★★★☆☆ Succession in Djelibeybi and other stuff

Pyramids

Terry Pratchett

Yesterday I finished listening to Terry Pratchett's Pyramids (book 7 in his Discworld series, and I find myself doing what I usually do when I finish a Discworld novel: scrambling frantically to locate the plot. It's not that Pyramids lacks a plot. My problem is Pratchett's everything-up-to-and-including-the-kitchen-sink approach to story-telling. The plot of Pyramids is surrounded my yards and yards of stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time. And indeed, most of those things were good ideas.

I'm influenced by my background. I have written many scientific papers. My approach to writing a paper is to identify one main conclusion that I want to convince the reader of, then require that every sentence marshall evidence for or against that conclusion. Fiction is different, but not SO different as all that. The corresponding idea in fiction is that every sentence should advance the plot. Now, of course this is not a universal rule of story-telling, but it is an idea I value. Pratchett, not so much.

Pyramids does in fact have a plot buried deep within its Christmas Pageant of ornamentation. Like the previous novel, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids is about a succession crisis in a kingdom. In Pyramids the kingdom in question is Djelibeybi . (That reminds me of the other thing I do when I finish listening to a Discworld novel: frantically probe the Discworld Wiki to figure out how these names are all spelled.) Djelibeybi is essentially a heavily discounted version of ancient Egypt. (I'm sure the name Djelibeybi is absolutely hilarious to someone other than me.)

As usual, it's a lot of fun. There are assassins' qualifying exams and mathematical camels and Ephebean (that's Greek) jawmetry, which is how you pronounce "geometry", if you're English. And there are 32 footnotes, two of them footnotes on footnotes. Footnotes are always a high point of a Discworld novel.

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