Book Review: The Truth by Terry Pratchett

The Truth by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The city of Ankh-Morpork is a vast multicultural and multispecies metropolis with a strong economy and police force, so what happens when Discworld’s biggest city gets a newspaper? The twenty-fifth installment of Terry Pratchett’s fantasy-humor series, The Truth once more finds the flat world taking another step into an Industrial Revolution while a conspiracy looks led Ankh-Morpork into the future by looking back.

William de Worde, scion of one of Ankh-Morpork’s oldest families, is a scribe making his way in life by writing a newsletter for foreign consumption between regular scribe duties. Then suddenly William’s life gets changed forever when he runs into dwarves looking to make gold out of lead, well in fairness he actually gets run over by a moveable type printing press. Within a day, William finds himself running a newspaper and while still figuring out how it all happened, Lord Vetinari appears to have committed serious crimes that could result in a change of city leadership. But as the staff of the Ankh-Morpork Times looks into the political controversy, they find themselves being looked over by the Watch, two new criminals in town, and a sinister cabal (is there any other kind).

Unlike Moving Pictures, the previous “Industrial” story, The Truth doesn’t need the crutch of clichés to bring a laugh while also having a fantastic plot and numerous new characters that keep the book a great read. While focusing on new characters, several members of the City Watch come into the plot and interact with the main character but don’t take the focus on the primary protagonists and the major antagonists. Also Pratchett fills this book with a nice little mystery and the always entertaining Gaspode and his band of human beggars.

For the second straight book, Pratchett invests in plot that he builds jokes around and not the other way around. As a result, The Truth is a wonderful read for both longtime fans and first time readers.


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