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Moving Pictures | Rating | |
| B | |||
| Terry Pratchett | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Discworld | The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, Sourcery, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids, Guards! Guards!, Eric, Moving Pictures, Reaper Man, Witches Abroad, Small Gods, Soul Music, Feet of Clay, Interesting Times, The Firth Elephant, Going Postal | ||
On the Discworld, the strangest place in the multiverse, nothing is simple or innocent. So when the alchemists invent of a way to record performances and play them back to audiences later, you just know that it's just going to raise merry hell. This being the Discworld, though, the only question is, which is the operative word? Merry, or hell?
Pratchett ramps up his story surprisingly slowly. The main threat, what in most books would be the ocus of the plot, is made into a kind of side issue. Until the last quarter or so of the book, it's just one of those niggling oddities around the edges of the story, and oddities can be found in bucket loads on the Discworld. If it wasn't for some very leading text, it probably wouldn't even have been noticed until near the climax. Most of the book is devoted to giving Hollywood that peculiarly Discworld twist to it.
Yet that's not entirely bad, because Pratchett does a pretty good job. The technology of the process is peculiar, of course, given then Discworld is a fantasy setting. But the very act of making films is peculiar as well. It all makes for a rather raucous time as Victor and Ginger and CMOT Dibbler try to gain money and fame at this brand new gig. And the wizards, meanwhile, are trying to figure out what the heck is going on, and going down.
This is one of those books that, while not often funny, is nevertheless amusing throughout. While it does take some time to get the bad guys on the board, that time is still entertaining enough to sustain most readers' interest. This isn't a great book, but it is definitely a fun one.
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