Pyramids

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Pratchett, Terry	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Pratchett, Terry	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Pratchett, Terry	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024

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my beloved diskworld submitted by ferdoble on August 11, 2011, 3:53pm To describe Terry Pratchett’s books is a difficult thing to do. The disc world series is in a word fantastic. Terry Pratchett, would seem to use the disk world, to take any theme, or know story and then twist it in his own very humorous way. These are not always laugh out loud funny (sometimes they are), bur rather the sort of funny that just sort of lifts your spirits a little bit.

I will say that in some cases there isn’t always a really strong story, sometimes its just his characters moving through one of those twisted themes. I like them all, you may want to start with the Most Von Lipwig story line (“Going Postal” and then “making money”) as at least the first one has a really great story line.

I love to pepper my reading queue with these books to keep all those books that take themselves seriously fresh and interesting.

I recommend reading them ALL.

OR listening to them. The two main narrators of Terry Pratchett’s books are Stephen Briggs & Nigel Planer and they take Terry Pratchett’s phenomenal writing to a whole new level.

A spoof on Ancient Egypt submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on August 17, 2012, 11:12am As you probably guessed from the title, "Pyramids" is about a culture much like ancient Egypt, ruled by a semi-divine king...or so we're led to believe. The story features Teppic, who, as prince of Djelibeybi (get it?) goes to Ankh-Morpork for a first rate education. While there his father dies, which Teppic learns when the magical powers of king suddenly blossom upon him, quite literally.
Back home, Teppic learns that his kingdom is not as just or well-run as he would like to think and his adventures, including run-ins with walking mummies and the kingdom's many gods, begin when he tries to set everything to rights.
Some readers, particularly younger ones, may find the novel's end disturbing. A basic understanding of ancient Egypt's matrilinial royal succession will help explain why the novel ends as it does.
This is Sir Terry Pratchett's seventh Discworld novel, but one can read it first as it really can stand alone. I recommend all 39 Discworld books, which are enormously entertaining.

discworld submitted by unknown on August 10, 2013, 11:31pm Pyramids represents something of a detour in Pratchett's Discworld series. The principal action takes place in the heretofore unfamiliar land of Djelibeybi, located in northern Klatch across the Circle Sea from Anhk-Morpork. This is a unique realm of the Discworld, two miles wide and 150 miles long. It is often referred to as the Old Kingdom for a very good reason-it is quite old, over 7000 years old in fact. It is a desert land whose pharaohs are obsessed with pyramid-building; besides bankrupting the country, this obsession has also had the unforeseen consequence of keeping the country firmly entrenched in the past. Pyramids, you see, slow down time, and there are so many pyramids in Djelibeybi now that new time is continually sucked in by them and released nightly in flares. In a land where the same time is reused daily, it comes as something of a surprise when the pharaoh Teppicymon XXVII decides to send his son Teppic outside of the kingdom to get his education. Just after becoming a certified, guild-approved assassin, young Teppic is called upon to return home after his father suffers the unfortunate consequences attendant upon thinking he can fly. Three months into his reign, he basically loses his kingdom-literally. The Great Pyramid being built for his father's mummy is much too big, and eventually it causes the temporal dislocation of Djelibeybi from the face of the Discworld. Accompanied by the handmaiden Ptraci, whom he rescued from certain death, and a camel whose name would be edited were I to state it here, Teppic must find a way to restore his kingdom back to its proper place and time above the ground. The ordeal is only complicated further by the fact that all of the land's dead and thousands of gods suddenly have appeared in person, acting as if they own the place.

While its unusual setting and the fact that it features characters seen here and nowhere else makes this novel seem a little different from its fellow Discworld chronicles, I must admit it is quite an enjoyable read. Pratchett ingeniously incorporates ideas and practices from ancient Egypt and ancient Greece: pyramids, mummification, Greek philosophers, the Trojan War and its Horse in particular, etc. Teppic is an enjoyable enough character, but we never seem to delve deeply enough to understand him properly. I loved the brash handmaiden Ptraci and her fearless contempt for tradition. All of the dead pharaohs are quite funny, particularly in terms of their opinions on an afterlife spent shut inside a tomb inside an escape-proof pyramid. The subplot featuring the history of warfare between two neighboring kingdoms really helps make this novel a true winner. Perhaps the most interesting thing to be found in these pages, though, is the actual identity and thought processes of Discworld's greatest mathematician. There is also much to amuse and delight fans of temporal dislocation theories-the pyramid builders make many incredible discoveries in the process of building the Great Pyramid, not the least of which is a means of utilizing the structure's innate time loop to call forth several different selves to help make sure the job is finished in the allotted time.

Even though this book is funny and satisfying enough to stand on its own, I would not start my Discworld reading with it. Aside from Teppic's time spent in Anhk-Morpork learning to be an assassin, the action takes place outside the much more familiar lands we encounter time and again in the other novels. Of course, Pratchett devotees will want to read it for the very reason that it acquaints us with a strange, otherwise unfamiliar section of the Discworld.