{"id":4886,"date":"2019-02-18T05:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4886"},"modified":"2019-02-17T11:27:38","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T19:27:38","slug":"mark-reads-making-money-chapter-1-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/02\/mark-reads-making-money-chapter-1-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Making Money&#8217;: Chapter 1, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the first chapter of <i>Making Money<\/i>, something waits, while someone else plots, while someone else narrowly avoids detection. 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>Welcome, friends, to the thirty-sixth book in the <i>Discworld<\/i> series! I am so happy that I was right about this being a Moist von Lipwig book, but&#8230; lord, I already don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting into. Somewhat, I should say. <i>Making Money<\/i> opens with a familiar framing device: a mystery. A lot of the recent <i>Discworld<\/i> books have had this sort of start, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m expecting that whatever is laying in the dark, guarding, is vital to the story at hand. Why did some of them shatter? Why had others \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gone silent\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? And why does one of them raise \u00e2\u20ac\u0153his mind in song\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find out. (And try to keep this in mind.) From here, chapter one moves through a few important scenes that establish&#8230; well, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know. What the hell is Adora Dearheart buying land from the dwarfs for? Actually, not just buying land, but only for a short period of time? Initially, I thought maybe she was buying more land to build some sort of new headquarters for the Golem Trust. But <i>temporary<\/i> land? Why land for only a few years? (Assuming that what the lawyer says about the lease is a reference to how long Miss Dearheart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s will last.) WHAT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S THE SECRET?<\/p>\n<p>I could ask the same of Moist von Lipwig. Granted, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still more of chapter one left, so perhaps the big mystery will be answered. But y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna ask the question anyway: WHY WAS MOIST VON LIPWIG TRYING TO BREAK INTO HIS OWN APARTMENT??? Indeed, I feel like I have to repeat what the coachman says later:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the postmaster! He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got a bloody key! He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got all the keys! Why the hell would he want to break into his own post office?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>THE QUESTION OF THE EVENING. Why did he have the brick key and the hammer on him? I also assumed that he was in his dressing gown, but I suppose that he could have changed very quickly??? But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if Moist wearing normal clothes or a dressing gown makes this any more sensible? None of it makes a lick of sense to me, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And Pratchett does not make this any easier to understand, and instead, we move from one chaotic scene to&#8230; well, something really sweet. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been really cool to see the development of the golems over the course of this series, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another example of that in this chapter. Gladys is introduced, and even though she may have been forced to wear a dress because Miss Maccalariat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ideas of gender are absurd, Gladys comes to <i>be<\/i> a woman. I appreciated that Pratchett, through Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s narration, made sure to make it clear what her pronouns were, too! This is who she is, and after this introduction, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made clear that Gladys is a woman, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just how we should treat her.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>From this, Moist is summoned to Vetinari\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office, where a very strange (but entirely in-character) interaction occurs. This is Vetinari\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thing. He rarely says exactly what he means in a direct way, but he implies it. Or couches it in hypotheticals. (Like his long monologue to Drumknott.) He levels threats by <i>not<\/i> leveling them, but letting people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s minds fill in the awful blanks. As he puts it to Drumknott, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better to get someone to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153build his own rack, and let him turn the screw all by himself.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So, at the end of <i>Going Postal<\/i>, Vetinari had offered Reacher Gilt something very similar to what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d offered Moist at the start of that book: a chance at reconciliation and repair. The Royal Mint needed to be fixed, and Gilt could have reinvented himself and helped. (He chose not to, and by the way, I love the reference to the door in the opening of this chapter.) So, is <i>that<\/i> what Vetinari is trying to manipulate Moist into doing? Is he trying to pull him away from the Post Office?<\/p>\n<p>If that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the case, then the fate of Owlswick Jenkins might be more of a clue than I thought while I was first reading this. What if the title of this book\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand Vetinari\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offer\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis a play on words? What if it is LITERALLY making the money, as Moist did with stamps? If the Royal Mint is indeed the direction of this book, perhaps Vetinari knew that Moist would be tempted by the idea of making money, not knowing the offer was a literal use of the word.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly the sort of thing Vetinari would do, right?<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/aS018v5jK8I<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/19\/the-anger-is-a-gift-paperback-edition-is-out-may-7-2019\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now up for pre-order!<\/a> It comes out on May 7, 2019.\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 first chapter of Making Money, something waits, while someone else plots, while someone else narrowly avoids detection. 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":[558,463,248],"class_list":["post-4886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-making-money","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4886","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=4886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->