Sometimes you shoot for the moon and miss, but you land amongst the stars. Sometimes you shoot for the top of a mountain and land on the moon.
Which is bad, in this case.
Summary
Harry Dread creates an altar and prays to a god, telling them of Cohen and company’s plan because he’s a villain destined to betray them. Rincewind finds Carrot sewing badges for their group to create morale, which Rincewind finds ridiculous, but Carrot is set on it. The Silver Horde have their first major battle of the journey, Harry’s henchmen all die, and the minstrel is mortified and nearly mute at what he’s seen. Boy Willie thinks perhaps his time is up and he should stop the heroing, but Cohen doesn’t want to hear it; they press onward. Leonard and Ponder test Leonard’s food mix on the dragons, which he believes will lead to a better quality of flame (and less exploding). The Silver Horde come upon Vena, who is making stew, and she mentions that she found a scroll detailing the mountains and a trick to get past road blocks on the way to Cori Celesti—which is interesting because Cohen and Harry found the same scroll. The minstrel notes that this is pretty damned suspicious, which pings the gods on the mountaintop, who are (of course) watching all the proceedings. Offler asks who the minstrel belongs to and learns about the Almighty Nuggan’s religion, which bans most delicious foods. But the gods leave the party be, and the horde decides to press on.
Buy the Book
Witch King
Leonard is still designing pieces of the ship (and contingencies for repairing it) while the wizards look on in judgment. Rincewind is certain they’re going to die. Harry is having a hard time with the next part of the quest because it involves being on a mountain that decides its gravity based on where you think the ground is, and he’s got too much brain not to be horrified. The minstrel finally figures out what Cohen and his men are up to by invoking Emperor Carelinus. Ponder informs everyone that the ship will be launching tomorrow, and while they are avoiding Krull, Rincewind points out that they will hit the Circumference, which isn’t much better in terms of being boarded. Leonard has a plan for that, purely a thought exercise of course, that can be executed with magical help. Ponder makes it clear to Rincewind that he’s going to have to feed the dragons on their way in the ship, which he’s none too keen about. Rincewind then has to go and explain to the Luggage that it won’t be coming along for the journey. Vetinari gives a seeing-off speech to the group and notices that the motto that Rincewind recommended for Carrot’s badges says “We who are about to die don’t want to.”
Rincewind tries to back out at the last moment and is rebuffed, so the boats are released and the group take shelter in Leonard’s craft until it’s time for lift-off. Carrot points out that it’s bad luck to make a journey in a ship with no name, so they decide on the Kite, since that’s what the wizards had taken to calling it and Leonard knows that a kite is a type of beautiful bird. They begin flight and Rincewind sees that there are people actually living over the Edge of the world on little islands in the water. They release the first set of dragons and prepare for the second stage of the journey, talking to the group back on the boats through the smashed omniscope fragments. Leonard hangs up quickly to get them into the second stage, which involves folding in the wings and using the next set of dragons to help them move downward very fast. They get to a state of weightlessness, which Leonard tells Rincewind is magic so he doesn’t panic. Leonard notices that they seem to be losing air much faster than he anticipated, though he doesn’t think the hull is more leaky than he expected. Rincewind suggests that someone else might be on board—which turns out to be the Librarian.
The horde has another battle on their way up the mountain and the minstrel is remaking his lute from bones. He tells Cohen he plans to start their saga with a reminder of the legend about Mazda stealing fire from the gods, only to learn that Cohen doesn’t know about the whole having-his-liver-pecked-out-by-an-eagle-daily part. Ponder informs Vetinari that with the Librarian on board, the Kite won’t have the power to get back onto the Disc. The Patrician suggests the crew kill the Librarian, which no one is down for. The horde learns more about Carelinus (from the minstrel), who solved the Tsortean knot by cutting it in half and then proceeded to build an empire… which his sons lost in short order. This reaffirms Cohen’s belief that the saga is how they’ll be remembered and a good story is key. Ponder works on the air problem and sends a message to Leonard suggesting that they aim the boat toward the sun and go very fast. When they test this theory they wind up heading toward the moon, which Leonard assumes Ponder intends them to land on. Leonard believes they will just float down, hopefully because the moon can only hold onto light things like air. They make their landing.
