In the second half of the eighth chapter of The Amazing Maurice<\/i>, THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD, HOLY SHIT. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Look, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what the fandom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reaction was to this book when it came out or if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beloved, either. Even though I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know the behind-the-scenes stuff for the series or general fandom trends, I can usually gain some sense for how popular a book is. (For example, I know people respond to the Watch books and the Witches books a great deal. AND SUSAN.) But I have no idea for The Amazing Maurice<\/i>! AND Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL, I DEEPLY, DEEPLY LOVE THIS BOOK. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about that.<\/p>\n
Stories<\/b><\/p>\n
There have been quite a few moments that resonated with me in the Discworld<\/i> series, but HOLY SHIT:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell<\/i> you something,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/i> story.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n IF THAT ISN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T THE THEME OF MY WHOLE LIFE, THEN I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW WHAT IS. I love that this comes from Malicia, though. For the most part, her love of and obsession with stories is a negative thing. And I get why: she believes that the world outside of books is exactly the same as the world inside<\/i> of books. This has not worked in her favor, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the scene where she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trapped with Keith in one of the cellars that this feels most obvious. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, she insults Keith because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not special<\/i> enough for her! That whole line where she calls him \u00e2\u20ac\u0153useless\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is so endlessly cruel, so it makes sense to me that Keith would finally stand up for himself and point out how flawed Malicia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s outlook is. In short: SHE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S NOT HELPING AT ALL. The world doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just fall into place perfectly so that all problems can be solved with a clever coincidence or a little bit of elbow grease.<\/p>\n But Malicia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rejection of this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just stubbornness. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s indicative of a far more powerful worldview, one where she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desperately<\/i> trying to reclaim her love. I believe that her father truly hates storytelling, and I believe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s treated Malicia less-than-kindly because of it. So I found it encouraging that in the face of all of this, she still chooses to cling to stories and their powers. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what she loves! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what she believes in! And giving her life a story means she gets to be the protagonist. <\/i>She is not merely the Mayor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daughter; she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Malicia Grim, and damn it, this is her<\/i> story!<\/p>\n To Live is To Die<\/b><\/p>\n I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW HEAVILY INVESTED I HAVE BECOME IN A GROUP OF TALKING RATS. How? How did Pratchett pull this off? It snuck up on me, and now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ready to burst because of a rat heist<\/i> which involves a broken lamp and a rubberband. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, that whole sequence with Darktan was thrilling and exciting, largely because I truly didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what Pratchett was gonna do. The threat of the talking rat hung over all of this, obviously, but tied within this is that same disappointment we saw earlier. This time, though, it comes from Hamnpork, who despairs over the fact the other rats aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t binding together to fight the dogs that try to kill them. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S SO UPSETTING, ISN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T IT. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also such a huge<\/i> change for his character over the course of the book. At the start of The Amazing Maurice<\/i>, he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel any affinity towards being Changed. He was very much of the mind that they were all acting unnaturally.<\/p>\n BUT LOOK AT HIM NOW. Look at what these rats were able to accomplish. They rescued Hamnpork. (And I was thrilled that Nourishing was there, too.) Darktan ESCAPED FROM INSIDE THE PIT. Had any rat ever<\/i> done that? From the reaction of the humans present, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing NO. So\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 yeah, that ending better be a joke because I AM NOT AT ALL OKAY WITH IT IN ANY UNIVERSE. PLEASE TAKE IT BACK.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/jZl1j_h-WV8<\/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 half of the eighth chapter of The Amazing Maurice, THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD, HOLY SHIT. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.<\/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-4431","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\/4431","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=4431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}