In the sixteenth part of Raising Steam<\/i>, Ardent makes a move, and Moist is pressured to work faster. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Huh. Just as I finished typing that introduction, I had a thought:<\/p>\n
Vetinari knows this dwarf-on-dwarf war is about to break out into something disastrous, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he? And how much of that<\/i> is the reason why he wants the Uberwald line constructed faster than Moist ever thought possible?<\/p>\n
Obviously, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m missing some pieces to connect those beyond a theory, but Vetinari always knows<\/i>. Few things have probably ever<\/i> surprised Vetinari, so it feels like a safe assumption to make that he knows a whole lot about the fight between Ardent and Rhys. That being said\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 why is the railway to Uberwald so important? It can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just be for personal reasons, right? Like, yes, he wants to visit Lady Margolotta in comfort and style, but Vetinari is the king of schemes and machinations, so there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to be something else going on here. Why else would he say that he thinks that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremists are like perennial weeds\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? He knows, something<\/i>, right?<\/p>\n
Ugh, now I feel a little less certain about this theory now that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written it down.<\/p>\n
OH WELL. The railway continues, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a beauty to that momentum as the industry grows, expands, and seems to have a life of its own. But Moist is still the center of it all, which generally how he likes it. Except\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 lord, some of this made me exhausted for <\/i>him. I love how Pratchett portrays this so that we get a sense of how much the days are blurring together for Moist, that he sometimes just sleeps on a mattress under a tarpaulin, that he often just eats what everyone else does. As far as I understand it, Moist is rich now, right? So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure he could afford to stay nicer places and have food cooked and brought to him. So, I found it comforting that Moist doesn’t<\/i> treat himself special in these circumstances. He operates just like he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another one of the workers, and that also includes how he dresses<\/i>:<\/p>\n No longer did Moist wear the snazzy suits and handmade shoes that, along with his collection of official-looking hats, were his calling card back int he city. They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand up well to the regime of the railway worker and so now he wore the greasy shirt and waistcoat with rough trousers tied at the knee.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In this, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reminded of Sybil, who is even richer<\/i> than Moist, but who never flaunts it. I see Moist in a similar class most of the time: he has money now, but he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to prove that to the people he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s working with every day. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yet another character trait that Pratchett has developed in Moist to demonstrate how much he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s changed since we first met him in Going Postal<\/i>. Moist was a character of exceptionalism: he thought of himself as the smartest person everywhere<\/i>, better than the common human (or dwarf, troll, goblin, etc), and that those he hurt or exploited deserved it for being lesser than him.<\/p>\n Is that the same Moist von Lipwig we see now? Would Moist of old have given his golem horse a name? (Flash!!! What a great name!!!)\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, what is Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plan for dealing with the bridges? He only needs the beds<\/i> of them to work? What does that mean??? You have to have a properly working bridge for it to work, so how can only part<\/i> of a bridge be completed? Not just that, but apparently, Vetinari won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even be able to tell that Moist had come up with some strange means to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153complete\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the journey to Uberwald? Look, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure this is going to be ridiculous, because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the sort of shit Moist thinks of under pressure.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another example of an unintended consequence in this split, too. I still think that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be either an actual<\/i> huge disaster or the threat of one by the end of the book. (And my money is on Ardent being the cause of it.) But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten that there were other railway companies attempting to compete with the Hygienic Railway! (Bless that name.) The flaw pointed out here is one of regulation and consistency. Simnel set up a relatively simple means of the private owners of that railway to use two trains on a single line. Someone broke that system in order to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153save\u00e2\u20ac\u009d time, and one of the train drivers died in the ensuing collision. So I get Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reaction to it all: this is not an inherent danger of the railway as a whole. Simnel did what he was supposed to do, and he devised a system with that token so that it would be impossible for there to be two trains heading toward one another\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 except when someone decided to go around<\/i> the system. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s human error, not a design flaw. Still, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m nervous. What unforeseen situation will create further difficulties for the railway?<\/p>\n At the same time, Pratchett follows up this tragedy with something incredible: an emotional connection that most likely would not have happened without the trains. I love the way that Crackle and Dopey met, and I also understand in hindsight why I went into this thinking something horrible was about to happen. I WAS NERVOUS, OKAY. But these two librarians\u00e2\u20ac\u201done a troll, the other a dwarf\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmeet in the Sto Lat station, and their lives change<\/i>. And the extra bit of glue to keep this situation together: Marjorie Painsworth. How many moments like this has she seen in her coffee shop? How many more will she see? I LOVE THIS. Because transportation as an industry helps make human connections<\/i> in a way that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t previously possible. Like Crackle being able to work at Brazeneck and<\/i> still live where she does? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now entirely within reason.<\/p>\n And this is what Ardent wants to stop. Well, at least in part, anyway. He talks a big game about the preservation of dwarf society and culture, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a reason he and his followers have targeted things like the railway and the clacks. The more people learn about the world and those who live in it, the less likely they are to remain underground and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s entirely possible that Ardent and his followers genuinely and sincerely believe that dwarfs are being poisoned by the rest of the world. At the same time, he targets anything that spreads information. That is a source of an alternative view. That might \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tempt\u00e2\u20ac\u009d dwarfs away from what he and his followers believe. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not accidental! Deep down, then, I gotta wonder: does he know<\/i> that his views don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand up? That they are easily challenged? That they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just less attractive to most dwarfs?<\/p>\n Look, he staged his coup of Schmaltzburg when Rhys left. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well aware of who the real threat is and who has actual power. So what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gonna happen when Rhys gets home? How will Ardent hold power?<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/RNybmH6MJKk<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – You can now pre-order my second YA novel, Each of Us a Desert<\/i>, which will be released on September 15, 2020 from Tor Teen!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong> In the sixteenth part of Raising Steam, Ardent makes a move, and Moist is pressured to work faster. 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":[463,565,248],"class_list":["post-5152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-raising-steam","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5152","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=5152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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