Q:”Did Margery Daw die in episode 23 of Shakugan no Shana II (second)?” A: No she was just unconscious, look for her to possibly make a final desperate contribution in the finale. But seriously they don’t even have the guts to kill of enemies in this series, there is very little chance of them killing off a major, and I think popular (well I certainly like her), character. There is one character who might die, but it seems to me like they left the way wide open for that to not happen either. hmph… series these days have no guts.
That aside I finished reading Monstrous Regiment, another discworld book by Terry Pratchett at some point. In case you can’t tell, yes I do indeed spend the majority of my time on fiction but I think that my reading speed (in english that is) isn’t that bad. Anyway this was a book that in spite of a lot of humor was frankly downright depressing. The premise is that a girl from a before unnamed country (I think) on the Disc disguises herself as a boy to join the army in order to bring back her older brother from the war that’s ravaging her nation so that he can inherit the family inn. The cast is fairly colorful and of course they have even more colorful reasons for being that way. Similar to “small gods” there’s a heavy dose of religious skepticism thrown into the work but while the focus of that book was religion the focus of this one was on war. Something that’s easy to forget at times is that satire doesn’t always have to be comedic, it just has to be mocking, and so quite serious stories with quite a lot to say can still be satires. Unfortunately I think the book got carried away with plot twists and hurt itself a bit. It also seems to have set itself up either for a direct sequel or to be tied in with other works. Having not read all of the discworld books I suppose that perhaps it has already been tied in with some others while I was not aware of it or have already forgotten. Anyway this is one of the darker and heavier discworld books and as such was not the most enjoyable but if you only get your serious thinking done thanks to fantasy novels then you might check it out. Or if you’re just reading all the discworld books in the order that you get hold of them like I am then you might also consider it, the book has fewer ties to past works although Samuel Vimes from the Ankh-Morpork City Watch themed books factors into the story in an unconvincing manner.
On that last note, something that I may or may not bother to find out about is why, though only Terry’s name appears on the cover and the flap of the books his wife is still also credited with writing. Which makes me wonder whether this is cursory acknowledgement of inspiration or whether as has been the case in other long running series whether he isn’t actually running the show. I have remarked recently that there tend to be two distinct styles of Disworld novels with ones like Monstrous Regiment, Night Watch, and Small Gods, being a lot darker and ones like The Last Continent being somewhat lighter. Now to be fair I haven’t read as many of the recent novels as the older ones (maybe) and it’s not as though a person can’t write different stories different ways. But it just seems pretty dramatic. Not that I care that much, I’m reading them anyway.
