Reading: Feet of Clay

I remember when I was reading Discworld for the first time noticing, sometime around the mid-1990s, that something about what Pratchett was trying to do seemed to have shifted. The books became less straightforward comedy, more thoughtful; less parody, more satire. At the time, I found this quite hard to accept, because what I'd originally loved about Discworld was the lampooning of real-world originals; I started reading the books as light relief after doing an English degree and, two years on, I still wasn't really ready for subtlety or books that made me think. These days, I feel rather different; the earlier books feel a bit silly, and the subtler, more satirical books are the ones that feel like vintage Pratchett.

Feet of Clay is definitely vintage Pratchett. Ankh-Morpork here feels much more three-dimensional than it did in the earlier books, and although it's still very funny the issues it tackles are serious. ( Plot-specific )