Hello Readers,
I am continuing Terry Pratchett week with Going Postal.
This year for my birthday I asked for Reaper Man, The Colour of Magic, The Hogfather, The Fifth Elephant and Going postal in the new covers by Gollancz
and Doubleday they are stunning. This is the second of the books that has been
adapted for the TV.
Going Postal takes place in the Ankh-Morpork region of
Discworld. Moist Von Lipwig should have met his maker Instead, it's Lord
Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, who promptly offers him a job as
Postmaster. Since his only other option is nonliving, Lipwig accepts the
position with escape and profit his end-game objective. However, This will be
difficult, though, as a hulking Golem, Mr Pump, has been put in place as both
protector and parole officer, just in case Moist was considering abandoning his
responsibilities prematurely. Lipwig has
lived by his wits since he was orphaned, becoming a master manipulator of men
and women. Turns out, years spent scamming and conning the public have
excellently prepared Moist von Lipwig with the skill set needed to run a vast
corporation.
The post office hasn't been open for 20 years since the
advent of the Internet-like clacks communication system. A quick explanation of
the clacks its a mode of communication in Discworld that is made up of a grid
of eight shutters By opening and closing these shutters, that converts
customers' messages to ticker tape which are then relayed from one clacks tower
to the next through the city. Moist's first impulse is to try to escape, but Mr
Pump, his golem parole officer, quickly catches him. The all but abandoned post
office of Ankh-Morpork might be harder may be a near-impossible task.
The Post Office building has been poorly maintained by
ancient Junior Postman Groat and Apprentice Postman Stanley the young and
straight pin collector, both long out of practice. The place is also haunted by
dead postmen and guarded by Mr Tiddles, a cat.
Every surface of the massive, labyrinthine building with mountains of
decades-old undelivered mail clogging every nook and cranny of the broken-down
post office building. Worse still,
Lipwig could swear the mail is talking to him. Oh, and one more last nail in
the coffin of the worst thing that can happen, it means taking on money-hungry
Grand Trunk clacks communication and the bloodthirsty Mr Reacher Gilt.
However, it isn’t long before Lipwig expands his staff by
hiring golems to deliver the mail and demanded that all old mail be delivered, and,
most importantly, come up with a new innovation called "stamps,"
which are essentially as good as printing money. Lipwig works out that he can
set his own prices and undercut the clacks. With the help of the ever-present
newspaper, the Post Office is doing roaring business in no time. The devious
Clacks chairman Reacher Gilt sets a banshee assassin on the Postmaster, but
only manages to burn down much of the Post Office building. The banshee dies
when he gets flipped onto the sorting machine.
Lipwig makes an outrageous wager that he can deliver a
message to Genua faster than the Grand Clacks can. "The Smoking Gnu",
a group of clacks-crackers, sets up a plan to send a killer poke into the
clacks system that will destroy the machinery Lipwig talks the Gnu out of this
plan and opts for a more psychological attack on the Clacks. Through the use of
an intermediate Clacks tower, he intercepts the Grand Trunk's message and
substitutes his own pretending it is from the ghosts of the dead Clacks
operators and which exposes the illegal activities of Gilt and his Board.
As much as the intriguing and at times hilariously
baffling storyline will never lose your interest, it is Von Lipwig Junior
Postman Groat and Stanley, Mr Tiddles and Mr Pump, and Adora Belle Dearheart
who make this book brilliant.
L x
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