The Truth, Pratchett's 25th Discworld novel, skewers the newspaper business. When printing comes to Ankh-Morpork, it "drag(s) the city kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat." Well, actually, out of the Century of the Fruitbat. As the Bursar remarks, if the era's almost over, it's high time they embraced its challenges.

William de Worde, well-meaning younger son of reactionary nobility, has been providing a monthly newsletter to the elite using engraving. Then he is struck (and seriously bruised) by the power of the press. The dwarves responsible convince William to expand his letter and the Ankh-Morpork Times is born. Soon William has a staff, including Sacharissa Cripslock, a genteel young lady with a knack for headline writing, and photographer Otto Chriek. Otto's vampirism causes difficulties: flash pictures cause him to crumble to dust and need reconstitution, and he must battle his desire for blood, particularly Sacharissa's. When Lord Vetinari is accused of attempted murder, the City Watch investigates the peculiar circumstances, but William wants to know what really happened. The odds for his survival drop as his questions multiply.

The Truth is satirical, British, and full of sly jokes. Although this cake doesn't rise quite as high as it did in previous volumes, even ordinary Pratchett is pretty darn good, and those who haven't read a Discworld novel before can start here and go on to that incredible backlist. --Nona Vero


From Publishers Weekly
The 25th book (after The Fifth Elephant) in the Discworld series returns to the thriving city of Ankh-Morpork, where humans, dwarfs and trolls share the streets with zombies, vampires, werewolves and the occasional talking dog. Young William de Worde makes a modest living running a scribing business, including a newsletter of current events for a select subscription list. Then he meets dwarf wordsmith Gunilla Goodmountain, inventor of the printing press, who helps transform de Worde's newsletter into a daily called The Ankh-Morpork Times (subhead: The Truth Shall Make Ye Free). While the city's civil, religious and business leaders are up in arms over The Times, Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, encourages the advance--as long as it remains a "simple entertainment that is not going to end up causing tentacled monsters and dread apparitions to talk the streets eating people." In the meantime, as de Worde's staff grows and a type turns the subhead to "The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret", two shadowy characters are hired to remove the Patrician--permanently. Pratchett's witty reach is even longer than usual here, from Pulp Fiction to His Girl Friday. Readers who've never visited Discworld before may find themselves laughing out loud, even as they cheer on the good guys, while longtime fans are sure to call this Pratchett's best one yet. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.



"Just consider yourself grabbed by the collar with me shouting 'you've got to read this book!"


From Booklist
"The dwarfs can turn lead into gold." So says the rumor in the medieval-cum-Victorian city of Ankh-Morpork, and like many other improbable things in Pratchett's twenty-fifth Discworld yarn, it turns out to be true. For a crew of dwarf printers has smuggled a press into the city, in defiance of city ruler Lord Vetinari's edict against such machines, and found a canny newsman-editor in young William de Worde, rebellious second son of a rich, powerful, scheming nobleman. William and the dwarfs' subsequent success is helped immeasurably by the arrival, simultaneously with that of the press, of Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, professional thugs, to aid a secretive cabal plotting to replace Vetinari with a more pliant, corruptible successor. In the end, Pin, Tulip, and cabal are foiled, thanks to crusading journalism. Pratchett keeps the thin-gruel plot palatable with his usual array of seasonings--cartoonish characters, screwball dialogue, slapstick action, silly names (some of the dwarf printers' monickers are variants of type-style names), and pop-cultural allusions (horror-movie mavens who look sharp will have a field day). Two of the most amusing Discworldians this time are the chemical-ingesting (anything to get a rush), art-savvy hitman Tulip, and the iconographer (i.e., photographer) Otto Chriek, a vampire who has taken the pledge (no more, uh, you know--the b-word), and whose flash technique occasionally reduces him to ashes. Light-hearted, Monty Pythonish stuff that fans of, say, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, shouldn't miss. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Chicago Tribune
"Humorously entertaining...subtly thought-provoking..."


San Francisco Chronicle
"Unadulterated fun...Witty, frequently hilarious."


A.S. Byatt
"...Has the energy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the inventiveness of Alice in Wonderland...Birlliant!"


Houston Chronicle
“Think J.R.R. Tolkien with a sharper, more satiric edge.”


The Washington Post Book World
"Just consider yourself grabbed by the collar with me shouting 'you've got to read this book!"


Publishers Weekly
"Pratchett's brand of humor has intelligence and satiric relevance… he has so much to say about the world."


Midwest Book Review
"The characters are delightful… Every page boils with humor and fantastic invention."


Library Journal
"A hearty dose of comedy and genuine slapstick humor."



