making money is about an earlier hero who was introduced in 'going postal'. in the earlier book he revamps and re organises the postal deptt of ankh morpork after being pardoned - saved from the gallows -by lord vetinari who runs the city.
in making money, the postmaster is asked to do his magic on the city's bank and the mint. so among other things, ankh morpork is introduced to the advantages of paper money.
the style of writing is extra ordinary - in that the reader is obliged to make sense of oblique references to many of our real world practices and is invited to laugh at the illogical procedures that we have. this is true of disc world per se and is not limited to the current book. real life blended with ingenuity into a mythical world...........
in 'making money', there is a long serving clerk -the backbone of the bank- who has been required to systematically reduce the gold reserves of the bank by the past owners and come up with creative accounting processes to hide it from the world.
then there is the formidable chairman - wife of the earlier owner- who owns 50% of the bank. she is a woman who managed to charm the previous owner, when she was a dancer [i think], then marry him, get his share of the bank and convince the husband to provide her dog with a 1% stake in the bank. the dog is hers and she is therefore in charge of the bank....however it doesn't pack as much punch as some of the other terry pratchett novels. the concept of paper money is a little lost in the process of being translated into ankh...and so the satire seems diluted.
No comments:
Post a Comment