SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I'm afraid that Unseen Academicals was the point at which I started to say, Alas, it's affecting his writing ability too much.

Granting that he has the best of all possible justifications for a decline in writing ability, it's terribly sad.

Vlad wrote: "I'll amend my post above; do not start with Unseen Academicals. Not because you won't understand it (you will), but simply because it's by far the worst of Pratchett's work I have read, to the poi..."

I wasn't a real big fan of it myself the first time I read it, but a re-read later let me pick up on some of the subtler themes he was going for.

Something else to keep in mind though, is Unseen Academicals is the first book he wrote while struggling to deal with the rare form of Alzheimer's he is suffering from. He has since abandoned trying to actually write, and now dictates his work, but his life was undergoing a lot of traumatic change during its writing.

-Damien Lake (Chronicles of the Crimson Kings)