Nation by Terry Pratchett Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Nation
Book Review: 384 pages of Terry Pratchett!
Summary: 5 Stars
Unless you've never read anything written by Terry Pratchett, what more do you need to know??Book Review: A GREAT STORY
Summary: 5 Stars
Book Review: A Huge Story Told In Small Words
Summary: 5 Stars
We meet Mau on Boy's Island, fulfilling the rituals that will make him a fully fledged man of the Nation, a small community on a island in the "Mothering Sunday" island chain--one speck of land amid other specks in a vast ocean. Just as Mau casts off the canoe he has built himself to return to the Nation, the great tsunami comes, and wipes out his world. When he reaches home, it is no longer there. Although there was high ground that could have sheltered the people had they taken refuge there, they did not know the wave was coming. In fact, the entire Nation had gathered on the low sloping beach to await Mau's return. He will never have his feast or get the tattoos that show he has completed his journey into manhood. His first task is to gather the dead, to give them burial at sea so the wild pigs will not eat the corpses.
With this astounding opening, Terry Pratchett launches his latest Young Adult fantasy. He has never been a writer to talk down to children and all of his books for young people have tackled the truly large questions: who and where is God? Why do bad things happen to good people? What is the meaning of life? Pratchett is a wise man, to catch intelligent readers at this stage. Later on in life questions like "how will I pay the rent?" tend to swallow everything else. If you are a fan of Pratchett's Discworld, you will enjoy this book set on a round world much like our own. Pratchett's trademark humor is playfully in evidence.
But this is a larger story than Pratchett has tackled before and many adults may flinch from it and try to keep it out of the hands of children. In a deceptively simple and transcendent style, Pratchett tells of how Mau is angry at God and his ancestors for not warning the Nation and how he and Daphne, a young British castaway, succor the other refugees that wash up on their beach and so lay the foundations of a new Nation. This is enrapturing, inspirational fantasy--but it cuts to the bone as it asks questions that cannot be answered. This is not escapist fantasy by any means, but while one is reading it one is rapt away to Robinson Crusoe's island.
There is no bad language that a parent could object to. There is no smidgen of sex, although there is romance to wring the hardest heart. There is only necessary opposition to violence. Warning: this book contains large and grand ideas that will start a person thinking. Mau and Daphne confront incredible grief and defy incredible odds in their own world, and they just might change how you look at your own.
Book Review: A New Universe
Summary: 4 Stars
Book Review: A classic story told through Pratchett's keen eyes
Summary: 4 Stars