It’s funny how in the book cover you can see suggestions of the development of Terry Pratchett as a writer, from cheerful gaudy frivolity to serious humour full of clever symbolism. This is a class act.
The earlier Discworld novels featured a chaos of little characters all romping around, and often that’s just what you got – comic fantasy. Sometimes the plots were hard to follow, or inconsequential, but the gags and wit and wry commentary on the human condition was enough to maintain interest. There’s nothing comic or throw-away about Thud! There’s good humour, make no mistake, but it’s mature humour, cleverly placed to lighten the mood in a very serious story. The plot is cunning. The cover by Paul Kidby couldn’t be better. It shows one man throwing a light and looking to the heavens (or just above the reader’s head) for an answer in a cold, tense world that is trying to be black and white (except for the vivid scarlet slash where their ideologies clash). Read the rest of this entry »
