[R] _Nation_ Review

[ Argh. Meant to crosspost this to abp, but forgot. ]

Warning: This post contains serious SPOILERS for _Nation_.

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^L


I have been browsing the online reviews and readers' comments for
_Nation_, and have found myself amused and bemused.

Most reviews are positive to ecstatic, but so many of them seem
to regard this book as a major departure for Terry, cautioning
that long-time fans may not find it to their liking because it is
(a) a YA novel, (b) not set on the Discworld, and (c) not
thigh-slappingly funny.

I don't get that. These warnings seem to be addressing a
hypothetical set of Pratchett fans stuck in 1992, still wondering
why Terry stopped writing 100-gags-per-page Rincewind romps.

The rest of us (and really not just the reviewers) have, I
like to think, by now managed to come to grips with the fact that
for the past two decades or so Terry has steadily been moving
towards the more thoughtful end of the literary spectrum, where
funny becomes witty, and the 'serious' themes (which have of
course almost always been present) take a more central role, even
(especially?) in the YA books.

_Nation_ fits perfectly well into that progression. There are
some novelties in the execution, and the seriousness factor is
notched up a little bit higher than what we're used to, but I
don't think there's anything here that should come as a big shock
or surprise to even the more casual fans of Terry's work. But
that does *not* mean _Nation_ isn't Terry's best book in years,
because I most certainly think it is.

If there is one issue I personally have with Terry's more recent
efforts, it is that they tend to get too preachy for my tastes.
Perhaps 'too explanatory' is a better phrase. It is difficult to
describe, but over the years I have found myself increasingly
more impatient and turned off by Terry's growing focus on his
characters' internal monologues and ruminations. We spend so much
time inside the heads of Vimes, Tiffany, Polly -- even Moist von
Lipwig, that overexposure sets in. I feel it upsets the narrative
balance -- too much 'tell', not enough 'show', and in general
just a lack of focus on an actual *story*.

With _Nation_, we get a tale that is so well-written and
well-balanced that I did not experience any of the above
problems, even though the book is actually quite didactic. I
don't pretend to know Terry's mind, but it certainly *feels* as
if he has tried to use _Nation_ as a definitive exploration /
thesis of his thoughts on religion, culture, science and what it
means to be human. Yet neither Mau nor Daphne feel like puppets
or avatars to me, and the philosophy bits ring true within the
context of the story. Put in another way: I may be getting
lectured at again, but it is done in such an expert way that I
hardly notice, and certainly don't mind.

There are many things in _Nation_ that I particularly enjoyed,
but perhaps nothing better than the opening chapter. It already
gets off to great start with Captain Samson and the Gentlemen of
Last Resort. To my mind, that section *is* a more radical
departure for Terry, of a kind I dearly hope we'll see more
often. We are dropped head-first into the action: unknown world,
unknown characters, none of the familiar Discworld land- and
storymarks, the first person we meet doesn't know what's going on
either, and his confusion and panic are pleasantly infectious.

Then, just as you think you are getting your bearings in time and
space, you suddenly realise: no wait, things are wrong, this has
to be an alternate timeline, wow, cool -- but before you get the
chance to fully think that through, the action heats up even
further, with the switch to captain Roberts and the shipwreck
scene, then things go relatively quiet for a few pages with Mau
on Boys' Island, and *then* the Wave happens and Mau escapes and
the Nation gets wiped out -- and at this point we are still only
on page 26! More has actually *happened* here in one chapter than
in the last three Discworld books put together. Well, okay, that
may be exaggerating a tad, but it certainly has been a long time
since reading Terry Pratchett has left me feeling so excited.

The good stuff does not end there, although the pace does slow
down considerably, and the mode of storytelling moves into far
more familiar and predictable territory. There are some great set
pieces (pig milking!), intriguing characters (that I wish we
could have gotten to know better), and many wonderful lines.
Don't let anybody tell you _Nation_ is not a funny book, because
in many places it's downright hilarious -- just perhaps not in a
Twoflower-sets-fire-to-Ankh-Morpork kind of way.

There of course always remain some things to complain about. As
usual for Terry, the villains are mustache-twirlingly,
one-dimensionally eeeevil (even the Priest is not that much
better), which makes them rather uninteresting and the sections
dealing with e.g. Daphne's guilt and subsequent 'trial' not
nearly as intriguing or powerful as they could have been. Killing
people *this* obviously irredeemable is fairly easy to accept,
but it is not very fair with Terry so firmly stacking the deck
against them. Terry rarely designs his heroes to be perfectly
good -- he makes them human, instead. What if he had allowed his
bad guys to be human, too?

I also thought the final chapter was a teensy bit self-indulgent.
Referencing Sagan and Feynman and Einstein and Darwin etc, must
have been great fun to do, but in the final analysis a temptation
that I think should have been resisted, if only because it spoils
the illusion of an alternate reality. But okay, that's a very
minor quibble, and the rest of the chapter is actually quite
touching and fitting. Never mind.

Finally, with respect to the thinking Terry encourages us to do
in his afterword: I still like implicit better than explicit,
and, despite the fact that it manages to do so without annoying
me, _Nation_ does tend to spell things out a lot. As far as I'm
concerned, an unpretentious story like _Truckers_ does a vastly
better job at actually making me think about the relationship
between man and religion than anything I found in _Nation_. But
as an example of engrossing storytelling done by a master of his
craft at the peak of his powers I think that even Terry is going
to find _Nation_ a very tough act to follow.
--
Leo Breebaart