The wife got it at the library. Good thing, too, because I would have been hella disappointed had I bought this.

Is it good? Sure, it’s ok. Is it the people we’ve gown to know and love? Well, sort of. Some spoilers below.

I don’t know if this is Sir Terry or if he has some help, but the characters are caricatures of themselves. I wanted to like them all, I really did, but it was as if all the people were just understudies. Even that is parodied, as Vetnari’s place is taken by a stand-in, and we find that he’s played the part of a stoker, which is ludicrous, because he is elsewhere very carefully described as rail thin, as if he never eats. No way he’s gonna stoke a train for any appreciable length of time.

I love Adora Belle Dearhart. I wish she had been in this, instead of the harridan depicted. Sam Vimes has become every wrong cop I ever knew. He spends weeks at a time away from his kid, and never tells a story once. Drumknott is an aging butler who has been taken with iron horse fanboy squee?

Don’t get me wrong. I will read a technical manual that has Moist Von Lipwig in it. The three sentences about Rincewind were just overdoing it, though. It’s the Discworld equivalent of “Number of the Beast”.

I hope there is one novel’s worth of shining coherence in Sir Terry’s life. A final book which properly showcases the characters. Death wandering off in the end, perhaps with Susan Sto Lat throwing one final snide remark. I don’t know. I expect the fanfic stuff will start showing up soon, and I hope that even one in ten thousand is worth reading.