They didn’t notice that some rats stayed on the bridge, urging the others with shouts of ‘Remember, strong regular strokes!’ and ‘There’s a nice beach just downstream!’ and ‘Hit the water feet first, it won’t hurt so much!’

Nourishing's desperate pleas for Darktan to wake up, she's gotten him out of the trap, are reminiscent of Bigwig's rescue from a snare in Watership Down. Both rescues are made possible because a young, not-too-competent character chewed through part of the trap. Dangerous Beans is also a close parallel to Fiver, that book's Waif Prophet. This happened to be my first Pratchett book and why I did not love it, I still found myself greatly enjoying it whilst I read it. I do have this hunch where I think that absurdist fantasy(is that what you call it?) is probably not my thing. Whether I will like it more the more kind of these books I read or not, I’ll have to see but compared to what is considered as ‘normal’ fantasy, this is really far out there as many people have already noted. According to the Word of God above, the pronunciation of Maurice's name makes this a shout-out to the 80s-90s era spokescat of Nine Lives cat food company. It could also be a reference to Morris Dancing, an activity heavily steeped in the Discworld canon. It’s just like crop circles. No matter how many aliens own up to making them, there are always a few diehards who believe that humans go out with garden rollers in the middle of the night—’Maurice – an intelligent cat who leads the group of rats. He is cunning and manipulative and has a very good (but cynical) understanding of how the world works. Late in the novel, he guiltily admits that he accidentally ate one of the intelligent rats of the Clan early in their history, and thus became sentient himself. The rats' names derive from the words they have seen written on tins before they knew what the words meant and they have called themselves whatever they thought sounded good. Pratchett puns on this; the doubting rat, is called 'Tomato' a play on Doubting Thomas one of Jesus' disciples. Other names include "Peaches", "Nourishing", "Hamnpork", "Delicious" and "Feedsfour". "Dangerous Beans" and "Donut Enter" are takeoffs on the roadway signs, "Dangerous Bends" and "Do Not Enter"

Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Some details about rats, mentioned in the author's notes: he says he had to leave out some stuff that was too implausible for fiction. Of course, the one or other depth is there , but it´s easier to spot and understand and the whole work is like a concatenation of the mostly happy, light fantastic elements and actions, the language so smooth, the metaphors so fitting, everything just so perfect only a master like Pratchett could have been able to create.Do Not Go Gentle/ Don't Fear the Reaper: Darktan manages to combine both of these tropes in his Rousing Speech to the rats: death in itself is not something to be feared, but the Bone Rat will only pass you over if you can look him in the eyes. Given that it's the Disc, he's likely not speaking figuratively. Terry Pratchett really knows how to write a kids book. I would have devoured this thing when I was a lad. Maurice and the rats are good characters, as is Keith, the aforementioned stupid-looking kid. The origin of Maurice and the rats' intelligence was fairly well done. Hell, it's a fantasy story. How much explanation do you need? Pratchett took the classic story of the pied piper and Discworld-ed it up with questions of philosophy, destiny, and leadership. And rat-kings. Pratchett has little respect in any of his novels for the bureaucratic wrangling of government and business. In this novel, the negotiations between the rats and the people of Bad Blintz to provide a permanent home for the rats in exchange for pest control become mired in endless committee meetings, resolutions, task forces, etc. which threaten the whole project. In The Last Hero, Pratchett refers to these kinds of "workshops" as a system "where people who don't know anything get together to pool their ignorance."

But in Bad Blintz, the little con suddenly goes down the drain. For someone there is playing a different tune and now the rats must learn a new word. The rats of the Clan feel it too, and many become so afraid that they all but forget how to think and reason. The Amazing Maurice was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Dazzler Media (under license from Universal Pictures) on 1 May 2023. [16] Reception [ edit ] Box office [ edit ] Ye-es,’ she said. ‘That usually works, in stories. It’s often the stupid person who comes up with the good idea by accident.’ Sugar Bowl: The Mr. Bunnsy books portray a world like this. The rats (particularly Dangerous Beans) treat the books as gospel, Malicia treats them as garbage.As Maurice and the rats become more "human", the rats discuss the concept of a soul and a god; a big rat who lives underground. Since rats are a tunneling species, it is appropriate that their god would not be above in "heaven" but below in the underworld - the place humans put Hell. The Bone Rat is their concept of the Death of Rats - Death's counterpart for rats - a skeletal rat with scythe. Maurice is blessedly short on fart jokes* and long on Pratchett's brand of homespun philosophical irony. Maurice, a talking cat, leads a group of talking mice and a stupid-looking kid into a town called Bad Blintz looking for one last score with their pied piper scam. Only Bad Blintz has troubles of its own...

Terry Pratchett’s first Discworld “story” designating it as written for children (followed by the wonderful Tiffany Aching sub-series) but I would submit this is YA territory, no warm fuzzy Disney moments here. The Amazing Maurice is a 2022 computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Toby Genkel and co-directed by Florian Westermann, from a screenplay by Terry Rossio, based on the 2001 novel The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett. [5] [6] The film stars Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke, David Thewlis, Himesh Patel, Gemma Arterton, Joe Sugg, Ariyon Bakare, Julie Atherton, Rob Brydon, Hugh Bonneville and David Tennant. [7] The story follows Maurice, a streetwise ginger cat who befriends a group of talking rats by coming up with a money-making scam. A movie, available in theaters and streaming on Hulu, directed by Toby Genkel (and starring Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke among others) and called "The Amazing Maurice", was released 5 February 2023 in the USA and Canada. Maurice and his savvy, talking rodents arrive in town, ready once again to pull the old "Pied Piper" scheme. They scare the bejeezus out of the townsfolk, nibble on the comestibles and widdle everywhere. The citizens waste no time hiring Keith to play his magic flute, rats follow him out of the village, everybody splits the money and VOILA! - it's on to the next little hamlet. Maurice, a streetwise tomcat, has the perfect money-making scam. He's found a stupid-looking kid who plays a pipe, and he has his very own plague of rats who are strangely educated, so Maurice can no longer think of them as 'lunch'. And everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers...Magical Flutist: Invoked by Maurice and his gang and later invoked and subverted by the real Piper.