{"id":4762,"date":"2018-11-09T05:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4762"},"modified":"2018-11-04T18:53:41","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T02:53:41","slug":"mark-reads-going-postal-chapter-10-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/11\/mark-reads-going-postal-chapter-10-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Going Postal&#8217;: Chapter 10, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the tenth chapter of <i>Going Postal<\/i>, Moist rushes to save the post office. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I. AM. UPSET.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gods damn Vetinari!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I feel like that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a succinct summary of Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s entire predicament, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to allow myself to laugh at it because most of the rest of this chapter is just so <i>sad<\/i>. I did not ever like Reacher Gilt, but this chapter\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 lord. I hate him. I hate him so much, and I find that he is one of the most despicable antagonists in this whole series. (And I say that knowing how much I hated Carcer in <i>Night Watch<\/i>.) He most likely destroyed the majority of the post office. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know what the final damage will be. Tiddles, Groat, and countless others nearly died. All that undelivered mail will now <i>never<\/i> be delivered. And for what? Because he believes in freedom and a life without tyranny? Bullshit. Bullshit!!! The man is threatened by someone offering a service better than his. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s threatened because Moist helped make it clear just how bullshit the Grand Trunk Company has become since Gilt took it over. And instead of providing a better service or fairly competing with the post office, he sent a banshee (!!!!!) to burn the whole place down, preferably with people inside of it.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A BANSHEE. MR. GRYLE WAS A BANSHEE. Holy shit, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even consider that! I thought he was an outsider gargoyle, and I get <i>why<\/i> I thought that, but this makes Gilt even more awful. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, think about the creature he chose to hire. They were able to fly and could silently assassinate pretty much anyone Gilt wanted. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen it happen numerous times before, and now I fully understand how it was that John Dearheart came to die. (And what a horrible way to die, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.) UGH, GILT IS THE WORST.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about other things, like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Part of Moist von Lipwig was happy to let it happen. But a new and troublesome part was thinking: <i>I was making it work. It was all moving forward. The stamps were really working. It was as good as being a criminal without the crime. It had been fun<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>HI, THIS IS SUCH A HUGE DEVELOPMENT. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of ironic that I brought up the fact that I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite tell if Moist was still a conman if he was using all the techniques he knew <i>and<\/i> still thought like one, but wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <i>actually<\/i> conning anyone. So, Moist is changing because of this experience, and he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even realize it. Which is so fascinating!!! He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s found a way to enjoy the world that <i>doesn&#8217;t<\/i> involve doing terrible things to other people, and he still gets to be himself. I do think that the book is eventually going to talk about that, too. Who is Moist going to be at the end of the novel when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spent all this time reviving a dead industry and doing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dgasp!\u00e2\u20ac\u201dactual good things for other people? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know yet! There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still so much for Moist to do, and I am also convinced that this specific experience\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe post office being nearly burnt down\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis going to influence his decisions in the immediate future.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s undeniable in this moment that Moist is not the same. The man we met at the start of the book would never have thought this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear the letters anymore. <i>Sorry<\/i>, he thought. <i>I did my best. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t my fault\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He cares. He cares about those letters, and he recognizes that it is a tragedy that so many of them were destroyed before they could be delivered. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <i>growth<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I also want to take the time to state, as a lifetime horror fan, that the scene in which Moist confronts Mr. Gryle is FUCKING TERRIFYING. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s constructed so well, and part of that comes from Pratchett establishing certain rules that allow him to toy with the reader. We know Mr. Gryle is fast, that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re upset after eating all those disgusting pigeons, and that the odds are vastly stacked against Moist. Also: CLAWS. Sharp teeth! WINGS. Everything about this <i>felt<\/i> like pure horror, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a well constructed sequence, one that also ends a whole lot gorier than I expected. But hey, that Sorting Engine was right there!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And then Pratchett rips my heart out.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know which part is sadder. It all sort of squishes together into a fabric of tragedy, but at least there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bittersweet sense at the end of it all. Anghammarad had survived <i>so many things<\/i>. And yet, it was in the midst of doing work\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwork that Anghammarad did dutifully and without complaint, work that was necessary, work that pretty much no one <i>but<\/i> a golem could do\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat they were destroyed. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even a malicious thing! They died because they just happened to be standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so sudden and so senseless, but then this chapter has to go and just drown me in feelings:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I Will Stay Here, Please.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>HERE? THERE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S NOTHING TO DO HERE, said Death.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes , I Know,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said the ghost of the golem. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It Is Perfect. I Am Free.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All those years of doing, of obeying, of following the rules, of following orders. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all gone. But now, Anghammarad gets to do absolutely nothing at all forever.<\/p>\n<p>Sounds like paradise.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/isbMd3w1pwk<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the tenth chapter of Going Postal, Moist rushes to save the post office. 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":[553,463,248],"class_list":["post-4762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-going-postal","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762","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=4762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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