Pratchett, Pullman and Snicket (was Need some literary advice)

[davewitley]

Abigail wrote:


> Terry Pratchett has recently written two books for young readers 
> which are set in his fantastic world of Discworld - The Amazing 
Maurice and 
> His Educated Rodents and The Wee Free Men.  I've only read the 
first one, but 
> I've heard great things about the other one too.

Wee Free Men is good - but I thought it was just the next in the 
series, not aimed at younger readers.  It has a more linear 
structure than the other Discworld books - if I have a complaint 
about Pratchett it's that he flips back and forth between his 
characters with stroboscopic frequency, so Wee Free Men was a 
pleasant change on that score.

And can I be the 
> voice of dissent on Pullman's His Dark Materials series?  The 
first two books are 
> passable, although the writing is not that great and the plot 
makes little sense, 
> but the third book is awful, and Pullman completely abandons his 
plot in order 
> to beat his readers over the head with his (in my opinion, 
extremely bigoted) 
> philosophy.

While I definitely liked the series, I agree with some of these 
criticisms.  He builds up some pretty significant expectations in 
the first two books, and wriggles out of one of them with an 'I 
lied', and just leaves some of the others hanging.  I found it 
fairly easy to let the philosophy slide in one eye and out the 
other, so to speak, and I'm not sure the plot holes arise because of 
the philosophical preoccupations, or are just changes of mind, or 
just holes.

Dumbledad mentioned Snicket-type photos.  These arise really in The 
Unauthorised Autobiography, whose placing with respect to the rest 
of the series is obscure, to say the least.  I can't see how the 
Series of Unfortunate Events can be seen as a Harry Potter knock-
off, though.  As well as being highly literary in its own right, it 
breathes a very different atmosphere to HP, IMO.  Somebody mentioned 
the link from JKR to Dahl: if LS reminds me of anyone it's PG 
Wodehouse, or Cameron McCabe's "Face on the Cutting Room Floor".


David