Amazing!

Finished reading Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents this evening. And how was it, you ask?

It was -

AMAZING!

PHENOMENAL!

AWESOME!

And it's the one book that blurbs keep citing, e.g. "Terry Pratchett, the winner of the Carnegie Medal for his novel The Amazing Maurice and blah blah blah". Like he didn't write all those Discworld novels before the Amazing Maurice, d'you think?

Righto. Mini review. I give this book - 10/10! Yes! It is teh awesome! And I shall tell you why, despite the fact that you may never read Pratchett in this lifetime or the next few hundred!

Things I Liked:

1. Maurice! A talking cat! YES! And he's very intelligent, PLUS he understands humans better than humans understand humans. Why do you think we've got to work and earn the money to buy cat food, and the wee kitty just looks up with those eyes and meows, and gets what he wants?

2. Rats! Changed rats, of course. The Clan. Rats that can talk, think and widdle in your cheese and cream.

3. Rats' names! You get very cool names like...(oo oo, this is my favourite bit) -

a) Hamnpork
b) Dangerous Beans
c) Peaches
d) Darktan
e) Nourishing
f) Inbrine
g) Big Savings
h) Fresh
i) Feedsfour
j) Sardines - who tap dances!

and etc. Very, very cute, I tell you. They got the names off the food wrappings and tins in the rubbish heap, see. I don't mind. It's way too kewt.

4. Philosophical questions in rats. It does sound slightly creepy, to think that rats are thinking about the self, and the Big Rat Under the Ground, and about where did everything come from and who created it. Existentialism in rats. Very cool, I tell you.

5. Keith, the "stupid-looking kid" who was first picked up by Maurice as part of the cat's big plans. Turns out he isn't as stupid as he looks. In fact, if anyone were to film this book, I'd want Thomas Sangster to play him. Fits the part in my head :)

6. Dangerous Bean's mighty intelligence. Very cool. A dreamer, a thinker, a philosopher, and a very shrewd rat.

7. Malicia - first you want to smack her, and then you don't want to, but then you think you want to. She ends up with Keith anyway, and all in all, she's not a bad sort. Loony, maybe, but then again, she isn't the only one living in stories in her own head.

8. The lines!! "Talk to the paw, mister, 'cos the whiskers don't want to know!" LOL. Lots more, but Wikiquote doesn't have them.

I should join maybe, and update their quotes. The overzealous fangirl. So be it. So be it! And I shall change the world, one at a time, by updating Wikiquote -

ahem. Moving on.

9. Pratchett always drops these little commentaries about governments without actually saying it. Love them.

10. Some questions Pratchett brought up about how humans treat each other, and treat - or more accurately, dispose of - other animals really got me thinking. I mean, those rats are more...human than some humans are.

What, exactly, makes us humans? Our emotions? But you get monsters like we have these days - killing and raping young girls, child porn, killing their own family members, abusing workers - and you start thinking, Hey, these people aren't human. They don't have any feelings at all!

And yet, and yet...we're poisoning rats, we're shooting stray dogs, running over cats, and killing any animal or insect we think are vermin. But do we get called inhuman for doing that? No. NO.

I mean, look at it this way. Rats and other vermin first started out as animals and insects, right, that didn't do any harm. They were just there. And then humans started getting civilized, they had houses and their lifestyles, and the vermin adapted to the changes. And being the rats and cockroaches and etc that they are, they also have to shit and breed and leave...things...somewhere. The problem was, their leavings aren't exactly welcomed by people, so people began to think of them as vermin. The diseases these animals and insects brought also made people afraid and dislike them, so yeah, more reason to treat them as vermin. But now that you have too many strays on the roads, people think it's okay to shoot or kill them. Too many crows? No problem, we shoot them. Too many dogs? Shoot them. Too many cats? Running over a few can't hurt right?

First you start with the small things, but then it gets bigger and bigger and everything is twisted out of proportion. And people will go on thinking that it's okay.

Are we really the sort of people to control the world then?

Pessimism. I still think cats know more than we do, but being the intelligent buggers that they are, they're not telling.

Like Maurice said once, Who do you think is actually running the place?

Cats, really. They know what humans are like; they know what we want and how they can get what they want. According to Maurice, the best way to get a person do what you want is to find out what he really wants, and kind of work your way towards making him think that you have it. Controlling people through dreams. Sounds kind of like The Wee Free Men. (I don't make sense here, of course. Just my personal view :)

Don't think there's anything I didn't like about this book. It's under Kids, but really, I'd recommend you to get this Discworld book. Colour of Magic was cool and all, but Rincewind is hardly...heroic or likeable. Personally, I thought he was way too whiny. The Luggage has more personality than the owner, imagine that.

This book - go get it. Seriously. The plot sounds stupid, the characters sound stupid, it all doesn't make sense - but really, if there's one Discworld book you should read, it's this.