Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
There are a lot of succulent ingredients in this book: steam power, the railroad, industrial revolution and cultural revolution, lots of recurring characters, and of course a generous helping of the Moist von Lipwig charm we all love.
Unfortunately it doesn’t all seem to gel together much. Things just sort of… happen, one after the other, rather than be tied together with a nice bow. The characters, too, seem like recordings of themselves, either somewhat faded, slightly subdued, or over the top. Most of all they’re wordy, much more than they’ve ever been before.
I noticed many of the same things in Unseen Academicals and in The Long Earth series, so I guess it’s just the new way that PTerry writes after his illness and switching to speech-to-text.
Also, while technically a Moist book, this story seems to actively involve wrapping up several plotlines from Thud and Snuff (and a little from Fifth Elephant). Since Vimes is low on my favourite characters list and I skipped both books, I found this somewhat annoying.