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Title: Hogfather (Isis) by Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer ISBN: 0-7531-0759-7 Publisher: Isis Audio Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 10 List Price(USD): $89.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (88 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Good "Christmas" Story -- Discworld Style!
Comment: This is a decent story - pretty good. I admit, judging by the pervious books featuring Death's family (not counting Death himself), I expected to be dissapointed, but I wasn't. This is not on a par with "Men at Arms," but it is still good.
Here we have a lot of variety - Death, the Death of Rats, Death's Grandaughter, secret assassins, the Auditors,...
The plot was interesting. The auditors have a nasty plan - get an assassin to kill the Hogfather, the discworld "Santa Claus." The assassin, Mr. Teatime (pronounce the vowels), tries to do that by getting children to disbelieve, thus negating the spirit of Hogswatch. He tries to do that with help from the world of the tooth fairies. Of course, Death takes it upon himself to play "Hogfather" with Albert in tow. And his granddaughter, pretty good at beating up bogeymen and other monsters, has to stop Teatime and foil the auditors.
Most of this story is good. Sto Helit, never really a milktoast like Magrat in the early Lancre books, becomes a fairly aggressive, take charge character. It was fun to watch her wield the fireplace poker against all foes.
Bilious was somewhat funny, and so was the "manifestation syndrome" of objects seemingly appearing when people mentioned them (like the "sock-eating demon elephant"). But after the first one or two times, it got too old. Enough with these insignificant characters adding to the confusion. Also, I know that wizards rarely make sense, but here they waste way too much time talking about non-consequentials - it becomes a big draggy and boring.
The criminals are funny - especially with the brothers who live by what their mother told them. It was funny to watch nursery-rhyme bogeys chasing grown men around screaming, and, while Teatime was not the best bad guy (although pretty good), it was great to see how Death and family finally dealt with him, and how someone finally pronounces Teatime's name correctly at the end.
All in all, a good book, an improvement for several characters. But Death can usually pep up just about any story - he's just such a memorable character. Yopu would never see Death the same way again.
4 well-earned stars.
Rating: 5
Summary: Hilarious!
Comment: This book was brilliant. It contains great humor! It was one of the funniest books I'd read in a long time. Terry Pratchett portrays 'Death' brilliantly. I liked the whole concept of Death taking over the Hogfather's job and doing his best, even if his best isn't very good. Terry Pratchett's humor is totally different to anything I've ever seen and it's this type of humor that draws me to this book.Characters are excellent and well written. Personally, I would consider it the best Discworld novel.
Rating: 2
Summary: One of the Weakest Discworld Novels
Comment: An incoherent mess. When a crazed asassin is hired by the Auditors to bring down the Hogfather, the reduction in overall belief allows new gods to pop into being as quickly as they are thought up: the "oh god" (the god of hangovers), the god of indigestion, a sock-eating fairy, and a miscellany of vicious childhood fears all come to life. Death has to take on the Hogfather's job so that people will keep believing in him. This setup has humor potential -- the pagan roots of Christmas could have made for an interesting subject -- but this book comes off as entirely too dark and mean; it plays at presenting a real philosophy, but this is really just a kind of cover or excuse glued on to a wretched excess of weak storytelling and bad editing. The humor features enemas, urinating pigs, vomiting gods, horrifying gluttony, a deranged crow constantly on the hunt for eyeballs to eat, and is largely just distasteful, a kind of Grand Guignol of snow, holly and mistletoe. Teatime is a vicious sociopath. Susan, Death's granddaughter, plays a major role here, and she's a great character, but not likable enough to make the whole book enjoyable. Worst of all, the Hogfather himself doesn't ever actually make an appearance as himself, but only as a sort of mythological object; we never do find out quite what happened to him and how how the army of mind-controlled children actually brought him down. Instead of this much-needed basic storytelling and characterization we get pliers-wielding tooth fairies and developmentally disabled thieves. The effect is rather like the trick played on the diners at a fine restaurant: instead of the delicacies on the menu, they get boiled shoe leather in mud sauce, but like the average reviewer on Amazon, the diners seem unable to taste the difference. Pratchett does supply his usual quota of great puns, and there are funny moments in this book, but speaking as someone who is more cynical about Christmas than just about anyone I know: Pratchett must truly despise the holiday to give us this steaming pile of... um, holiday cheer.
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Title: Jingo: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0061059064 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Maskerade (Discworld Novels (Paperback)) by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 006105691X Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Feet of Clay (Discworld Novels (Paperback)) by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0061057649 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Last Continent (Discworld Novels (Paperback)) by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0061059072 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Soul Music (Discworld Novels (Paperback)) by Terry Pratchett ISBN: 0061054895 Publisher: HarperTorch Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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