This is yet another review from my "big catch-up on books I've been reading in hospital". Note that I've been doing my reviews out-of-order, and this is actually one of the first books I read in hospital, a good number of weeks ago, so my memory of it is unfortunately pretty poor at this point.
Moist von Lipwig is back. The pattern from Going Postal is somewhat repeated, with the Discworld pretty literally repeating the inventions of our world. A big theme is how money can be backed by something other than gold, effectively by the economy itself. It's not exactly new to anyone who knows any economics, and it's not exactly subtly done, although there are the usual amusing Pratchett touches.
As usual there are Sinister Forces attempting to undermine things. More unusually, Pratchett doesn't really even let them get started. They're incompetent from the get-go and are never really a serious threat. It's a little odd, really.
Writing this review from a few weeks out, it seems I'm not as impressed with it as when I was reading it. As usual, the page-to-page reading experience is excellent. Moist is a great character, Vetanari gets plenty of air-time, it's a fun sequel to Going Postal. However, now that I step back I'm a little under-impressed by the plot. I guess it's not a great Discworld book, but it's still not bad.
Posted 2022-03-02.