The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
Terry Pratchett
The Pied Piper and the Rats of NIMH
Novel 28 in Terry Pratchett‘s Discworld series, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, is novella length, and is said to be the first Discworld book marketed for children. Children would, I think, survive most of the Discworld with their illusions intact, although they might be a little confused about the nature of the Guild of Seamstresses.
It is true that The Amazing Maurice leans into some of the common tropes of children’s stories, such as talking animals and main characters who are children. What’s more, the plot is essentially a collision of two well-known children’s stories, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (I linked there to Browning‘s poetic retelling of the old folktale) and the Newbery Medal winner Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. In this Discworld version, the role of NIMH is played by Unseen University. Rats partake, as rats will, of garbage thrown out of the University. But Unseen University has never been big on environmental responsibility, and it transpires that a lot of magic has oozed into the garbage. The rats find themselves able to speak and read and even think about Ethics.
The Maurice named in the title is not himself a rat -- he’s a cat. If you eat creatures who have eaten from magic garbage heaps, you get the same consequences. Maurice, therefore, speaks and reads and concocts scams. In the town of Bad Blintz Maurice and his Educated Rodents find that they are not the only scammers in the market.
The plot is scams almost all the way down. But only almost -- there is, it turns out, a monster down there, too. In an Author’s Note Pratchett tells us that the monster really exists, although we have to suspect that the real ones don’t have the powers of those encountered by Maurice and his rats.
The audiobook is narrated by Stephen Briggs, who does well with it. We do not, I am sad to say, have the usual backup team of Peter Serafinowicz on footnotes (there are no footnotes) and Bill Nighy voicing Death. Briggs does his best to be Death, but he just isn’t as good at it as Nighy.