Books: Raising Steam and Uprooted

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Two books: "Raising Steam" by Terry Pratchett, which took me weeks to get through, and "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik, which I read in one day and into the night because I couldn't put it down.

Raising Steam:
I recently saw "Raising Steam" in a bookshop and had to buy it immediately – a Discworld novel I didn't know, that I hadn't even heard about? (That last part was especially strange.) It's the story of how trains arrive on Discworld. It took me a long time to read, and not because I didn't have the time. It just wasn't particularly gripping. Interesting, yes, but there was very little plot. Things happened, certainly: the development of the railway system, mostly, and in the background some attacks by dwarf extremists. In books like "Going Postal", in which the development of an institution was also the major focus, there was usually some other plot driving the book, like Moist planning to escape Ankh-Morpork and a murder mystery. "Raising Steam" is almost entirely that background. There are a few surprises, but no real twists. There's a short coup near the end, but even that is almost expected. It's neat that someone invents the bicycle at the very end.

The Low King revealing herself as Low Queen is kind of neat, but I expected something like that was coming ever since Cheery. To be honest I was almost more excited when I thought Rhys and Aeron were a gay couple, there are very few known LGBT+ Discworld characters. There are several references here and there, many of them rather vague, iirc there's a lesbian couple in "Monstrous Regiment," and google tells me there are possibly queer characters in "Unseen Academicals" (which I haven't read), but it would be nice if there were more. (Dick Simnel, for example, would have been a nice possibility. Or maybe Aeron is a woman too! Who knows.)

I don't regret buying "Raising Steam" because it's neat to see Ankh-Morpork develop further, but it's definitely not among my favorite Discworld books and not one I'll reread often.

Uprooted:
I bought Uprooted on a rec by cofax7 (slight spoilers.) (Incidentally, that was the first book I actually paid for on my ebook-reader, before that it was only fic.) I only started it yesterday because I didn't have the time before and was afraid I wouldn't be able to stop halfway through, and of course exactly that happened and I stayed up way later than I wanted. Worth it though.

I don't remember the last time a book kept surprising me like this. Every few chapters almost it went into a different direction than I'd expected, which made the whole story very exciting and compelling. Yet it never seemed disjointed or chaotic or confusing, major kudos.

I really liked the setting. It wasn't drastically different from "mainstream" fantasy – wizards and kings and the dark Wood – but it was enough its own thing not to look like a copy. In many ways it seemed a bit like fantasy!Poland, I thought that was very cool. I was glad I had a friend named Agnieszka once so I knew how to pronounce it (it's only mentioned in the afterword.)

The writing is very good. Some really great images.

More things I liked:
- Agnieszka and Kasia's friendship. We're convincingly shown how close they are in very little time, and I love how they have to confront the ugly things they feel about each other too.
- The reveal of Sarkan's character. How he goes from fearsome to strict and then starts showing signs of caring and even (almost) affection is great.
- How the plot & perspectives of what's happening move and shift and yet fit together so well. The Wood was a great & scary antagonist.
- Alosha. The scene where she casually reveals that she has great-great-grandchildren is great. I'm happy that she survived.
- Politics. There wasn't too much of it, but I enjoyed what there was and that it was there. Poor Crown Prince Sigmund.
- That the most powerful spell in the book is a Truth Summoning, meant to be performed by more than one person. In general I liked the magic.
- Agnieszka and Sarkan's relationship. I liked that it was so clear that it was connected to their magic, & that Agnieszka is young and inexperienced and a bit overwhelmed but aware of it. I liked that it was her idea and that it wasn't a huge deal or grand romance. I could see them either get together or not and I'd be fine with it either way.

Things I liked a bit less:
- I liked Agnieszka, but as the book went on she seemed overpowered for being so new to magic, even considering her slightly different skill set. Maybe I'm just skeptical that any kind of so powerful magic could be that intuitive. While in general she's still finding her way and sometimes very uncertain, which is well done, when it comes to magic even she doesn't quite understand she's suddenly very sure of herself in a way I couldn't quite follow. Maybe she studied and practiced a bit more while in the capital.
What I found almost more annoying was that there were also many instances where other magic users said she'd be exhausted, but she recovered extremely quickly. Her plot armor was at times quite thick.
- After all the other deaths and drama, for some reason it threw me when only a handful of people survived from the 6,000 men army Marek brought against the Tower (and none of the 600 of baron Vladimir.) Yes it was a brutal battle and then the queen started killing, but it still seems excessive.

Comments

[which]

I've been convinced, since Feet of Clay and Monstrous Regiment, that Ventinari is a vampire. I'm sad we're not going to get to find out.

