{"id":4410,"date":"2017-12-27T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-27T13:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4410"},"modified":"2017-12-24T08:50:39","modified_gmt":"2017-12-24T16:50:39","slug":"mark-reads-the-amazing-maurice-and-his-educated-rodents-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2017\/12\/mark-reads-the-amazing-maurice-and-his-educated-rodents-chapter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents’: Chapter 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second chapter of The Amazing Maurice<\/i>, Maurice makes some bad, bad decisions. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oh, no, ABANDON SHIP. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it! There are just SO MANY red flags present in this chapter alone, but Maurice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greed prevents him from seeing them as red flags. He views people and situations as opportunities<\/i>, as chances to make more money through tricks and manipulations.<\/p>\n

And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m already calling it: his hubris is going to backfire. It has<\/i> to, right? Once the group gets to Bad Blintz, it felt obvious that this wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to be a normal con. Even though I just started reading this book, I can already tell that this is going to be disastrous, though I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite<\/i> understand everything going on here. Bad Blintz is a beautiful town that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been struck by a famine\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 at least if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m to believe what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m being told. But the signs are there: the lines for food. The rationing. The ridiculous inflation that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made food cost prohibitive for people. And anyone looking to scam money out of people should notice when those people might<\/i> not have money to be scammed.<\/p>\n

But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not Maurice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s priority, and he ignores the following things:<\/p>\n

\n
The limited market, which should have been the very first sign that this city was not as successful of any of the others that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d worked in. And grated, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so much that he ignored it as he just pushed beyond<\/i> it.<\/li>\n
The buildings. The contrast was interesting, though I immediately knew that Pratchett wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t point this out unless it was important. SOMETHING WAS WRONG. EVERYTHING WAS WRONG.<\/li>\n
The rat-catching. Look, perhaps<\/i> there is a rat problem, and I could see why Maurice would see this as a good thing. If they had a big enough rat problem that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be such a huge reward per rat, then this would be the perfect place to exploit, right??? Except I saw it\u00e2\u20ac\u201dagain!\u00e2\u20ac\u201das a red flag. What if Maurice wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t looking at this the right way? What if these rat catchers viewed a Piper as an unnecessary and competitive element? Seriously, what if they think this is their turf or something???<\/li>\n
The mayor breaks Maurice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expectations for what a mayor looks like. LOOK, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M JUST ASSUMING THE WORST HERE, OKAY.<\/li>\n
Then there are the ratcatchers themselves, who ARE WAY TOO CLEAN. Their boots were shiny! That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a red flag, right? Maybe? Look, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust them, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mostly based on the condescending way they talk to the young boy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Maurice sees opportunities, and he might be right. Maybe he just looks at this differently than I do. But I see a trap<\/i>. Whatever is going on in the town of Bad Blintz, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem good. How is it that rat catchers seem to be living it up, but everyone else isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t? In what world is that<\/i> possible? AND WHO IS THE YOUNG GIRL WHO TRICKS MAURICE INTO TALKING??? Oh, this was such a great start to this book!<\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/GRYCs5Zu6Q0<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the second chapter of The Amazing Maurice, Maurice makes some bad, bad decisions. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,540],"class_list":["post-4410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-amazing-maurice-and-his-educated-rodents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}