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Dragons At Crumbling Castle (2014)

by Terry Pratchett(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0857534378 (ISBN13: 9780857534378)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Doubleday Childrens

review 1: I will preface this by saying that I am a massive, massive Terry Pratchett fan - to the extent of dressing up in Discworld outfits, going to cons and even owning some of his books in German, which I don't speak a word of. This one, unfortunately, was not for me. After just finishing A Slip of the Keyboard which is brutally honest (not to mention funny, sad and thought-provoking) this book just comes across as rather dishonest - on the part of the publishers, that is. The material is Sir Terry's oldest stuff from when he worked for the Bucks Free Press as a young man. I figured that out before I bought it, but to the uninitiated it's packaged to look like new material. It's been padded out with big text and pictures as if they're trying to justify making it a hardback. And ... morethe pictures, well - the artist, while good, has clearly copied Quentin Blake's style down to a T. His name is only printed in tiny letters on the inside, which also feels pretty deceptive.That's before you even get to the stories. Terry Pratchett actually dedicates the book to his "younger self, who thought these stories were pretty good". Even HE thinks they're not. If it were anyone else, these would not have been published. At least not without considerable editing to give them some semblance of plot, and remove words like "interestedly". The stories are mildly funny but read like they were written by an inexperienced teenager - because they were. The saving grace of this book is that it's an interesting historical document - you can see Terry's ideas bubbling away, ideas that eventually turned into The Carpet People, Truckers, Discworld. If this was printed as a cheap paperback with "early work by Terry Pratchett" clearly stated on the cover, I would feel much happier. I feel like the publishers are taking advantage of two markets here: those who auto-buy any Pratchett book, and those buying books for kids who they hope will recognise the name and the Quentin Blake-ish illustrations. I still love Sir Terry and am sure that some fans will get enjoyment out of this, but I'm going to put this book down and wait for something new.
review 2: This collection of short stories, drawn from the newspaper-published early works of a young Pratchett back in the 1960s, is probably at this point mostly for the true Pratchett fan. What makes it special, other than the cute stories themselves, is discovering how the young writer first learned his craft. There are definite hints of the coming author hidden in these brief, silly children's [rather fractured] fairy tales. less

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