(book review)

To begin with, lets talk about the plot. To avoid spoilers as much as its possible, we will discuss only the structure of this story. The tale begins in a typical for T. Pratchett way: a bit of mystery, a little caricature of a common cliché for a fantasy – just enough for readers to nearly skip all the boring preparations for the main story. After that, everything goes as it`s supposed to go. The intrigue, the pressure is rising, a culmination and an open ending. An old good classic story, neither more, nor less.

But! If we were talking just about the plot – this would be an end, but we are talking about this story translated, adapted and published in Ukraine and for Ukrainians, so let us look at the pros and cons of this edition.

Pros. Firstly first – the adaptation. Translators dont just take one text in one language and put the same text in another one. No, theyve decided to go along the hard way – the true way. For example, lets compare the Ukrainian and russian adaptations. In russian, there are two types of characters: the main one and all others. You will learn the names of secondary characters only in the middle of the book, because all of them talk in the same way. And its not even a movie or a cartoon, where you could, at least, see them. In addition to this, the russian version also contains that weird kind of censorship, which changes the story in such a way that some jokes stop working, some plot holes appear from nowhere and sometimes the whole story even stops making sense. On the other hand, in the adaptation of “VSL” all the characters are bright and there are fewer moments which look as if they were in the wrong place.

To continue with, I will bring your attention to the text itself and to the design of the cover. In the way the text is written – it is a huge progress, compared to the old books published by this company, which were full of dialect and unknown words. In this book the text begs you to read it. Just one more page… And another one… And another one. And so on, suddenly, you will catch yourself in the middle of the book. Isnt it wonderful? In addition, the books cover is designed in a special for T. Pratchett`s books way. It creates that simple childish wish not only to read books, but to collect them too.

However, sadly, there are also some cons. The books cover looks like a hard one, but in reality, this ‘hard cover’ is actually pretty soft. I wouldnt put it under pressure. To continue with, there is an old VSL problem: in some places, the ink may bleed onto the neighboring page. In the case of this book, there were two or three reprintings on the last pages. It`s not so critical, but it is cheerless to see that some old problems are still there.

So, to sum up everything, what do we have? A well translated and adapted book edition. The publishing house “VSL” shows a good job by working on some of its issues, yet some of them are still unsolved. On a scale of one to ten, my rating is a true eight.

* published by Ukrainian publishing house “VSL” (or “The Old Lion Publishing House” in English)