So recently I’ve been rereading some of my favorite author’s work — Terry Pratchett. I’ve had a twelve year long love affair with all of his Discworld series and other works besides. Everything he writes has a lot of humor, a bit of snark, and a world of heart.

Frankly I’m a bit glad he phased out Rincewind. We’d followed old Rincey on many an adventure but he was truthfully a one joke character. I did like that in the last book of his (so far; he may be brought back later) he seemed to develop as a character and finally grow up from his perennial — and successful — cowardice.

I do like Pratchett’s later books more than his first books. You can see how the writing has gradually improved, making the characters more colorful, vivid, and three dimensional. Take for instance Lord Vetinari; originally a completely cold and humorless cardboard cutout of a character (yet incredibly cool for all of that). Now I find the Patrician of Anhk-Morpork to be a varied and slick individual with his own special brand of dry humor. He seems real, and it seems a shame that he doesn’t live in a real world that I could visit.

Likewise, Granny Weatherwax. I want to be her when I get physically older. I don’t say “when I grow up” because I don’t think she did and I don’t think I’d care to. A wise witchy woman who can take on a whole clan of vampires without it feeling totally cliched. A woman with her vanity, foibles, blind spots, and all too prey to her insecurity and depression. A woman always in combat with the powerful dark side of her nature. That is a woman I can understand and with whom I can identify.

Currently I’m rereading the two Moist von Lipwig books: “Going Postal” and “Making Money”. Moist (yes, unfortunately, it’s his real name and he’s heard ALL the jokes) is a man who was hanged just long enough under an assumed name and he awoke to see an angel… or at least, Lord Vetinari with an incredible offer. Either Moist would take over the ailing Post Office and make it an institution able to serve the bustling Anhk-Morpork, or he could walk out that nearby door and Vetinari would never trouble him again. Of course, the door in question opened onto a deep pit lined with spikes…

In the second book, “Making Money”, Moist has mostly broken the bucking bronco of the Postal Service and mostly won the heart of the dry-humored Miss Adora Belle Dearheart, who looks good in plain dresses, fights for the golem rights, and smokes one hundred packs a day. Now Vetinari has a new deal for him: put life back into the public banks while facing constant death and danger threatening from the family of the bank’s previous chairman. No more pits with spikes; Moist faces a wonderful placid life ahead with no challenge and a nearly goldish chain from the Merchant’s Guild.

I look forward to every new book with great anticipation, but I fear there may not be many more. The gigantic wit and brave heart housed in the body known as Terry Pratchett face the a grave threat. Some malicious god (and he knows who he is) has cursed Pratchett with Alzheimer’s. There are some treatments available, of course, but there is the growing potential that at any time his family and his millions of worldwide fans will lose him to the ages.

But he’ll go into the future with the love of hundreds of millions, and I think Death would certainly find that balance weighed in his favor.

Who’s your favorite author? Has their work changed for the better or worse over the years?

Tags: book review, illness, terry pratchett