Terry Pratchett is pretty awesome

This cover doesn't really fit the book, but whatever.

I don't know how I managed to dodge Terry Pratchett's books for the past who knows how many years, but now that I'm finally sitting down and reading them I'm really enjoying myself.
So far I've read Going Postal and Small Gods, and am almost done with Mort (which is my favorite so far). Mort was an earlier book than the other two and I can sort of tell: Small Gods was a very biting satire of religion (and I'd think Catholicism, though I'm not going to make any assumption) but isn't very high on the "jokes per page" quota. Mort, on the other hand, a story of Mort who becomes the apprentice to Death, is consistently goofy and is throwing jokes out left and right. If I had to prefer a style, I'd say I like Mort better, though Small Gods made me THINK more than Mort did.

Going Postal was straight up weird. I don't know what else to say about it.

This isn't the first time I've tried Pratchett, to be completely honest. I got about 50% of the way through Good Omens, which is him and Neil Gaiman doing their thing. I honestly thought it read more like a Neil Gaiman book than a Pratchett book, though maybe they switched off chapters/characters because stuff frequently goes from weird to somber to weirdly somber as we bounce around viewpoints. I enjoyed the book a lot, but when it started focusing on characters I didn't care about at all (the witch-hunter) I sort of lost interest. I should pick it back up.

Granted I had the same problem with American Gods, so maybe it's Gaiman's fault. Though I can't fault the man for being extremely clever, which he most certainly is. He and Pratchett seem like a really odd mix, though.

Point being: check these books out. They are very entertaining. The best part is they are fast and light (unlike A Song of Ice and Fire, which I am stuck on the fourth books of) and I can finish them in a few days if I'm quick.

This is where I'm supposed to put notable quotes, but I can't think of any offhand. Needless to say, any book where Death quits his job and finds more job satisfaction in being a chef in a backwater restaurant is 10/10 in my book.

In personal writing news, Steelgods 1 is finally near finished after nearly a month and a half of pain and whining. Once it's finished I'll start submitting, while I write my next book.

And as a special bonus for all those who bought Paradise Seekers on the Kindle and liked the Steelgods snippit: since the odds of me posting it on Kindle are substantially lower than when I first put Paradise Seekers up (though I'm still keeping my options open), if you'd like a free, maybe-badly-formatted Kindle copy of the third draft of Steelgods just shoot me an email or a comment (or a Facebook harassment). I figured I'd reward you for being nice and buying my book. :) Though if I do sell it YOU'D BETTER BUY THE HARDCOVER. :P

 I'm getting excited to write again - anything at this point, I'm going crazy - so expect some more exciting posts hopefully soon. In the meantime, go read some Pratchett.