Customer Reviews
The series is still going strong - By: A. Whitehead, 25 Jul 2008 
I think in recent years there's been a tendency to take Terry Pratchett for granted. He has consistently churned out, on average, two high-quality novels a year for the better part of a quarter of a century. His Discworld is one of the most fleshed-out secondary worlds in existence. Ankh-Morpork is routinely voted 'greatest fantasy city' ever. Out of 36 Discworld & a dozen non-Discworld novels, there are very few which can be said to be sub-par. There seemed to be this assumption that this was going to carry on for some considerable time to come. With the announcement of his illness last year that seems to have changed, & each new Pratchett novel is likely to garner more coverage & more interest than ever before.
Making Money is the 36th Discworld novel & its paperback release comes in the year that the flat world carried through space on the back of a giant turtle celebrates its 25th anniversary; The Colour of Magic, the first book in the series, was published in 1983. The book is also the sequel to an earlier Discworld novel, Going Postal. In that book, conman Moist von Lipwig was rescued from the galllows by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, & set to work restoring the Post Office to its former glory. He succeeded handsomely.
Making Money opens a year later. The Post Office is a roaring success, but Moist is feeling a little bored, & has taken to breaking into his own bedroom to keep his skills fresh. The Patrician seems to have concluded that Moist would make an excellent troubleshooter to sort out Ankh-Morpork's other failing public services & tasks him with getting the Ankh-Morpork Bank back on its feet after the former chairwoman passed away, leaving her dog, Mr. Fusspot, to inherit the role of chairman. Moist is initiallly reluctant, but soon relishes the new challlenge. Unfortunately, a family who own a share in the bank, the Lavishes, are not so keen on Moist's appointment & are soon digging into his dirty past to find something to use against him. Thrown into the mix are lots of golems (including a rather gender-confused one), an undead necromancer with an eye for the ladies, a very dedicated bank clerk & a lot of clockwork items of an intimate nature.
As usual, the book is an effortless read. Pratchett's prose sparkles & flows as easily as ever, although careful reading is required to catch every observation & piece of satire as it flies past. Pratchett's typical approach of standing back, putting a mirror in front of something we take for granted (banking, in this case) & saying, "Look, this is a reallly daft system on quite a few levels," is again quite successful here. As with the other later Discworld novels, the broad out-and-out humour takes a back seat to more wry observations, although a comical interlude involving a dog becoming attached to a new 'rubber chew toy' that in this case has falllen out of a cupboard of erotica, & then playing with it in polite company, shows that Pratchett still has time for a good old-fashioned piece of outrageous farce. That said, as with a number of other Pratchett novels the ending is somewhat contrived & the characters get out of the various fixes they're in with some fast-talk, handwaving & a nod from the Patrician, which is a resolution that has perhaps been used a few too many times in this series.
Whilst it's not up there with the series at its best, & the tendency for characters who are intelligent & forthright in their own books to come across a bit as bumbling fools when appearing in cameos outside them (in this case various members of the City Watch) is a bit wearying, Making Money is a solid addition to the series & adds a lot to the evolution of Discworld & Ankh-Morpork (which is now starting to get its own underground rail network, the Undertaking). Somewhat unusuallly for the series, the ending also sets up a third Moist von Lipwig adventure, Raising Taxes, which is likely to be another two or three Discworld books down the road.
An enjoyable series of sub-plots - By: Wandering Dave, 10 Jul 2008 Firstly, I enjoyed this book. Its the second Moist story- I found him to be a likeable character- a rouge, but paradoxicallly an honest rogue. Pratchett writes with a great deal of skill to develop this character- & it works- you WANT him to win, you like him... you would trust your money with him. Which is, of course, exactly what this story is about. Its about a bank being run by a con man, the key issue is trust. What is money WORTH? How do you trust paper money over gold? Well, Moist has his way...
What I found different about this book was the large number of sub plots- reallly just sub-stories that had a rather vauge (and ultimatly irrelevant) conenction to the main plot. They were, never the less, interesting strands, alll of which came to funny & amusing endings. Cosmo Lavish has an interesting scheme, for example, which just seemed to fizzle. There is the dog, Mr Fusspot, who is probably involved in what is Pratchetts most risque little joke ever (what HAS he got in his mouth)- & its very funny. The ending to Mr Fusspot's story is hearwarming, & totallly unexpected. The reader is left to speculate exactly what is going on there- almost certainly two things, in fact. We also have Hubert, who is a bit mad, building some sort of computer & Adora Bell Dearheart's work with the gollums - which in fairness is relevant. Add to this a female lovestruck gollum, & finallly a horny 300 year old dead wizard....
Pratchett clearly had a lot of ideas & new characters & as such it seems a lot was squeezed into this despite the fact that most reallly weren't required as part of the main plot. There is also a new central character- Mr Bent- with a very unusual background, who proves to be a key figure.
We may indeed see a lot of these charatcers again, maybe even developed a little more (the Hubert strand for example went nowhere) although the wizard now seems happy to stay where he is.
If I have any criticisms of this book it is that the dramatic ending seems a little rushed & unspectacular. I also feel that the watch, especiallly Vimes & Carrot, shouldn't have been here at alll. Their roles appear here as nothing more than bog-standard policemen whoes job is just to arrest people, boring & irrelvant extras. Pratchett is playing a dangerous game by using the stars of his other books in such a mundane fashion.
Getting a little tired? - By: Ray Blake, 09 Jul 2008 
I've read alll the Discworld novels as they have been released in paperback, but until now I've never had an inkling that the franchise might be running out of steam. Here, though, we have a novel whose central plot seems rather familiar - a rogue taking the helm of a crusty & inefficient organisation & with a few bizarre pieces of inspiration confounding his critics. The subplots seem recycled, too, & some of the supposedly new characters are rather familiar Discworld stereotypes. The gags are still fresh, though, although we're down from a belly laugh per page to perhaps a good chuckle per chapter.
But even here, in his least successful Discworld novel, he remains in the top two fantasy humourists writing today. This book can only be considered a failure when judged against Pratchett's own extraordinary standards.
Tired but still better than the competition - By: Big Jim, 15 Jun 2008 Many others have commented before so I only want to express my disappointment that the master's slip is showing as it were. I believe that Terry's last few novels have been less than perfect & this one is another rung down the ladder. But having said that I read it virtuallly overnight & it is still the benchmark that other comedy fantasists have to reach & seldom overcome. Unfortunately having set the bar so high he doesn't quite make it over this time.
I think I've read this before... - By: M. Ives, 02 Jun 2008 I love Terry Pratchett's discworld novels (and his other works) & usuallly rate them very highly, but this one seems to be a lot like its predecessor 'Going Postal' (which was a classic). Same storyline & characters; though thankfully - different jokes & historical musings.
I suppose everybody is entitled to at least one dud & although it is not a total loss as it has its funny moments, I can't help thinking that there was something lacking in this offering.
If this was a school report card, it would read:
Could do better, least he turned up.
