Metaphorosis Reviews
Written on Mar 30, 2024
Summary
A collection of children's stories written by a teenaged Terry Pratchett.
Review
These are billed as stories Pratchett wrote as a teenager, and I’m sorry to say that’s how they read. I presumably knew that when I bought the collection, but had long forgotten it by the time I read the book. So I was expecting a more adult, polished Pratchett than I found.
The stories are largely unobjectionable, with traces of the humor Pratchet would later develop further, as well as the appearance of a gnome named Rincemangle, who’s a credible distant predecessor of the unflappable Rincewind of Discworld fame. There’s nothing really wrong with the stories, and they appear to have been written for children, but even so, they’re fairly thin fare. Suitable, perhaps, for the children of Discworld fans, but not really interesting for the adults themselves.
If you absolutely must have everything Terry Pratchett wrote, by all means get this. But if you’re looking for the defter humor of Nation and Discworld, pass this by.
While this is recent collection, and some care has been taken with the typography, I found it more distracting than helpful, even envisioning it for children, with shouts in a huge font – about twice or thrice what you likely see here.