Commentary
The thing is about this book is, it only works because you’re pulling in the characters you’ve got at this precise point in time. Which I love because character development in the Discworld books is a subtle but incredibly consistent thing. The characters are always evolving, but it’s not Pratchett’s style to make a big to-do about that process; people just change because that’s how people work.
There’s the measured side of this, which is Leonard coming to terms with how his inventions are often coveted for horrific purposes and firmly choosing not to engage with that. Unlike previous books where he can’t even conceive of cruel uses for his creations, he is now perfectly aware of the consequences of his thoughts, and simply elects not to think about it. Which is great for his sanity, I imagine, but little else. (I’m sure Vetinari appreciates how practical he’s being about it, however.)
Then we’ve got Rincewind, who is trying to be sensible about this particular adventure, but having difficulty overcoming his instinctual desire to, you know, not die. The only difference is that this time he’s got someone like Carrot around to pull his hat over his face when he gets overworked. And that is only possible because we’ve got this version of Carrot, who has also grown and changed and absorbed a lot of extremely Vimesian responses to hysteria. There’s no way the Carrot from Guards! Guards! would have handled Rincewind like that. But current Carrot has a sense of comedic timing and a distinct lack of patience for the complaints of a man who got him to stitch that motto onto his lovely badges.
Look, they were handsewn badges, so I sympathize with Carrot fully here.
We’ve got Ponder sitting on a boat with Vetinari for enough days to have learned that he can manipulate his fellow wizards by forming them into their own sub-committee that goes off and talks uselessly while he works. And we’ve also got Vetinari, too; after all, here’s a guy who keeps getting bothered whenever things are imperiled because he always seems to have an idea on how to stop turmoil in its tracks. (Namely by assembling the right people, like a particularly exhausted Nick Fury.) Which is a funny job for the man who once told Sam Vimes that all people are bad just on different sides. And when he suggests that the Kite crew kill the Librarian because, as he points out, it’s one life for the world here, when no one seems on board with that plan, he drops it with a sigh. I have a feeling that newly-graduated baby assassin Havelock Vetinari would be appalled at himself.
On the horde side of things, we’ve got a lot of thinking about mortality and heroism, and importantly, there are no happy answers to what these folks are struggling with. There’s just an acknowledgment that time seems cruel to beings who are cognizant of age, and that stories are better immortality-makers than progeny (though not by a lot). And where does that leave a band of epic heroes? Only Gilgamesh can say…
Asides and little thoughts:
- The brilliant undersold-ness of Rincewind thinking about his terrible birthday badge (telling the world he’s five! on the day he turned six)… the awfulness of his life is so consistent.
- The minstrel going on about how Carelinus’ empire spanned the whole world! (Except the Counterweight Continent and Fourecks, of course.)
- Vetinari: “Well, I trust your new careers will be uplifting if not, ahaha, meteoric.” Did…? Did you just? My lord, this is dangerously close to dad joke territory for you. Someone’s gonna have to send himself to the scorpion pit when he gets home.
Pratchettisms:
And he felt an ungodlike pang of sympathy for any human whose god banned chocolate and garlic.
Ponder nodded. He had a quick mind when it came to mechanical detail, and he’d already formed a mental picture. Now a mental eraser would be useful.
Lord Vetinari was not a man who delighted in the technical. There were two cultures, as far as he was concerned. One was the real one, the other was occupied by people who liked machinery and ate pizza at unreasonable hours.
Ponder, like all bad photographers, took the shot just a fraction of a second after the smiles had frozen.
There was a roll of thunder, and fingers of lightning walked along the Edge of the world.
As a calculation, it was like balancing a feather on a soap bubble which wasn’t there.
On the Kite, the situation was being “workshopped.” This is the means by which people who don’t know anything get together to pool their ignorance.
Next week we’ll finish the book!
