This book by Terry Pratchett is one I love so much I sort of don't want to write a post about it (same way I was with all the Salingers); it's another that I've read multiple times (not even sure how many*) and has been in storage in my parents' house for the last five years (so including all the time since this blog started), finally being liberated alongside a couple hundred dusty assorted books now that I have moved into a post-studentdom flat with enough space for an adequately-sized bookcase for my ludicrous library - and as I found it in the penultimate box I noted, "that is a brilliant book, I've not read it for like nine years", and bypassing the PURP entirely it went straight to the top of the CRRP*** and by the same time less than 24 hours later (so, nowish) I'd finished it again. It helps that my new flat doesn't have internet yet.****
You may have astutely got the impression so far that I like this book a lot, but would I recommend it? Yes. Absolutely. To pretty much anyone capable of and open to reading books - there is just a great deal to like; it's an unpretentious classic of modern kid's lit, that can be appreciated thoroughly on many levels (see *).
It's about a cat called Maurice who has befriended some rats that became intelligent after eating waste from the dump behind the wizards' University, and together with a stupid-looking kid who plays the pipe, they have devised the perfect scam - move into a town, the rats put on a plague, the kid offers the mayor his services for far cheaper than the actual official Piper (who apparently is a scary bloke), all the rats scamper out of town along with him and once they rounded the corner meet up with Maurice to count their gains. However, when the gang descends upon a town called Bad Blintz, there are factors they hadn't predicted: the town is suffering a plague of rats and the Piper has been called for already, there seems to be a terrible food shortage but the rat-catchers are doing well for themselves, a fairy-tale-obsessed girl called Malicia inconveniently befriends the stupid-looking kid, the rats can't find any non-intelligent rats anywhere to be seen, and Maurice detects a dark lingering evil in the air... all of which adds up to an inestimably brilliant conspiracy-romp that is also a powerful, morally-charged story with some fantastic characters. Oh man, I want to read it again already.
* At least three, potentially up to five or six, but before this time last reading was I'm pretty sure summer 2008 (on a family holiday, obviously). I first read it from a school library when I was a keen pet-rat-owning nine-year-old, acquired a copy for a subsequent birthday, and just kept going back to it - because the first time I was only reading it because it was about rats and obviously a pre-teen bookworm with a pet rat will go for that (I even named my third (and last) rat Sardines, after my then favourite character), but even though it's written for a younger audience** it's still just pure genre-shattering Pratchett; hilarious and heartwarming and skewed and flippant and dark and silly and common-sense and thought-provoking and utterly mad yet entirely believable within its own world all at the same time, and there was a simplicity and easiness and real honesty and depth to the story that was unlike anything I'd ever encountered in fiction before, let alone kids' fantasy - needless to say, it stuck with me, and with each re-reading my slowly accruing experience of life and humour and whatnot made the book ever more brilliant.
** Good job too - this brought Discworld to the peripheries of my bookshelves' attention much sooner than the series probably otherwise would have entered it.
*** Pre-selected Upcoming Reading Pile and Currently Recreationally Reading Pile; see here for full explanation - basically I'm just enjoying having made-up important sounding acronyms to dish out on here.
**** "Oh so how are you writing a blog post!?" Alright wise guy, I've taken artistic license with the time-prepositions, and am writing this after wifi's been all sorted out here also after having worked through the backlog of dissertation-season posts that this blog had accrued. What difference does it make? I feel like this is getting banal.
You may have astutely got the impression so far that I like this book a lot, but would I recommend it? Yes. Absolutely. To pretty much anyone capable of and open to reading books - there is just a great deal to like; it's an unpretentious classic of modern kid's lit, that can be appreciated thoroughly on many levels (see *).
It's about a cat called Maurice who has befriended some rats that became intelligent after eating waste from the dump behind the wizards' University, and together with a stupid-looking kid who plays the pipe, they have devised the perfect scam - move into a town, the rats put on a plague, the kid offers the mayor his services for far cheaper than the actual official Piper (who apparently is a scary bloke), all the rats scamper out of town along with him and once they rounded the corner meet up with Maurice to count their gains. However, when the gang descends upon a town called Bad Blintz, there are factors they hadn't predicted: the town is suffering a plague of rats and the Piper has been called for already, there seems to be a terrible food shortage but the rat-catchers are doing well for themselves, a fairy-tale-obsessed girl called Malicia inconveniently befriends the stupid-looking kid, the rats can't find any non-intelligent rats anywhere to be seen, and Maurice detects a dark lingering evil in the air... all of which adds up to an inestimably brilliant conspiracy-romp that is also a powerful, morally-charged story with some fantastic characters. Oh man, I want to read it again already.
* At least three, potentially up to five or six, but before this time last reading was I'm pretty sure summer 2008 (on a family holiday, obviously). I first read it from a school library when I was a keen pet-rat-owning nine-year-old, acquired a copy for a subsequent birthday, and just kept going back to it - because the first time I was only reading it because it was about rats and obviously a pre-teen bookworm with a pet rat will go for that (I even named my third (and last) rat Sardines, after my then favourite character), but even though it's written for a younger audience** it's still just pure genre-shattering Pratchett; hilarious and heartwarming and skewed and flippant and dark and silly and common-sense and thought-provoking and utterly mad yet entirely believable within its own world all at the same time, and there was a simplicity and easiness and real honesty and depth to the story that was unlike anything I'd ever encountered in fiction before, let alone kids' fantasy - needless to say, it stuck with me, and with each re-reading my slowly accruing experience of life and humour and whatnot made the book ever more brilliant.
** Good job too - this brought Discworld to the peripheries of my bookshelves' attention much sooner than the series probably otherwise would have entered it.
*** Pre-selected Upcoming Reading Pile and Currently Recreationally Reading Pile; see here for full explanation - basically I'm just enjoying having made-up important sounding acronyms to dish out on here.
**** "Oh so how are you writing a blog post!?" Alright wise guy, I've taken artistic license with the time-prepositions, and am writing this after wifi's been all sorted out here also after having worked through the backlog of dissertation-season posts that this blog had accrued. What difference does it make? I feel like this is getting banal.
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