Going Postal - Terry Pratchett

I had only read one other Terry Pratchett book former to Going Postal, and that was his first novel, The Carpet People, when I was a teenager. I didn't understand it, so I never bothered with any others. Going Postal was chosen for book club by a Pratchett fan due to it purportedly being one of his more accessible titles, but whether through reading whilst overly tired, or due to the often zany writing style and overinfusion of dry wit, or a lack of prior Discworld knowledge, I struggled to fully understand this one too. The confusing opening sequence went right over my head, which is followed by the false hanging of a conman called Moist von Lipwig. He is given a chance to redeem himself from his crimes by re-establishing the defunct post office of Ankh Morpork, which I assume is a major city of Discworld. Therein lies the problem, this being book no. 33 of the Discworld series, there is very little in the way of world building, and I had a lot of unanswered questions. However, as someone who hates the pandering of authors to new fans in having to re-explain the essentials in each book, I felt like I didn't have the right to complain about this.

For all my confusion, the plot of Going Postal was actually very enjoyable, even if the characters did have ridiculous names and Pratchett tried hard to force comedy into every sentence. The setting of a creaking old post office stuffed with mountains of unsent letters whispering to be delivered was a compelling one, and the rivalry with the technologically superior Clacks had relevant real world connotations. However, Pratchett does a poor job of explaining what the Clacks are to anyone with no experience with semaphore towers, and I finished the book none the wiser than when I began. I plan to watch the 2010 mini series just to get a handle on this, and also to make sense of the book's ending, which had me scratching my head. This book was a solid 3 stars for most of the read, but sadly plummeted to 2 after a fairly underwhelming, unsatisfactory, and puzzling denouement. Will I read more of Terry Pratchett in the future? Quite possibly, but not in any great hurry.

Rating: 2/5