Yuffie's Book Reviews

Making Money - by Terry Pratchett

Making Money (MM) is the direct sequel to Going Postal (GP), which you all know I absolutely adored. One of my favorite books! But this sequel.... meh. It wasn't as good, and I'll explain why. (And I know I should critique this book in and of itself, but it's terribly difficult for me not to compare it to its predecessor, so keep that in mind when reading this review.)

THE PLOT

So the premise is awesome--the same formula as the last book. Moist, former conman, is presented with an ultimatum by Lord Vetinari, the tyrant ruler of the Ankh-Morpork: Fix the bank, or you're going back to the gallows.

I really liked the set-up with that. However, there turned out to be a stark difference between reviving a post office and running a bank. The former was wacky, fun, hilarious, mind-blowing, outrageous! The bank... stuffy, humorless, serious. I mean, it's Terry Pratchett, so there's a lot of parodying and inline jokes and play on words, but the actual content wasn't funny, save for a couple exceptions.

So you have Moist von Lipwig taking over the bank and trying to get more business for it. Here's one major difference from GP: in GP, the post office was completely demolished. It hadn't been used in a hundred years. Moist had to build it up from scratch. In MM, the bank was already established, and Moist was just tweaking a few things. Actually, he only changed one thing.

That's one major area where this book suffered, compared to GP. Moist didn't DO much of anything. In GP, he created stamps, got golems working there, cleaned everything up, got the gold suit, appealed to the "gods" and got money, rode an untamable horse, sabotaged some clacks. There was so much action happening. So many big events artfully and ingeniously devised by Moist. In this book, he just created paper money for the first time, and that's literally it. There was no flair, none of his signature Moist von Lipwig style or trickery. That had been the big selling poing of GP, and it was missing from MM, which really lowered the intrigue of this book.

Definitely not as funny as GP. While reading GP, I had a smile permanently etched into my face. I couldn't stop smiling and laughing. In MM, I cracked a smile 3 times total.

THE CHARACTERS

If you've read GP and remember the hugely colorful and fascinating cast of characters--it's not the same in MM. Yes, we get the return of Miss Dearheart, a very short cameo of Stanley, Vetinari, Moist, Sacharissa, and that's it. Oh and Igor. Well, AN Igor.

(Igor was just as brilliant as in the last book. That character(s) is seriously the greatest thing ever and I love, love, love the wacky concept around them.)

But while Moist had been supported by the absolutely awesome characters of Mr. Groat and Stanley in the last book, here we got two humorless bankers. And literally humorless. One actually had never laughed in his life nor found anything funny at all. The other was a zombie, which you'd think would be awesome, but he was a really serious, no-nonsense zombie. It was DULL. And I was really shocked to see that.

Mr. Bent had a layered characterization, but the color and magic and hilarity of Groat and Stanley were so far out of Bent's league in terms of how interesting the character is. Mr. Bent was a math whizz who lived and breathed numbers, but unlike with Stanley's obsession with pins, Bent loved order and sticking to tradition and had no soul in him other than doing sums and such. Stanley had heart and humor and a colorful personality with a dream of collecting pins, which in itself was funny. Mr. Bent was content with his life, doing all the bank's transaction calculations. It was... dull. Very dull.

The doggie, Mr. Fusspots, was wonderful though. It was the Stanley and Groat of this book. It's this tiny yappy dog that's really ugly with big bug eyes and is really derpy and adorable.

Oh, and one final honorable mention is for the main villain/antagonist, Cosmo Lavish, who was trying to take control of the bank. But Cosmo had this really unhealthy obsession with becoming Vetinar. Like, he would get his assistant to steal Vetinari's things (though the assisstant simply made forgeries because no way is he gonna actually steal from Vetinari!)--his ring, hat, sword, a painting of Vetinari--and then don these things and pretend to be him. Like literally he would pretend to be him. It was pretty funny, and he made for a unique and interesting villain.

But yeah... other than Cosmo, Mr. Fusspots, and Igor, the characters were dull. Even Moist... He barely did anything. He had so much style and flair and charisma before, taking so much agency, but now he just printed some paper money. That's it. And it's the same thing as printing stamps, so on it's own it wasn't very compelling or unique.

THE WORLD

Same as GP, so nothing new to add. Pratchett did a lovely job packing this world with details and really developing it.

THE WRITING

Witty prose, though due to the lack of humorous and creative plottings and characterizations, there weren't as many jokes in the narration as in GP, and the jokes that were present were so-so. If anything, I wasn't cracking a smile as much as I did in GP.

His style is very distinguishable and poignant. You always know you're reading a Pratchett book, which is great.

Overall, it's a good book, but I was disappointed in it. I'd had high expectations from Going Postal, and this didn't live up to them. While reading, I kept glancing at the page numbers to see how much more I had to sit through, wishing it'd be over. It absolutely wasn't the worst book I've ever read, and there were some really great moments in it (Mr. Fusspots ignorantly loving the, er, sex toy and zooming around the stage with it hahahaha!, and Igor), but it ultimately lacked the whacky flare and charisma from Going Postal.

3.5/5 stars