The Truth (by Terry Pratchett)

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I’m mostly enjoying re-reading Terry Pratchett’s lengthy ‘Discworld’ series, more so with the later books, although for most I have only previously read them once. That’s the case with ‘The Truth’, 25th in the series, which we acquired in hardback shortly after it was published in 2000. I read it aloud to my sons, who were teenagers at the time, in March 2001.

I didn’t remember much about this book, other than that it involves a newspaper. I had quite forgotten the young and enthusiastic William de Worde, hero of this book, who is compulsively truthful. When we first meet him, he writes a monthly newsletter to a few dignitaries, letting them know what’s going on in Ankh Morpork. It’s a tedious process, writing the information longhand, then having someone from the Engravers’ Guild carefully cut out the writing - backwards - and print it on paper half a dozen or so times.

But some of the mechanically-minded dwarf population have developed a printing press, with movable type. When William discovers this, he realises that he can print dozens - maybe hundreds - of his newsletters. And as one of the dwarfs points out, if he sells lots of them inexpensively, he can earn considerably more than selling a few at high price.

And so it escalates. More copies are made, more are sold, and people become hungry for news. So William starts to produce a new ‘paper of news’ daily, employing more people, spending more money, publishing items that seem of low significance but which prompt citizen letters or even visits…

But this is Pratchett so there’s not just one main storyline. There’s also a significant one involving Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, who has been taken into custody after apparently trying to kill his secretary. William reports on what he knows, and the Watch attempt to figure out what’s going on, but they are hampered on all sides. The reader quickly learns how the apparent crime was committed, but it’s a difficult one to solve.

I’m not sure I followed all the threads fully, but the Vetinari one involves two unpleasant people who have worked all around the Disc, extorting, cheating and getting away with all kinds of nasty things - mostly employed by others who don’t want to get their hands dirty. Mr Pin is the brains of the pair, Mr Tulip the brawns, with a limited vocabulary and an urge to scrag people and destroy evidence.

Other interesting characters of significance in ‘The Truth’ involve Foul Ol’ Ron and his cronies, Gaspode the talking dog, Otto the vampire, who is an excellent iconographer, and the dodgy zombie lawyer Mr Slant. Pratchett’s writing was, in my view, at its peak with the middle Discworld novels, satirising the newspaper and printing industries, and showing - in a low-key way - the importance of all races, and the way unpleasant people are biassed. And they really are different races on the Disc, not people of the same race with different shades of skin colour.

I liked this book very much; it makes a great addition to the series, and would probably work well as an introduction to the series, too; while some characters have appeared in earlier books, most of the main ones (including William and his staff) are newly introduced in this story.

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