Raising Steam
Terry Pratchett
A formulaic Moist von Lipwig story
Raising Steam is the 40th novel in Terry Pratchett's 41-novel Discworld series, and the third and last in the Moist von Lipwig subseries. There is a reason why this novel, published in 2013, is the last Moist von Lipwig novel and the second-to-last Discworld novel. In 2007 Pratchett announced that he had a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He called it "An Embuggerance.".
Alzheimer's disease is a slow-moving catastrophe, and Pratchett would manage to crank out another six Discworld novels before departing with the bony man with the scythe in 2015. Unfortunately, the consequences of the Embuggerance became (in my judgment) evident in novel 39, Snuff and remain evident in this one. The verb "crank out" becomes too apt towards the end of the sequence. Snuff is, in my opinion, the worst of all the Discworld novels. The adulteration of Sam Vimes's character in Snuff is deplorable.
The adulteration of Moist von Lipwig in Raising Steam is less striking, but I have to say that's mostly because Moist was never that great a character to begin with. Moist is a character you have met in a hundred other novels: the charming rogue with a heart of gold. In each Moist von Lipwig novel Lord Veterinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, gives Moist the job of making some modern institution of the city work. He begins with the post office in Going Postal, then moves on to the mint and the central bank in Making Money, and finally, in Raising Steam he takes on the railways.
Now, to be fair, I'm committing the sin of relativism in condemning these novels. Almost any author would be proud to have written a novel as good as Raising Steam (or even Snuff). But for Terry Pratchett it is disappointing. I barely felt, when reading Raising Steam, that I was reading a new novel. It was just the standard Moist von Lipwig novel with some of the names and situations changed.
At the very end, the Discworld does pull up sharp with The Shepherd's Crown. To read that it is helpful to have read Snuff and Raising Steam, since the Discworld in which The Shepherd's Crown takes place is one with goblins (introduced in Snuff) and crisscrossed with iron mechanisms (introduced in Raising Steam). For this reason it is worth reading those two lesser novels.