captaind's Full Review: Terry Pratchett - The Amazing Maurice and His Educ...
The Amazing Maurice is a cat, and His Educated Rodents are… um… rodents. What is a cat doing with educated rodents, I hear you cry. Well you see, not only the rats are educated, but Maurice himself is educated and more than a bit cunning. The rats have no idea how they came to start thinking, while Maurice has a suspicion that he hopes is not true.
Anyway, cat, rats. Add into the mix one stupid-looking kid and you have the perfect scam – rats invade town, rat piper shows up and leads rats away (for a small fee, of course), everyone’s happy. Everything’s going well but they seem to be developing consciences,,, very inconvenient, especially for cats. So they decide that this town will be the last one they do… but in this town they find something new… EVIL… and they are the only ones who can stop it. The rats call themselves “The Clan”, distinguishing themselves from rat packs. They long to be more than just rats…
I’m not going to give away any more of the plot, but here are some of the characters you meet along the way:
The Humans
Keith – a stupid-looking kid who only wants to play his pipe. Except perhaps he’s not as stupid as everyone thiks…
Malicia – the mayor’s daughter whose relatives were the famous tellers of grisly stories, the Sisters Grim. She has acquired their story-telling ability – or so she thinks. Life is but one big adventure story to her…
The Rats
Hamnpork – the clan’s leader, who’s getting a bit old and rather grumpy – doesn’t really agree with this new-fangled “Thinking” business.
Sardines – a rat who had a brief stay in the theatre. Creates panic in towns due to his singing and dancing.
Darktan – the trap-buster. Can disarm a trap at 50 paces.
Peaches – one of the few rats who has learned to read.
Dangerous Beans – the real thinker of the clan.
And of course Maurice - the cat who always has a plan (and several back-ups). He knows where he’s at, all right. But his conscience is bothering him of late…
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You might be wondering where the rats all got such funny names from – it’s because they learned to read before they learned what the words meant, and chose as names those words they liked the sound of. It’s ironic humour like this that makes Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents such a joy to read (as is the case with most of Terry Pratchett’s books). The humour is always there, and the way that the rats struggle to come to grips with the world around them is a joy to read. There are plenty of funny and interesting characters throughout the book, the characterisation is perhaps a tad on the shallow side. (Given that this book is primarily aimed at children, that can be easily forgiven.) The set pieces don’t disappoint and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep the page-turning quotient up nicely.
Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is a Story of Discworld, which means it’s set on the Discworld but isn’t written in quite the same way as the Discworld novels, which are intended for adults. The simple and humorous writing belies the fact that this is a very intelligent social satire in its own right (don’t worry though, the kids won’t realise – probably – so it won’t upset them too much! :-D) Kids of all ages from 10 to 80 will enjoy this book immensely. Each chapter is introduced with an excerpt from “Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure”, the significance of which will become clear as you read the book.
However there are a couple of things that hold me back from giving it 5 stars. The first isn’t really a fault of the book in itself, but having read so much Pratchett before, including his books written primarily for children and the majority of the Discworld novels, some of the themes and humour just seemed a little too familiar. (Not that they weren’t still funny, but somehow I got the feeling I’d been here before.) Also given that it is aimed at children, some of the scenes were, I felt, a bit on the brutal side, and likely to upset some children.
The above are not really major concerns and Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents certainly does have a charm of its own. All Pratchett fans will love this (irrespective of age), and many who find themselves unmoved by his Discworld novels may well find themselves being drawn into the story here. Very highly recommended, but not quite brilliant.
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