The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is the only book missing in my Diskworld collection. Which is a shame, because it’s one of my favourites. I have fond memories of my mum reading it to me and my siblings when we were tadpoles.
I used to own a copy. But then I took it camping. And then there was a storm. My tent imploded, and my paperback was ruined by water damage.
So I bought a replacement. But then I leant it to my ex-girlfriend, who lost it and subsequently denied ever hearing of it.
So now I have to get it from the library.
There are three things which are really cool about Maurice:
It’s set in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales world. It’s dark. There’s lots of death. There’s a village in the woods. Talking animals. The “Grimm sisters” are explicitly mentioned.
The premise is brilliant. A talking cat organises a scam where a gang of talking rats stage a plague in a village, then a piper stages a , a kid comes in and plays the pipe for a substantial fee. The rats
I also once went camping with a copy of Maurice. A storm destroyed and flooded my tent, which also ruined the paperback. After I bought a replacement, I leant it to my then girlfriend who subsequently lost it and denied having ever heard of it.
At that point I gave up on owning a copy.
There are three things which are remarkable about Maurice.
First, it’s set in the Grimm’s fairy tale universe. There’s death and darkness, a teutonic village in the woods, talking animals, and a piper. And one of the characters is related to the Grimm sisters. This is a really interesting creative move, and makes Maurice unique in the discworld series for having a totally different worldfeel to everything else.
a piper, and talking animals, and
There are three things which are unique about Maurice:
Canonologically, it’s set on the Discworld, same as most of Pratchett’s novels. But in terms of worldfeel, it’s set in the Grimm’s fairy tale universe. Specifically, in a small village in Überwald (the discworld equivalent of Germany), where a pied piper and . One of the characters is
The premise is brilliant. A
Unlike the other Discworld novels, which have a worldfeel somewhere between Douglas Adams and Tom and Jerry, Maurice is set in the discworld equivalent of the Grimm’s fairy tales world. The tone is a bit darker. The characters are nasty to each other. The idealistic characters are disappointed.
The premise is fantastic. A cat and some rats find themselves sentient (after consuming magical waste product), and the cat
But the characters. For a long time I didn’t understand what people meant when they talked about characters as being two dimensional. But it’s obvious when reading Maurice because there are so many three dimensional characters who just jump out of the page. You become fascinated with these guys. They’re so interesting and full of quirks and they know who they are and are doubling down on that rather than
The cat is a sly bastard who manipulates
Some really memorable characters. Maurice the sly, manipulative cat. Sardines the tap dancing rat.
I recently revisited on of my
And some
Pratchett, a master of Character, puts in an especially strong performance in Maurice.
Darktan, the reluctant leader who
Dangerous Beans
“The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it.”
Foremost there’s the eponymous Maurice. He’s a talking cat, a master manipulator, and he’s come up with a clever scam wherein the rats stir up an infestation and a guy with a pipe comes in and makes them go away.
“Everyone needs their little dreams." Maurice truly believed that, too. If you knew what it was that people, really, really wanted, you very nearly controlled them.
Then there are the rats. Sardines is the star of the show. He wears a hat and tap-dances, and .
“You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance.”
Darktan, the
“Look, what I'm saying is, you're the leader, right? So you got to act like you know what you're doing, okay? If the leader doesn't know what he's doing, no one else does, either."
"I only know what I'm doing when I'm dismantling traps," said Darktan.
"All right, think of the future as a great big trap," said Sardines. "With no cheese.”
“To be a leader you have to learn to shout! But after you've learned to shout, you have to learn not to!”
Peaches, the idealist:
“It’s odd,’ said Peaches, ‘but we didn’t know the shadows were there until we had the light.”
“Everyone's thinking these days. I think there's a good deal too much of this thinking, that's what I think. We never thought about thinking when I was a lad. We'd never get anything done if we thought first.”
Malicia, who like Abed in community sees everything through the eyes of story
“If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story."
"And what if your story doesn't work?"
"You keep changing it until you find one that does.”
“The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.”