So I'm guessing that Thrrp, The Charioteer of the Sun has also been through since I finished the book, but never mind, I'm sure I shall be forgiven if I build a pyramid in my garden. Subverted when Teppic's father meets Death, and is confused because he does not look like a giant scarab. Apparently, Death used to look like whatever people expected the personification of death to look like, until it became too tiresome and he decided to settle for the " skeleton with a scythe" look. Gone Horribly Right: Ptaclusp regards his sons' schooling as this. He saved and struggled to be able to send them both to good schools, and how did they repay him? By getting educated!

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett | Goodreads Pyramids by Terry Pratchett | Goodreads

It has been suggested that Pratchett took his inspiration for this line from Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, but this is a very ancient concept in magic and primitive religions. People bearing the same name as the deceased often change their names for fear of the dead person's ghost. James George Frazer's The Golden Bough covers this concept in detail. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Anatomically Impossible Sex: It features on a tattoo that defies biological facts. (An in-story example; all we are told about the tattoo is that it defies said facts.)

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Pyramids is Sir Terry Pratchett’s 7th Discworld book and the Pratchett Smile-O-Meter is dancing happily as this is another fun ride with cool Uncle Terry. Creature of Habit: Dios has a routine that he has been practicing for at least seven thousand years. When it is unquestionably ruined beyond salvage, he still feels his body begin to urge him toward whatever task he 'should' be doing at this time of day. Add to that the details that fascinate us all about Ancient Egypt. We all picture pyramids, hieroglyphics, gods, priests, and the Pharaoh, and Pratchett provides them all, but from his own hilarious perspective. He manages to comment on the need to keep up with societal changes and how new politicians can get weighed down under the trappings of tradition, handicapping their attempts to modernize. Bait-and-Switch: Teppic's father tells an ancestor, recently freed from his pyramid, that he hates pyramids. The ancestor tells him that he does not, seeming to imply Teppic's father is obligated to be in favour of pyramids. He then clarifies that what he means is that what Teppic's father feels for pyramids is a mild dislike— if he hasn't been trapped in one of the damn things for a few thousand years, he can't know what it is to truly hate them! First Edition. PYRAMIDS, Gollancz, 1989, first edition, very fine in like full color wrap-around pictorial dust-wrapper by Josh Kirby. Discworld #7. INSCRIBED by the author.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett | Waterstones

Pyramids is almost totally disconnected from the rest of the series. It has only five characters who appeared in later books: Death, Xeno and Ibid (they only appear in Small Gods, the only novel more distanced from the series than this one), Princess Keli (who is mentioned in Soul Music and the earlier novel Mort) and Dr. Cruces, who appears in Men at Arms. In Dec. of 2007, Pratchett disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. On 18 Feb, 2009, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Running Gag: The statue of Hat, the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests. Ptaclusp got it as part of a job lot, but now he can't find anyone who wants it. The only person who seems to like it is Hat himself. Hoot Koomi wants to be scheming and oily, but Dios won't have any of it. Even when he finally gets the job at the end, he can't get any evil machinations past new ruler Ptraci.TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It´s never bad for craftsmen to organize in guilds or unions and if the specialization is something not as mainstream as wood and metalwork, but, let´s say, different forms of working with living material, it gives the whole idea potential for satirizing the strange bureaucracy of the political apparatus. If robbers, assassins, smugglers, prostitutes,… all have their accepted, democratic councils and can influence legislation and jurisdiction, the manifold interests and manipulations that are forming the processes in real life can be shown in a new light. God of Darkness: The night goddess Nuit appears in the night sky over Djelibeybi (a fantasy version of Ancient Egypt) as a cosmically massive woman with a mournful face looking down on the world. From the perspective of people standing on the earth, her face is upside-down. Later on, Teppic notes the royal guards are carrying the kind of bows that can turn a charging hippo into a pile of kebab meat, and there's something about their expressions that suggest they don't know what it'd do to people, but they'd be keen on finding out.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett - AbeBooks Pyramids by Terry Pratchett - AbeBooks

Obfuscating Stupidity: Every camel, everywhere on the Disc. Having long ago figured out that showing off your intelligence in any significant way leads to being asked to do things (admittedly, either being a lab rat or used to sink boats, like dolphins), they're quite content to be contentious and disagreeable if it means all they have to do is walk around and eat stuff while they ponder theoretical physics. At a British public school/grammar school sports day, the pupil who overall won the most, was declared ‘Victor Ludorum’ – Latin for ‘Winner of the games.’ Character Tics: IIb has a habit of biting his wrist when he's nervous. After he burns his hand from touching his dimension-warped brother, he switches to biting his stylus instead. Fed to the Beast: Getting thrown to the crocodiles is evidently the default execution method in Djelibeybi, a policy which makes for an obedient populace and very large crocodiles.This is a blisteringly funny satire on religion, faith and loyalty taking place in the blisteringly hot desert of Discworld in the Old Kingdom of Djelibeybi (which is of course analogous to Egypt in our world). It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?” Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: Pyramids had a lot of potential as a concept, and to his credit, sir Terry Pratchett really tried to cover as much of Egyptian history and customs as possible... and therein lies the problem.