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The blurb:
The alchemists of the Discworld have discovered the magic of the silver screen. But what is the dark secret of Holy Wood hill?
It's up to Victor Tugelbend ("Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little") and Theda Withel ("I come from a little town you've probably never heard of") to find out...
This one felt pretty light and fluffy to me: balanced against the fine fury of Night Watch or Thud!, a light and fluffy take on the perils of fame via Holy Wood does feel like it comes up a bit short. But it's relative because even lightweight Pratchett is still Pratchett, you know? I think I'm also still having a bit of Watch hangover to a degree, getting used to meeting new characters after several books in a row of Vimes, Carrot, Angua etc.
The story is pretty straightforward: the Holy Wood priests have been keeping an eldritch horror at bay without really realising it. Now the last of them has died without a successor, which means that the entity trapped under the hill is beginning to leak out. Unfortunately, Ankh-Morpork is within leaking range and an alchemist stumbles on the perfect formula for celluloid (it only explodes sometimes, which puts it ahead of all his past experiments) at the same time. Thus is born Ankh-Morpork's own movie industry.
Chronologically, this one does come before The Truth, but I got mixed up at the library. There's a difference in Pratchett's writing: this one is still in the parody era, while The Truth is very much more pointed and, to me, much more enjoyable for it. But I did enjoy seeing the early days of Ponder Stibbons, who's turned up in a few other books I've read before now, and parody is still fun. The lead characters, ironically, feel the lightest of them, like there's nothing much to Victor or Theda. I say 'ironically' because that's frustrating as a reader, but apt for characters in a Hollywood parody — they're like characters in a movie, with only a thin veneer of reality, no deeper than the screen they're projected onto.
So probably one of the weaker Pratchetts so far, for me at least. Still a fun read though.
Started: 23 May 2025
Finished: 28 May 2025
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