I am reading a Terry Pratchett book. Trying to. Previously I was reading the first of Piers Anthony's Xanth novels. The Pratchett is about a mercenary cat named Maurice and some rats who have become conscious of themselves. "I think, therefore" kind of conscious.
What I am not understanding is why I enjoyed Xanth so much and can't get into Maurice.
I read at least 10 of the Xanth books years ago. I don't believe I've ever gotten more than 200 pages in to a Terry Pratchett. Why? What's the difference?
Both authors wink at the camera - tell the kind of jokes that make you aware of an authorial presence outside of the story. In Xanth you get shoes from shoe trees. Maurice has met up with a girl who bases her behavior on how things go in fairy tales. To find a secret passage, she starts leaning casually on various walls.
The shoe trees are much more of a groaner than is the self-referential analysis of how things should go in stories.
And yet I prefer Xanth. Is it that Pratchett's winking pulls too much focus from the story? There is something sincere about Anthony's story-telling, something about heart that I'm missing in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, even though the rodents are dealing with some important moral issues.
What really makes me sad is that I want so much for Maurice and the stupid kid and Dangerous Beans - the rats named themselves - to become important to me, but I don't feel like I'm willing to devote much more time to them.
Y'know. So many books, so little time.
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