Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Like the other reviewers who made this claim, I'll state my bona fides. I've read all the Discworld books. I've read half of them at least six times each. I've read most of Pratchett's other stuff. And like the other people who made this claim, I never imagined I would ever write a bad review for a Terry Pratchett book. But I've come to the conclusion that someone else wrote this book. As soon as this thought struck me (around page 80) I found myself reading on and wondering how I could ever have believed this was Pratchett's voice at all. No, someone else has taken over the shop. His daughter is the most likely suspect, since he said he was handing the Discworld on to her. (By the way, a note for the copyright page detectives: The books have been copyrighted in the names of both Terry and Lyn Pratchett for years... long before his illness. And Lyn is his wife, not his daughter.) Assuming that whoever wrote Raising Steam goes on writing, I want to offer him/her a few tips: - You need to know two things about Vetinari. He's always in control of any situation, and we are never shown what he's thinking. Never. - All right, you need to know a third thing about him. We are constantly told he's ruthless, but he's not. He's got way more ruth than most people. - Oh, and a fourth thing. He's the king of understatement. When Vetinari threatens you, he raises an eyebrow. He may or may not make some comment along the lines of "Indeed?" He does not give detailed, repeated, re-repeated descriptions of what he's going to do to you. - The members of the City Watch call Vimes "Mister Vimes". - The dwarves do not represent Muslims. - Dwarves refer to female dwarves as "he". - Death is a good guy. He's sympathetic and takes a long view of human foibles. He's not going to threaten anyone with retribution, nor be particularly horrified by the sin of trying to blow up an unoccupied locomotive. Believe me, he's seen worse. - Pratchett's later stuff was always suitable for children. There were no four-letter words, no direct, overt references to sex, and animals were almost never killed. Innocent bystanders were seldom killed, and when they were, it was never played for laughs. It's not that these things bother me particularly, except that they totally scotch any pretense that this is Pratchett writing. - You can't be as funny as Pratchett was. And it's embarrassing when you try. So just drop the humor, drop the footnotes, and we'll all feel better.