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Re: Making Money [spoilers]

Foul Ole Ron wrote:

> However, having read Making Money, I feel like ranting. For me it was,
> and I never expected I'd say this about a Pratchett novel, a bad book.
>
> L
> O
> T
> S
>
> O
> F
>
> S
> P
> O
> I
> L
> E
> R
> S
>
> A
> H
> E
> A
> D
> .
> .
> .
>
> Let's start with the good bits...
>
> There's a few nice lines about the (non-existent) base of finance.

I think that's more than just a few nice lines  -  it's a major plot theme.

> Now the book itself. Where to start? The whole plot is just... stuff
> happening. Happening to Moist, of all people. He hardly does anything
> himself, he just get into trouble [not even very *urgent* trouble
> except for the hanging-on-the-wall in chapter 1] and gets rescued by
> Vetinari, Vimes or golems. If I want to read that kind of plot, I can
> read Harry Potter.

I think you're looking for too much focus on a single central character.
There's quite a lot in the book about Vetinari's manipulation, and some
excellent new characters in the persons of Malvolio, Topsy and Cosmo.  I
wonder whether Terry was deliberately breaking away from too tight a focus
on one person?  To me the central character of the book isn't actually
Moist, he's just one of the characters in a story that is at its core about
the continued evolution of Ankh-Morpork.

> I can't remember a bigger/worse deus ex machina than these bloody
> golden golems. They just appear suddenly, conveniently saving Moist,
> the finance system, Ankh-Morpork and the multiverse.

Well, there's an oversimplification!  I think the nature of the golems is
one of several examples of unexpected outcomes that are so prominent in the
book that one could think of that as a significant theme of the book.
Remember we're first lead to think that they are four golden golems, and
there's a lot of thought about that effect they would have.  Then it turns
out that they're not four golden golems, but four thousand golems, with an
entirely different set of implications.

The other prize unexpected outcome is who Malvolio really is  -  after all
the hints leading us to think he's a vampire, he turns out to be a clown.

And, going back to the golems,  I was left with the impression that their
real significance may not be seen until some future book.

> Further, there's a lot of unnecessary fluff. Why the Glooper, for
> example? Just to fit an Igor in the story, which seems obligatory
> after CJ? It wasn't even funny, and it had no function - the only
> thing it did was discover that the gold had gone, five minutes before
> Moist did.
> There was a hint that it could control finance, but did it actually do
> so?

I thought the Glooper was one of the finest bits of the book  -  all the
more because it's real (or did you miss the author's note at the
beginning?).  To find out more about the RW one, see
http://tinyurl.com/2ccxat

> Bent - was he necessary? I kind of liked the character, but his
> coming- out had hardly any impact

That certainly wasn't how it affected me.

> I'm curious to hear what the regular posters think about this book.

My feeling was that it's one of his better ones, but short of his best.  I
felt he'd rediscovered the easy surface humour which was there in the early
Rincewind books, but later got rather submerged as he developed more serious
themes.  Now he's been able to combine it with some serious analogies with
RW economic theorising and the ongoing story of the development of
Ankh-Morpork under Vetinari's leadership.  I ended up with the feeling that
this book is a step towards one or more in the future  -  there are so many
future plot-lines hinted at.


--
Mike Stevens
narrowboat Felis Catus III
web-site www.mike-stevens.co.uk

No man is an island.  So is Man.

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