Executive Summary: Another good, but not great entry in the Discworld series. This one seems to read pretty much stand alone, though I think it would be best to have some knowledge of the series prior to this book. It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modem society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?" It has been suggested that Pratchett took his inspiration for this line from Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, but this is a very ancient concept in magic and primitive religions. People bearing the same name as the deceased often change their names for fear of the dead person's ghost. James George Frazer's The Golden Bough covers this concept in detail. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says that for a quantum particle (e. g. an electron), it is impossible to know with complete accuracy both where it is and how fast it is going. The act of observing it interferes with the event you want to measure (one might say that at the quantum level the observation is the event) in such a way that it is physically impossible to determine both velocity and position of the particle in question. It´s never bad for craftsmen to organize in guilds or unions and if the specialization is something not as mainstream as wood and metalwork, but, let´s say, different forms of working with living material, it gives the whole idea potential for satirizing the strange bureaucracy of the political apparatus. If robbers, assassins, smugglers, prostitutes,… all have their accepted, democratic councils and can influence legislation and jurisdiction, the manifold interests and manipulations that are forming the processes in real life can be shown in a new light.

Teppic shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said. “They have a new Tyrant every five years and they do something to him first.” He hesitated. “I think they ee-lect him.” In 2008, Harper Children's published Terry's standalone non-Discworld YA novel, Nation. Terry published Snuff in October 2011. As it always is with Pratchett, the "stuff" doesn't really matter. I can't point to a single part of this book and tell you why it's my favourite in the series, because I've forgotten all of the funny parts that made me laugh, because jokes are fleeting and of the moment. And yet it's those jokes that make me love this book above his others.

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There isn't a huge amount of character development, Teppic’s arc is good, but considering the type of book this is there is no need to have a hugely meaningful and introspective dive into the character. This is a reference to the other Egyptian myth regarding the sun god Ra riding across the sky in Atet, his solar barge. Atet was also known as the Mandjet, the Boat of Millions of Years, and, during the night, as the Mesektet. Ra – variously conflated with other solar gods such as Amun and Hathor – travelled through the sky on the barge, providing light to the world. Each twelfth of his journey formed one of the twelve Egyptian hours of the day, each overseen by a protective deity. Ra then rode the Atet through the underworld with each hour of the night considered a gate overseen by twelve more protective deities. Passing through all of these while fending off various destructive monsters, Ra reappeared each day on the eastern horizon. The side characters are all well formed. I loved Teppicymon when he was a ghost commenting how silly all the pyramid nonsense was. And the people of the Old Kingdom were learning that, for example, Vut the Dog-Headed God of the Evening looks a lot better painted on a pot than he does when all seventy feet of him, growling and stinking, is lurching down the street outside. Unfortunately he doesn't bank on his "conservative" Head Priest Dios, who lives his life by ritual and regularity and has no time for religion despite believing that Net was the Supreme God, oh as was Hast, Fon, Set, Bin, Sot, Dhek and Ptooie, as well as a host of others. The trouble was the kingdom was a slave to ritual and to a multitude of Gods for every occasion, with many duplicates.

Prince Teppic is the heir to the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi*. His father, a non-traditional man with odd ideas, decides to send him to get the best education possible outside of the Old Kingdom, by sending him to join the Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild. Seven years later, Teppic is summoned home by sad news and sets about building the greatest pyramid ever seen on the Disc. This proves to be a Very Bad Idea. Madness in the form of prestige buildings, world wonders costing the lives of tens of thousands and more, have such a fascination for humans that we may keep building them forever, no matter what a waste of time, resources, and money it is. Bloody old temples and pyramids, but the modern skyscrapers for which instead endless amounts of standard houses could be built, speak a similar language. Pratchett uses the language of oil well drilling throughout the novel to describe the pyramids and their construction. The well cap is like a capstone, it covers the top of the drill pipe and controls the flow of the oil from below, equalizing pressures, etc. The capstone on the pyramid in Discworld does the same thing – controlling the energy flow from the pyramid. Oil wells were known by their signature flame or flare illuminating the night sky just as Djelibeybi's pyramids flare off and light up the desert. Finally, at the end Teppic caps the giant pyramid and seals it returning Delibeybi to ‘normal’ just like capping an oil well permanently seals it after a blow out.

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The fabric of space-time is a conceptual model combining the three dimensions of space with the fourth dimension of time. Albert Einstein helped develop the idea of space-time as part of his theory of relativity. According to the best of current physical theories, space-time explains the unusual relativistic effects that arise from traveling near the speed of light as well as the motion of massive objects in the universe. It is therefore not surprising that lines like, ‘the fabric of time and space was torn asunder’ are common ones throughout science fiction writing, good and bad. The line is one of Pratchett's trademark puns because the Sergeant is speaking to the young soldier named Autocue. Autocue is a British term for a teleprompter (the name of the company that manufactured it). So the lines in this section reflect that connection. Autocue is told to ‘run like the wind. Although I don't expect you'll need telling’. Then he is told to ‘ tell’ the Ephebians. He replies, ‘ Tell them what?’ to which the sergeant responds, ‘Go and tell them what kept you.’ Pratchett, as he often does, overplays the pun to make sure the reader doesn't miss it. He shrugged. It might be, for all he knew. “The point is, though, that everyone can do it. They’re very proud of it. Everyone has—” he hesitated again, certain now that things were amiss—“the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extractions. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lost of other people. But everyone apart from them. It’s a very enlightened civilization.” The Marie Celeste left port in 1872 with a full crew, but was later found (by the crew of the Dei Gratia) abandoned on the open sea, with no crew, the single lifeboat missing, and half-eaten meals in the crew's mess. It was later discovered that captain Morehouse of the Dei Gratia had dined with the captain of the Celeste the night before she sailed, and Morehouse and his crew were eventually tried for murder, but acquitted because there was no hard evidence. The missing crewmen were never found. Pratchett also uses the Marie Celeste reference in the novel The Last Hero.