Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Blurb:

A splendid send-up of government bureaucracy, corruption, the postal system, and everything in between in this ingenious entry in Sir Terry Pratchett’s internationally bestselling Discworld series.

By all rights, Arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig should be meeting his maker at the end of a noose. Instead, Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, has made him the city’s Postmaster General. Death may be preferable to fixing the Postal Service—a creaky, outdated institution beset by eccentric employees, mountains of old, undelivered mail Moist swears is talking to him, and a dangerous secret order. To restore the postal service to its former glory, Moist accepts the help of the tough talking and very attractive activist Adora Belle Dearheart.

But to succeed, Moist must overcome two formidable foes—new technology and the greedy chairman of a communication monopoly who will stop at nothing to delay Ankh-Morpork’s post for good . . .

The Discworld novels can be read in any order, but Going Postal is the first book in the Moist von Lipwig series. The series, in order, includes:

• Going Postal

• Making Money

• Raising Steam

Review:

Well… up until a few weeks ago I haven’t looked that much into Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I’ve read “Good Omens”, but aside from that, I’ve always looked at Discworld from afar, wondering what the books were like, and I think I tried reading one when I was fourteen, but then put it back down because I understood little to none of it, and didn’t feel like it was my cup of tea. Here I am about five years later, and craving the next absurd adventure that Pratchett has written after reading five of his works.

If I had to sell this book to anyone, especially a postman, I’d give them this spiel on the book:

“Moist is a brilliant conman. But when he gets caught, and hanged for it, his only options after are either being the postmaster general or dead.”,

before explaining to them that the name is, yes, indeed, Moist.

To start off this review, in order to start explaining “Going Postal” without spoiling too much of the good book, I’ll start with Moist. Moist von Lipwig. He’s the best conman around, according to himself, but when he gets the noose for his misdeeds, all seems over, until an angel offers him a job as the postmaster in order to bring the post office to its former glory or death. From there on, he’s a reformed man, somewhat. As he grows into his role as the postmaster, but is halted by extraneous circumstances. What I love about what Terry Pratchett has done to Moist von Lipwig is taking a man who, by all rights, should burn for his crimes, redeem himself slowly through community service under orders from a somewhat friendly tyrant to most people. That brings me to Lord Vetinari, the friendly tyrant. He’s a recurring face in Discworld, and I should just leave it at that because he is someone that, from the times I’ve seen him in a Discworld book, is way too difficult to describe in a review without overly extending it by a few hundred words (TLDR: a man who is insane with too much time on his hands running Ankh-Morpork). After that, we have Adora Belle Dearheart, who’s name is a complete and utter juxtaposition to how she’s introduced, and she’s an activist for golem rights. Through the book, she lightens up a bit and she and Moist get together, somewhat, even though their flirting could be considered… jarring. Lastly, there’s the chairman of a communication monopoly called the clacks, who is literally every large corporation rolled into one. How Pratchett managed to do so, I know not, but the cartoonish level of villainly that rolls off the chairman is perfection in and of itself. He’s there, doing his monopolistic stuff, celebrating his wealth, and loathing the post office for even existing.

That leads me to the second part of this, the plot. And, I’ll be saying this a lot about some of Terry Pratchett's books, the plot is structured around Moist von Lipwig, Lord Vetinari and Adora Belle Dearheart, and fits perfectly in the pages. Going from the blurb above, the postal service that Moist von Lipwig runs as postmaster general (under supervision by a golem) as per orders from Lord Vetinari, is decrepit with eccentric employees (eccentric is a slight understatement) with really weird shenanigans taking place in that building alone. While sorting what he is supposed to do with the post office, he ends up running into Dearheart, who runs a golem work agency. From there on, it is pure and utter threading the plot needle until the end. Meanwhile the villain is doing his best to ruin the post office, which throws so much absurdity and chaos into the mix that it’s hard to stop reading.

After that, we have the world building. Discworld, for those not familiar with Pratchett's work, is a flat disk inhabited by all sorts of creatures balanced on the backs of four elephants who are in turn balancing on a galactic turtle who is wandering through the universe. Ankh-Morpork is a city that is brought up a lot in this series. And for good reason, everything is there, all the familiar sites and faces from all novels are somewhere in Ankh-Morpork at some point and time. It’s a magnet for everything. It’s a pure absurdist world where anything will happen at some point. As for creatures, almost everything exists in this world, and lovecraftian horrors lurk behind the magic curtains that wizards in Discworld touch, but that I’ll touch more upon in my next Discworld review. The worldbuilding is amazing and can barely be scratched in a review, it has to be experienced individually by everyone to fully understand it (also there’s forty books so trying to fully unpack the worldbuilding with just one book as an example is an undertaking that I’d rather not try to attempt until I’ve read all of the novels).

Continuing on, I’d usually point out a flaw that I found while reading, but I can’t really find one with “Going Postal”. However, that is my own opinion, and it should be read to form your own opinion about the novel.

If you’re into magical mail, cartoonishly villainous chairmen, and chaos, this novel is for you.

As always, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading this review, and I hope I’ve helped add another novel to your TBR, or given you an idea for your next read. If not, don’t fret, there are plenty of reviews here on SFF Insiders that are about novels similar to this one or completely different. Here is a link that’ll bring you to a random review of a novel on this site. It could be within the same genre or somewhere completely different.

Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night!