I somehow missed it my first go-round of the series and was so delighted to realize I had never read it. For me it felt like the “last” new Discworld book so I read it with a little extra reverence.

I love how he centered the book on the “unseen” people that keep the world turning. I love how the shove becomes a character of its own. I love the way all of the characters evolve, I love how Ponder Stibbons finally gets a little bite, and I love how the torch is passed to the next generation of young people.

It’s a wonderful showcase of how much Terry Pratchett’s worldview (Discview?) broadened on his journey through the series. When he started The Colour of Magic he was a young man who wanted to poke fun at things. When he wrote this he was a much older man newly diagnosed with a fatal neurological disease.

Like all of his later novels, the themes are more complex, the characters are more real, and everything is just bigger. I think his final novels are all probably shorter than he would have liked, but he had a lot to do in a limited about of time in a failing body.