Review: Pyramids

My first Did Not Finish for Discworld. I got just over half-way through and put it down. While the opening scene with the assasin's exam was very strong, and there were plenty of funny sentences and satirical bits, the overall experience felt incredibly disjointed, with bizarre single-sentence paragraphs that didn't flow together, to the point where I just wasn't engaged (perhaps my copy of the book had some kind of formarting error?). Anyhoo, the good stuff from the first half:

There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.

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His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as self-centered as a gyroscope.

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His father spent a lot of time worrying about the kingdom and occasionally declaring that he was a seagull, although this was probably from general forgetfulness.

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Most of his tutors had been sufficiently unnerved by the sight of the king occasionally perched on top of a door that they raced through such lessons as they had and then locked themselves in their rooms.

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“Oh, them? No, my father’s a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine, I think.”

“I thought that was some sort of vegetable.”

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Dios, First Minister and high priest among high priests, wasn’t a naturally religious man. It wasn’t a desirable quality in a high priest, it affected your judgment, made you unsound. Start believing in things and the whole business became a farce.

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The doctor sat back.

“Fairly straightforward,” he said, thinking quickly. “A case of mortis portalis tackulatum with complications.”

“What’s that mean?” said Chidder.

“In layman’s terms,” the doctor sniffed, “he’s as dead as a doornail.”

“What are the complications?”

The doctor looked shifty. “He’s still breathing,” he said. “Look, his pulse is nearly humming and he’s got a temperature you could fry eggs on.” He hesitated, aware that this was probably too straightforward and easily understood; medicine was a new art on the Disc, and wasn’t going to get anywhere if people could understand it.

“Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire,” he said, after working it out in his head.

“Well, what can you do about it?” said Arthur.

“Nothing. He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er…bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for preference. But he’s still breathing!”

“These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,” said the doctor airily.

Chidder sighed. He suspected that the Guild, who after all had an unrivalled experience of sharp knives and complex organic compounds, was much better at elementary diagnostics than were the doctors. The Guild might kill people, but at least it didn’t expect them to be grateful for it.

Teppic opened his eyes.

“I must go home,” he said.

“Dead, is he?” said Chidder.

The doctor was a credit to his profession. “It’s not unusual for a corpse to make distressing noises after death,” he said valiantly, “which can upset relatives and—”

Teppic sat bolt upright.

“Also, muscular spasms in the stiffening body can in certain circumstances—” the doctor began, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. Then an idea occurred to him.

“It’s a rare and mysterious ailment,” he said, “which is going around a lot at the moment. It’s caused by a—a—by something so small it can’t be detected in any way whatsoever,” he finished, with a self-congratulatory smile on his face. It was a good one, he had to admit. He’d have to remember it.

“Thank you very much,” said Chidder, opening the door and ushering him through. “Next time we’re feeling really well, we’ll definitely call you in.”

“It’s probably a walrus,” said the doctor, as he was gently but firmly propelled out of the room. “He’s caught a walrus, there’s a lot of it going—”

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“If we could just begin again, sire? This is the Cabbage of Vegetative Increase—

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He reached down in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats. This also was not a good move. The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the effort of thought, and then bit his fingers.

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Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed something about not wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, one of them playing a trombone.