Think J.R.R. Tolkien with a sharper, more satiric edge.


Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“More gloriously uproarious doings from Discworld. Pratchett's humor is international, satirical, devious, knowing, irreverent, unsparing and, above all, funny.”


Book Description

The denizens of Ankh-Morpork fancy they've seen just about everything. But then comes the Ankh-Morpork Times, struggling scribe William de Worde's upper-crust, newsletter turned Discworld's first paper of record.An ethical joulnalist, de Worde has a proclivity for investigating stories -- a nasty habit that soon creates powerful enemies eager to stop his presses. And what better way than to start the Inquirer, a titillating (well, what else would it be?) tabloid that conveniently interchanges what's real for what sells.But de Worde's got an inside line on the hot story concerning Ankh-Morpork's leading patrician Lord Vetinari. The facts say Vetinari is guilty. But as William de Worde learns, facts don't always tell the whole story. There's that pesky little thing called the truth ...


About the Author
Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular living authors in the world. His first story was published when he was thirteen, and his first full-length book when he was twenty. He worked as a journalist to support the writing habit, but gave up the day job when the success of his books meant that it was costing him money to go to work. Prachett's acclaimed novels are bestsellers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and have sold more than twenty-one million copies worldwide. He lives in England, where he writes all the time. (It's his hobby as well.)

FROM OUR EDITORS

Our Review
At their best, Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are inspired comic creations: funny, pointed, irreverent, and endlessly entertaining. This entry, appropriately entitled The Truth, is the 25th installment since the series began in 1983, and I'm pleased to report that it's as deeply deranged as any of the previous 24.

Discworld, for the benefit of newcomers, is a flat, disc-shaped planet carried on the backs of four giant elephants, who are themselves carried by the giant turtle called Great A'Tuin. The principal metropolis of Discworld -- and the site of most of the stories -- is Ankh-Morpork, a cosmopolitan city populated by an uneasy combination of humans, vampires, trolls, werewolves, zombies, gnomes, gargoyles, and imps. Typically, the Discworld novels reflect fractured versions of instantly recognizable events, trends, and cultural phenomena, and The Truth is no exception. This time out, investigative journalism gains a foothold in Ankh-Morpork, with predictably bizarre results.

The hero of The Truth is William de Worde, disenfranchised member of the wealthy -- and arrogant -- nobility. William earns a meager living selling highly specialized "news letters" to selected subscribers. With the belated advent of moveable type, business picks up rapidly, and William finds himself manning the helm of a revolutionary publication: The Ankh-Morpork Times, whose erroneously typeset motto is "The Truth Shall Make You Fret." It shall, indeed.

William and his fledgling staff start out by covering a variety of mundane subjects: weddings, weather, fires, and flower shows, as well as "human interest" stories, such as the unusual -- i.e., genital-shaped -- vegetables grown by an enterprising farmer. But before you can say Woodward and Bernstein, William uncovers a major political scandal, as the anonymous members of "The Committee to Un-elect the Patrician" attempt to incriminate and depose the legal ruler of Ankh-Morpork, Havelock Vetinari, and replace him with a more amenable candidate of their own.

William's pursuit of the elusive, subtly shifting concept known as "truth" takes him from the highest levels of Ankh-Morpork society to the lowest, and bring him into contact with a wide variety of allies and opponents, including: a talking dog named Gaspode, a pair of imported hit men, a fast-talking lawyer who happens to be dead, and -- my own favorite -- a vampiric photographer with a peculiar allergic reaction to sudden flashes of light. The result of all this is an illuminating excursion into the origins of journalism, Discworld-style, and a first-rate entry in the most consistent series of comic fantasies currently available in the English-speaking world.

--Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has just been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

He sold more hardcovers in the United Kingdom during the 1990s that any other living writer including King, Grisham, and Cornwell! Now, in the newest entry in his internationally bestselling series, Terry Pratchett takes readers to the strange and magical metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, on the world known as Discworld. There, young William de Worde has decided to start the city's first newspaper. When a high official is impeached after apparently admitting to attempted murder, our ambitious young hero finds himself plunged into the harrowing world of investigative journalism. But his sleuthing—and his predilection for always telling the truth—soon make William some very dangerous enemies in this brilliantly satirical send-up of the Fourth Estate.

FROM THE CRITICS

Chicago Tribune

Humorously entertaining...subtly thought-provoking...

Midwest Book Review

The characters are delightful￯﾿ﾽ Every page boils with humor and fantastic invention.

A.S. Byatt

...Has the energy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the inventiveness of Alice in Wonderland...Birlliant!

San Francisco Chronicle

Unadulterated fun...Witty, frequently hilarious.

Houston Chronicle