Title: The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner
Author: Terry Pratchett
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 324
Rating 4.5/5
This book was a lot of fun, a similar collection to Dragons at Crumbling Castle which I reviewed a couple of months back. They’re basically newer releases that dig into Pratchett’s back catalogue and republish some of the stories that he wrote when he was working for the Bucks Free Press. It’s pretty cool because their office is about three or four miles away from my house.
I like these books because they also play with the layout, with certain words highlighted or emboldened. Then there are the illustrations by Mark Beech, who’s clearly a big fan of Quentin Blake’s because he pretty much nailed imitating the guy’s style. I actually assumed it was Blake until I saw who it was attached to.
As for the stories themselves, they are of course fantastic. Pratchett is a talented writer and even early on in his career, he clearly knows how to tell a story. Some of my favourites here were the ones set in the British Wild West – it turns out that in Wales, instead of having cowboys, they have sheepboys. There were also a few characters called Dai, including Dai Too, who was worried that he might die.
I was always going to like this book anyway, because I don’t think I’ve ever read a Terry Pratchett book that I didn’t like. This one was pretty good and it made me chuckle a lot, but I also don’t think I’d put it in the top 50% of his books. It’s still very much worth a read though, and it’d be great for a parent to read to their kids. It’s also a decent enough introduction if you’re intimidated by the size of the Discworld series but you want to read some Pratchett. My advice? I still think you should read it.
