My review of Pyramids or How Terry Pratchett almost completely disappointed me

Original Cover by Josh Kirby

Originally published on Goodreads

Pyramids is the seventh novel in the Discworld-series by Terry Pratchett. Discworld is a series I  enjoy immensely and Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. This novel however, will not go down in history as my favorite Pratchett book

It was a struggle for me to get through the first half of this novel, to the degree that I had to will myself not to put it down and not pick it up again.

I actually ranted about the novel quite extensively at the time. I even called it my "first big disappointment with a Pratchett novel" and to some degree this still stands after finishing the book. It however became both funnier and more interesting in the latter part of the novel and I ended up actually enjoying the novel.

The specific part of the first half I am referring to is the part of the novel Teppic spends in Djelibejbi as king and god. I could not stand this part of the novel, it was unengaging, slow and not even all that funny.

Jokes and jokes about how traditional the society of the children of Djel is got severely tired after a while. The beginning of the novel however, with the Assassiny bits, was quite enjoyable.

In the end I think much of my disappointment* with the plot and many of the jokes in the first parts of the novel comes from me having read all of the previous novels as many of the plot elements and even some of the jokes are very similar to some of the earlier novels in the series. Especially Mort and the Rincewind novels. Having similar story elements and themes in several novels is not exactly bad, but the treatment of the themes was not better than they were in previous novels and as such it felt repetitive. 

I did however end up enjoying this novel. Not as much as I enjoyed other Pratchett books, but the plot, jokes and themes in the last half of the novel were so much better than the boring parts in the first half that it actually felt like a Pratchett quality novel.(I also didn't like the treatment of the only central female character who did very little in the book, especially as Pratchett does so many excellent female characters in his other books) I find it superior to Sourcery which I regard as the worst Prachett novel I have read so far. This is not high on my list of Pratchett books but it had enjoyable elements, it pokes fun at the silly things we humans do(Such as blind adherence to tradition and religion), the silly things the Eqyptians and Greeks did and treats with the silliness of the theory of "Pyramid Power" and the eccentricities of space and time. In the end it was an enjoyable read with a personally almost unreadable part looming somewhere in the middle.

I do think it can serve as a serviceable introduction to the Discworld-series as I am quite sure that many of the elements I did not enjoy came from my familiarity with those thing being done before. I believe that if I had read this as my first Pratchett novel I might have given it 4 or 5 stars. (On Goodreads, I gave this three stars)

My advice, read this at the beginning of your Discworld reading career or if you are a hardcore Discworld fan**

*It was also disappointing because it felt it could have been so much better. Much like Sourcery.

** If you are, you probably already have