{"id":244,"date":"2003-12-30T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2003-12-31T03:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=244"},"modified":"2003-12-30T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2003-12-31T03:14:10","slug":"pratchett_terry_11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2003\/12\/pratchett_terry_11\/","title":{"rendered":"Pratchett, Terry: (31) Monstrous Regiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Monstrous Regiment<\/cite> is the latest Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett<\/strong>, in which a woman joins the army in disguise and learns much in the process. I think I can best sum up my attitude toward this book by saying that Chad suggested a strong criticism of the ending, and I just don’t feel like re-reading to see whether I think he’s correct. (As a plot matter, the ending is rather over the top. Chad’s criticism is on the story level.)<\/p>\n

It’s not a bad<\/em> book by any means. I didn’t hate it, and it didn’t actively annoy me. But little things poked at me all the way through, and at the end, I had a strong feeling of artifice. Things served obvious plot purposes, and that plot function was my strongest impression of them: “oh, that’s why this is here, it gives them the way to escape” (or whatever). Their existence made sense independent of their plot function, when I stopped and thought, but I had to stop and think—I didn’t instinctively feel like they were an organic part of the whole. Put another way, I saw the book as a jigsaw puzzle rather than a painting—a completed jigsaw puzzle, to be sure, but with the lines between the pieces still visible.<\/p>\n

I have no idea if that makes sense.<\/p>\n

There are good things about the book. I really like the very ending, the last couple of pages. Some of the characters are very engaging; there was one in particular that I was pleased to see given more dimension than I expected. But overall Monstrous Regiment<\/cite> makes me want to re-read Night Watch<\/cite><\/a> and see why I thought it didn’t quite cohere, because right now the two don’t seem comparable at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monstrous Regiment is the latest Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, in which a woman joins the army in disguise and learns much in the process. I think I can best sum up my attitude toward this book by saying that Chad suggested a strong criticism of the ending, and I just don’t feel like re-reading … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pratchett, Terry: (31) Monstrous Regiment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,64,15],"tags":[350],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-discworld","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-pratchett-terry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}