Unseen Academicals

Unseen Academicals (2009) Terry Pratchett (Discworld)

I’ve owned this book for years (as well as the following two) but I didn’t read.

First, because I wasn’t reading a lot of fantasy.

Then, because I knew there wouldn’t be any more Discworld books, and I wanted to save the reading of them.

Which meant I never read them.

So now I have two Discworld books I haven’t read.

This one is mostly set in the Unseen University, so there is an appearance of Rincewind, but mostly it was Ridcully and Ponder Stibbons.

It is a well-known fact in any organization that, if you want a job done, you should give it to someone who is already very busy.

Plus the Librarian

Oh, she had screamed and run away the first time she’d seen him. They all did. But she had come back, and she’d smelled ashamed. She also respected the primacy of words, and, as a primate, so did he. And sometimes she baked him a banana pie, which was a kind act. The Librarian was not very familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical.

A couple of new characters.

(O)ne of the things that really annoyed her about romantic novels, as she had confided to Mr Wobble, was that no one did any cooking in them. After all, cooking was important. Would it hurt to have a pie-making sequence?

Juliet’s version of cleanliness was next to godliness, which was to say it was erratic, past all understanding and was seldom seen.

And of course lots of Terry Pratchett-y bits.

Ankh-Morpork Trespassers’ Society,’ (*)

Originally the Explorers’ Society until Lord Vetinari forcibly insisted that most of the places ‘discovered’ by the society’s members already had people living in them, who were already trying to sell snakes to the newcomers.

It’s the creation of soccer and Romeo & Julliet and considerations of worth.

Publisher: HarperCollins
Rating: 8/10

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