Overview
Pyramids gets a solid 4 star rating. I rarely have a physical reaction when I'm reading but I was chuckling on the train to this one…hopefully not too loudly! This has turned me from a fan to a Pratchett fanboy.
Structure
Pyramids uses a fairly straight forward structure. It's linear and focuses, mainly, on Teppic our main character. The paragraphs are nice and short in the main. It also includes the nice little footnotes that Pratchett uses in most of his works. All in all, a very easy book to read.
Characters
Teppic is one of the better characters I've come across in the Discworld. There are funny moments littered throughout and I did end up feeling sorry for him throughout this book. And that's the holy grail when writing characters isn't it, make me feel for them. Pratchett certainly does so here.
There isn't a huge amount of character development, Teppic’s arc is good, but considering the type of book this is there is no need to have a hugely meaningful and introspective dive into the character.
The side characters are all well formed. I loved Teppicymon when he was a ghost commenting how silly all the pyramid nonsense was.
Writing
This is where Pratchett thrives, in his writing. If you laid out any two or three sentences and asked me to identify it's owner, it would be easy to spot Pratchett’s work. It's simply beautiful. Here's a few of my favourites:
Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.
Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on inserting the significant comma.
‘In layman’s terms,’ the doctor sniffed, ‘he’s as dead as a doornail.’ ‘What are the complications?’ The doctor looked shifty. ‘He’s still breathing,’ he said. <><><>‘Well, what can you do about it?’ said Arthur. ‘Nothing. He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er … bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for preference.’
He also gets brownie points for using the word inhume to describe assassination.
Complaints
I didn't spot any errors within. My only minor complaint came with the end where it got a little confused and jumped to different povs almost from paragraph to paragraph which meant I found myself having to back track just to keep up. As I said though, fairly minor.
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