillo wrote Tale of Despereaux, which remains one of the best books I ever read, and this one isn’t disappointing. When I found her other books were available as ebooks, they got boosted way the hell up on my to-read list, but are now officially ‘do no read in front of other people’ books.

Right after shutting down the book to regain composure, I had to choose another book and fast to switch gears. I chose Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett, a YA book he wrote early on. His early stuff is kind of dire, but it was just what I needed. It’s full of interesting character descriptions and a fun videogame story with an alien race I like.

The only problem was the main character, Johnny Maxwell who was inoffensive but so generic that once he started interacting with the girl in the story I started desperately wishing he was Janie Maxwell because at least I wouldn’t feel like I was reading about a cookie cutter protagonist and it would have made parts of their interaction a lot less urgh to read.

I’m starting on the next book in the trilogy now, Johnny and the Dead which ominously starts off with Terry Pratchett explaining Pal battalions.