Making Money by Terry Pratchett is the 33rd book in the Discworld series. This is the latest of the Disc World books, the unending story of a coin shaped world that travels through space supported by four elephants riding on the back of a giant turtle. The people that dwell on this world are a little bit silly themselves. There are vampires, werewolves, wizards, Death, and a wide and varied assortment of gods of one sort or another.
There also seems to be a Guild for everything imaginable, from the Fools Guild to the Assassins Guild. And well, if there are going to be beggars, why not have them unionized?
Making Money is the story of how the great city of Ankh-Morpork leaves the Gold Standard and tries it’s hand at using paper money. There are many funny little stories within the overall larger one to do with banking. There are countless characters that fall into various stereotypes from mad scientists to their lisping assistants to benevolent tyrants and our hero, Moist Von Lipwig, who has to deal with all of them.
This is my first Disc World Novel, though I did manage to catch The Hogfather on Ion TV a few weeks ago. Which was so full of wonderful and silly things that the fact that the plot involved the end of the world hardly mattered at all. It was all just someplace for the silly business of Discworld to take place. And so it is with Making Money.
People wander in and out of the story and all kinds of silly and improbable things happen. It is fun. The Discworld universe is a vast and amusing one. Maybe Making Money is not the best of the series, but I enjoyed it. There is something warm and comforting about a world where an entire race of beings are called Igors and live only to serve at the whim of madmen.
Hmm, I wonder if I could find an Igor around here? Mu hah ha ha ha! Well, maybe not, but they are sure to turn up again in that wonderful place called the Discworld.
