The basic situation is familiar to fantasy writing going back at least as far as Malory's 15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur, in which a junior acolyte is forced to take on heavy adult responsibilities and avert widespread disaster following the death of their trusted mentor. Sir Terry had a new tale to tell, and launches into it at top speed. But this final work contains no bewildering flashbacks or anything else taken for granted in the Discworld cosmology. The Shepherd's Crown, the 41st addition to his Discworld series, continues the story of young witch Tiffany Aching, first met four novels ago in The Wee Free Men. And against all the odds, it remains 343 pages of high-octane literary enjoyment. But there was still one more novel to come before he succumbed to early-onset Alzheimer's disease, first diagnosed in 2007. His death in March, aged 66, after writing 70 novels enjoying sales of around 85 million copies, has robbed fantasy literature of its brightest star. Rescued from sentimentality by Kipling and Tolkien, given new life by Philip Pullman and the late Diana Wynne Jones, their most popular advocate over the last 40 years has been the one and only Sir Terry Pratchett. Fairies, elves, pixies and goblins, exiled from contemporary literature of any quality by the end of the 19th century, have gradually worked their way back into popular adult imagination.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |