Albert Spangler is about to be hanged. So far he’s been a successful counterfeiter and overall swindler but in spite of changing his identity countless times, justice has caught up with him. Justice in Ankh-Morpork, however, is a relative concept and ultimately controlled by the city’s permanent ruler, the always cunning Lord Vetinari. Vetinari happens to see potential in this particular young criminal and grants him a pardon in his real name – Moist Von Lipwig.
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Naturally it’s not an unconditional pardon – Vetinari intends to use Moist to restore Ankh-Morpork’s postal service back to its former glory, which is no easy feat. The post office is a complete mess, run down and covered in old letters. Besides, the city’s postal service has more or less been replaced by the new and wondrous Semaphore Towers, also known as the Clacks. Even when Moist manages to breathe some fresh air into the postal service, he still has to deal with the evil conglomerate running the Clacks, who don’t take too kindly to the new competition.
That’s the premise for Going Postal, one of Terry Pratchett’s more recent additions to his fantastic and long-running Discworld series. Personally I’m a huge fan of the Night Watch characters (from the novel with the same name and several others), and this novel features some cameo appearances by the watch. While this makes it an even better read, the cast of Going Postal definitely holds its own. Moist Von Lipwig is a really amusing character, but it gets even better when he runs into a Miss Adora Bell Dearhart – the Golem rights activist.
Pratchett’s ability to convert real-life events and objects into his own humorous Discworld counterparts is brilliant as usual. The Clacks, for example, is his fantasy interpretation of the Internet and in one episode, Moist hires “hackers” to get to the semaphore towers. The list could go on, but let’s just say that there are very few things in the Discworld that hasn’t been translated from the real world.
This lovable underdog story is another great fantasy novel in the Discworld series. I loved it and read it with a constant smile on my face, and I’m sure you will too.
Get it from Amazon.com, Amazon UK
