By Terry Practchett
Rating: 4/5
Three Word Summary: Fantasy carpet world
Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the finest living authors. But even the finest authors, especially those who write so prolifically, will eventually produce a slightly less than brilliant book.
To be fair, he has become my favorite author, so I tend to judge him more harshly because I hold him to a higher expectations.
By anyone else’s standards, The Carpet People would have been a masterpiece. But compared to the spectacular body of Pratchett’s work fondly known as Discworld, this book doesn’t quite meet that high standard.
To be fair, very few works of fantasy can be favorably compared to Discworld. Also, The Carpet People was based on a story Pratchett originally wrote in serial form when he was sixteen years old. Not bad for a first novel.
The very idea of creating an entire fantasy world in a carpet is unique and fascinating. Similar to many of his other works of fantasy, Pratchett weaves an intricate tale of various races and civilizations.
My primary complaint with the development is the difficulty telling the various races apart with limited background establishment. This may be due to the fact that the book is meant to be primarily for children, who are much more forgiving of such things than I am.
Even still these races and places were as vibrant and colorful as we’ve come to expect from Pratchett. The dialogue is his same near-perfect tone and pace. The names are a bit hard to pronounce, but I suppose people living in a carpet would have funny names.
Most unique about these books was the inclusion of original illustrations by Pratchett. They reminded me of Roald Dahl illustrator, Quentin Blake, also recently knighted. In fact, the story itself reminded me a bit of Dahl’s stories. And there is no higher compliment than that for a work of children’s literature.
So honestly, the only real criticism that can be made of Carpet People is that it isn’t the best ever work of literature, or even the best book by a phenomenal author.
By normal standards, it is a good book, full of creative elements and funny moments and a fantasy world contained entirely under foot.