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Interesting. Any particular reason?

[which]

Well, first there was the vampire who was managing the heredity of the upper classes like a chess game in Feet of Clay, who was ascetic, controlling, highly disciplined, and in charge of far more than anyone suspected he was, using Ankh Morpork as a sort of bad-smelling game of Civilization. Meanwhile, Vetinari turned out to be unusually hard to kill by poison that left a lot of death in its wake.

Then Monstrous Regiment, where it became a plot point that vampires didn't have to live like traditional vampires if they had something else to focus on (for her, I think it was coffee). And it occurred to me that if Vetinari was a vampire (and his aunt was, wasn't she?), he'd subsumed his urges into power and control instead of blood.

There were little things, but that's the main part of it. I'm hoping his daughter's going to address it in future books, but it's really fanwanking on my part so I won't be disappointed if she doesn't.

My headcanon, though, is that he's a vampire.

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I don't remember that from Feet of Clay, hm. My gut feeling is that Vetinari probably isn't a born vampire - someone would probably have noticed when he was young? - he's too good to let himself be bitten involuntarily, and he wouldn't have volunteered because he doesn't need the extra abilities and being a vampire comes with several vulnerabilities he'd like to avoid. It's canon that his very good friend (long distance relationship) Lady Margolotta is a vampire; I don't remember anything about his aunt but it's possible. I also don't remember how well Discworld vampires can conceal the fact that they're vampires if they have good control.

I'm not sure how much I'd like it if he was a vampire, but it would definitely be interesting!

[philomytha]

I still haven't finished my copy of Raising Steam and I've had it since it came out. I went on a Discworld rereading binge lately and still didn't pick it up, and yeah. All the details were funny and witty and charming, but I never really felt any concern over what was happening next.

And I've seen a lot of people really enjoying Uprooted - sounds like something to pick up.

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I like trains, that made it easier. I still haven't finished "Unseen Academicals" because I just didn't find it interesting. Maybe if I was a bigger soccer fan...

[which]

There was sort of a heavy-handed analogy going on about our accepting The Other if they play sports well, but I'm not sure the last bit really added that much if you're not a compulsive completist.

[scintilla10]

Uprooted! :D I enjoyed the book muchly, and likewise sped through it. I especially loved Agnieszka and Kasia's relationship, and the magic and world-building were just so wonderful.

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I want the post-canon epistolary fic with letters Kasia and Agnieszka send each other. After all the "we'll never see each other again! - hi!! - we'll never see each other again!" they still live apart, but they'll always be close :)

[naye]

I finished Raising Steam, went on the internet, and got the news that Sir Terry had passed, so... I have this weird emotional connection to the book now. It's so full of hope for the future, so full of promises - a future that its creator will never get to share with us now. :(

My reaction to the Low Queen was the same as yours, though! I thought they were gay, and was dismayed to find it was simply a presented-as-male-but-was-female-all-along dwarf with her male boyfriend/husband. (He both presents as male and has gotten her pregnant, so I think I can safely put him in the "man" camp.)

This is vague spoiler territory, but you are right about Monstrous Regiment. And also wrong - the book is far queerer than you might guess. X3 Definitely give it a go if you want non-standard characters in a Discworld setting!

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Ouch, that must have hurt :( bad timing.

I read Monstrous Regiment! It's just been a while. Or did you mean Unseen Academicals? I started it, but I had a similar problem like with Raising Steam: I just didn't find it particularly interesting and I stopped somewhere in the middle.

[serrende.livejournal.com]

I did not like Raising Steam at all, sadly. I felt not just that there wasn't much of a plot, but to me Vimes, Vetinari and even Moist seemed far from their earlier selves. The villains were cardboard, nobody who was sceptical against the railway was allowed to have even the sheerest bit of a point (environmental concerns? what are those??) - I didn't recognise the sardonic Pratchett at all. The message seemed so smugly pro-establishment to me, and Vetinari had lost pretty much all his hard edges. I remember when he was supposed to be a very efficient, kind-of-narratively-approved yet still in some ways troubling ruler. But in the last Ankh-Morpork books he was just The Perfect Leader plain and simple, with no interesting wrinkles to him anymore. And Vimes seems to have lost most of his egalitarian pathos. He was perfectly fine with having first and second class compartments in the train, for instance.

I got a similar sense of pervading smugness in Snuff and the non-Discworld novel Dodger. "Good men are in charge, they will sort everything out, don't worry about anything" - with a similar flatness and lack of well-rounded characters. All the more disappointing for a writer who used to be so good at characterisation... :(((