Carpe Jugulum
Carpe Jugulum (Latin for "seize the throat", cf. Carpe diem) is a comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the twenty-third in the Discworld series. It was first published in 1998. In Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett pastiches the traditions of vampire literature, playing with the mythic archetypes and featuring a tongue-in-cheek reversal of 'vampyre' subculture with young vampires who wear bright clothes, drink wine, and stay up until noon. (description taken from Wikipedia)
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2010–2026years
25% recommend67% neutral8% critical
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- Vimes is my favourite character arc; I don't always rate Guards Guards but it is essential entry to Night Watch (IMO one of the best books).
Also a shout out for underrated options; Soul Music (great tag line, lovely observational comedy) and Carpe Jugulum (some fan favourite characters, but also one of my fav bit-part characters - Lacrimosa)
- I wouldn't start with "The Colour of Magic", it is - by far - not the best of the Discworld novels, and tbh I find Rincewind a tad annoying.
I personally find any novel in the Witches arc a lot more enjoyable, starting with "Lords and Ladies". Other good ones: "Carpe Jugulum", "Equal Rites".
Another very enjoyable set is the night watch arc. Both "Guards, Guards" and "Night Watch" are excellent.
[edit]: oh yeah, and how could I forget: "Small Gods". Hilarious even if it stands a little aloof of the rest of the discworld stuff.
- Since no one has mentioned it so far, I recommend the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. This year, I finished (numbers in Discworld order, annotated by the series):
9. Eric [Rincewind]
10. Moving Pictures [Independent]
12. Witches Abroad [Witches]
18. Maskerade [Witches]
19. Feet of clay [The City Watch]
23. Carpe Jugulum [Witches]
32. A Hat Full of Sky [Tiffany Aching]
37. Unseen Academicals [Wizards]
38. I Shall Wear Midnight [Tiffany Aching]
Brilliant series, highly recommended. Whenever I feel down, I re-read one of the Witches series - I spot something I never noticed before - an immediate mood-booster!
- As Terry Pratchett put it in Carpe Jugulum:
> And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
- > This shift coincided with a decrease in adjective TTR below a defined threshold, occurring approximately ten years before Pratchett’s formal diagnosis.
The diagnosis was announced in 2007, meaning the shift occurred in 1997. 1997 was after Jingo and before Carpe Jugulum and The Last Continent, and 2007 was after Making Money and before Unseen Academicals.
The Last Continent is the first identified in the paper as below the cutoff for adjectives which they use to identify the start of the decline.
My own feeling is that many of his strongest works were before 2000, though he had several excellent ones after (the City Watch and first two Moist von Lipwig; I know the ongoing Tiffany Aching series are good, but in terms of writing I found them not as intricate as his earlier books.) I found Snuff harder to read, and Raising Steam, sadly, very difficult. I could tell the genius was there, but my memory of the writing was that it used much longer sentences, had less intricate plotting, and far fewer puns and wordplay. It was this book that made me really feel a sense of grief for what was happening to him, and it was this one where I first felt there was an observable threshold that was crossed.
I have sometimes wondered if it would be respectful if another author was brought into assist in editing or rewriting his last two novels. I know his unpublished works were destroyed, and any writing assistance is not his own voice. Yet I feel, in a sense, seeing books with such clear decline could in itself have let his legacy down. I don't know what his own view was or would be. While I admire Sanderson' continuance of the Wheel of Time, I would not wish such a drastic change in tone for some similar effort for the last of Pratchett's works. Yet I deeply wish that his last books were, somehow, different, more representative of him that I feel they were, in that his illness (in a sense, of course!) let him down. They cause me sadness.
GNU Terry Pratchett. (My own site sends this too.)
- I haven't read Carpe Jugulum for years, but the slow/dim/clumsy meaning of Klotz has been adopted into (American) English as "klutz".
