Fantasy - J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit (1937)

Aw jeez. Aw jeez. A lot of people are gonna hate me now.

I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm not a fan of Tolkien. I read the three LotR books a while ago and was bored to tears. I get that he pioneered the fantasy genre and that many authors look to him for inspiration and there's not a small amount of his ideas in Dungeons and Dragons, but that doesn't mean that I have to like his writing.

That said, I enjoyed this book WAY more than LotR. That doesn't mean much in the grand scheme, however.

This book felt more "for kids" than Amazing Maurice did, and I can't really figure out why. I might have had something to do with the storyteller narrator that was driving me up the wall. I had the same problem with Chronicles of Narnia; the narration breaking the fourth wall by mentioning how you may not be able to imagine it, or how the narrator supposes characters' feelings rather than just telling us the fucking story. If the prose is not in first person, suddenly switching to that POV is jarring and makes me mad.

I think I actually enjoyed reading this BECAUSE we play D&D. I've noticed that it makes me more tolerant of the high fantasy that I hate so much. Fighting trolls, goblins, and giant spiders just feels like a series of modules I would run rather than cliche now.

I am glad that this book was not steeped in appendices and glossaries like LotR is. I may be able to reread that series now that I've reading the prelude.

One final note: why are these dwarves so inaffective? They are constantly getting captured and lost and almost eaten, but then when Bilbo saves them, they treat him like shit? Maybe stop being so useless on an adventure, dipshits. Maybe y'all need a respec.

7.5/10

Young Adult - Terry Pratchett - The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (2001)

Long time no see! Not much has changed. I just felt frustrated with reviewing the books I read before; I hadn't been enjoying the act of reading knowing that I had a blog post to write immediately after. But after this hiatus, I feel like I am ready to get back in the saddle again. And with a pretty good book too!

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is the first YA installment in the acclaimed (both in our home and beyond) Discworld series. Because it is YA, Bryan, who normally reads all the Discworld books, hasn't bothered with it. I read it because it should come after The Last Hero, which ironically is the last Discworld book I read (several years ago, sadly). I think Bryan got me this for some Christmas, but I could be wrong.

This book is about the eponymous Maurice and a bunch of rats that ate some magical refuse from behind the Unseen University and were granted intelligence and the ability to talk. Maurice comes up with a scheme with a "stupid-looking kid" to have him play as the pied piper, and lead these specific rats out for cash. And it works out, for a while. But then they go to Uberwald.

If the title sounds familiar, it's because the idea of an amazing Maurice and some smart rats were briefly mentioned in Reaper Man. It had been such a long time that I had to look that up myself, and I still haven't found it flipping through the book.

While this book is labeled as YA and is found in that section of the bookstore, I don't think it's really YA. It doesn't feel like it, at least. What it is is very Pratchett, very Discworld. There are only four things I can think of that make it YA, and two of them are just Discworldy: there are talking animals, the book is broken up into chapters, there are illustrations to show how rats write in their language, and the ending is pretty clean.

I enjoyed reading this book. I actually stayed up late two nights in a row reading this in bed. As I said, it is very Discworld, and while there aren't many characters from the main series here, save for the obvious ones, it doesn't really matter. It fits the method of Pratchett's stand-alone Discworld books (Like Pyramids and Small Gods), and is engaging. You won't be disappointed with time spent reading this book.

10/10