[The Illusionist]

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
by Terry Pratchett

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'An island with no humans and no krllrrt cats would be a good place,' said Hamnpork.
Maurice didn't let his smile fade, even though he knew what krllrrt meant.
'And we wouldn't want to keep Maurice from his wonderful new job with the conjuror,' said Peaches.
Maurice's eyes narrowed. For a moment he came close to breaking his iron rule of not eating anyone that could talk. 'What about you, kid?' he said, looking up at the stupid-looking kid.
'I don't mind,' said the kid.
'Don't mind what?' said Maurice.
'Don't mind anything, really, so long as no-one stops me playing..'
'But you've got to think of the future!' said Maurice.
'I am,' said the kid. 'I want to go on playing my music in the future.'

Alright, I admit it - I'm weak.

I tried. Really, I tried as hard as I could, but right at the very last I couldn't stand it any more - I'm reviewing a Discworld book as the Book of the Week

I am also, to add insult to... well, insult, reviewing a book that, as Mr.Pratchett himself put it:

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Not as yet [scheduled] in the U.S., because there's always been a hate/hate relationship between U.S. children's publishers and myself, is likely to be The Amazing [Maurice] and His Educated Rodents, which is... we're not going to call it a junior Discworld, but it's a Discworld book actually written with the knob turned down a level, so it will be more accessible to the younger market.

So you're all going to have a hard time getting your paws on it

In my defence, however, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (hereafter referred to as TAMaHER for the sake of my sanity) is a bloody good book that everyone should pick up if they can.

The story is a highly diluted parody of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Discworld style. The rats are infact in cahoots with the Piper, and both are supervised by Maurice - the world's most intelligent talking (FAST talking!) tomcat. Arriving for one more job in a remote mountain town, Maurice, "his human" and the rate find themselves in a whole lot of trouble - not only are there REAL ratcatchers around, but there's something else that they're going to have to learn a new word for: EVIL.

Crafted originally to be targetted at a younger audience, TAMaHER makes little reference to the Discworld universe save through a few select and discreet cameos that set the scene, rather than make up the content, though is none-the-less a fantastic read for everyone - even cynical, cold-hearted bastard teenager's much like myself.

Discworld books are generally good no matter where you are, but this one takes a prize (quite literally, if you see below) among them for it's quality, ingenuity and fast pace that reels off tremendous amounts of plot and fantastically funny characters for your money.

For example, Terry is the only author I know that could write a children's book comprising of significant chunks set in a dark, slimy sewer where rats spend notable amounts of time debating the ethics of eating one-another's corpses, and making it funny.

Similarly, like in his better books (Small Gods in particular spring to mind), Terry adds to TAMaHER just enough thought-provoking moral and spiritual questions that bring the pace to a screeching crawl and set the dark, lurking mood for the confrontation scenes perfectly. Admittedly the finalé might be alittle TOO dark for some of the more sensitive kids out there, but personally I think it's finely balanced by the epilogue, so if you're wanting to read it to them as well as yourself, you should be fine.

It's also worth noting that TAMaHER won the 2001 Carnegie Medal for it's content, the first (and only) Discworld books ever to do so. Surely, it's worth a look on those grounds alone?

A very easy 4 Smilies!