RIP Terry Pratchett!

Fantasy author Terry Pratchett dies at age 66.

I was so sad to hear this news. Terry Pratchett was my favorite author after Douglas Adams, and now he’s passed on as well. It’s rare for me to get emotional upon hearing about the death of a celebrity, but hearing the news definitely brought tears to my eyes, and I will most assuredly mourn his death.
This man’s books have brought me so much joy over the years, and I will always be grateful for that. I hope he is at peace now and making people laugh with his wit in the great beyond.

Review of Alice in Wonderland: The Vampire Slayer by J. J. Maddox and Lewis Carroll

As indicated by the title, Alice in Wonderland: The Vampire Slayer by J. J. Maddox and Lewis Carroll is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland set in a world in which vampires are real. Alice's profession is vampire slaying, and she ventures to Wonderland in order to destroy the Blood Queen hoping to put an end to the vampire war once and for all. This short story was an ok read, but I don't think I'd have any interest in reading it again, and I'm not entirely sure I'd recommend it. For those that are curious, it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to read it though. For the most part, the story seemed to stick fairly close to events from the original tale with details changed here and there up until the end. When reading this story, I got the feeling like I was reading fanfiction, which I suppose it essentially is, but it also had more of an amateurish feel to it. There were also a few errors here and there in the text, which would be much easier to overlook if this was a free piece of fanfiction posted online rather than a published work. I really don't think that this short story is worth the price it is being sold for on Amazon.com, so if you really want to read it, I'd suggest waiting for when it goes on sale for free like I did. This short story is also labeled as being the first in the Vampire Wonderland series. I have no plans to read any additional stories in this series unless I can pick them up for free like I did with the first one.

Review of Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

In Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork receives a letter from the Agatean Empire demanding that a great wizard be sent to them. He relays this message to the Arch-Chancellor of Unseen University. After conferring with the wizard staff of Unseen University, they come to the conclusion that none of them want to undertake the journey, so they decide that they should send the inept wizard Rincewind. They summon Rincewind through magical means, and then subsequently transport him to the Agatean Empire. Once there, Rincewind finds himself being forced to participate in a revolution quite against his will that it turns out was inadvertently started by an old friend of his. Rincewind wants no part in the revolution and seeks only to escape, but Fate has other plans for him.

This was a really fun and hilarious book. I really love the characters Rincewind and Twoflower, and I was delighted that the Luggage made a reappearance in this book. I highly recommend it to fans of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series, or anyone that enjoys British humor. While it's probably not necessary to read all of the Discworld books that come before Interesting Times prior to reading it, I would recommend at least reading The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic first, and perhaps Sourcery and Eric as well.