FIFA Time Read!

Grade: A+

As always, I love Terry Pratchett. I re-read Unseen Academicals, and I MUST recommend that you read it while the football FIFA season is on.

If I could do this review with only excerpts with this most fantastic of books, I would.

Excerpt:

"A chant came past. It had started somewhere at the other end of the game and, whatever it had been once, it was now just four syllables of roar, from hundreds of people and many gallons of beer. As it faded, it took the warm, belonging feeling away with it, leaving a hole."

This is Pratchett’s writing at its most brilliant, with all the fanatical obsession with Football that you would expect.

Unseen University, The Discworld’s premier institution is in the center of the football resurgence at Ankh-Morpork. A hotbed of different stories, The wizards are playing football with the locals, the Dean has left the university to join a rival and is paying a return visit to gloat, there is a new species on Discworld.

The story meanders across different plot-lines, with social commentary on the cult of football, the racial prejudice seen in any society and gay wizards.

All the UU characters feature here – Ponder Stibbons, the Archchancellor, the kitchen staff (new characters), the candle dribblers, and the various Chairs. The older characters like DEATH, Vimes and the Luggage, have cameos, but the second half of the book features a new romantic duo find each other and fumble through the initial stages of dating. This section made for a much better read now, during the football season, that it did at first.

There are gems of one liners – “Now, I am concluding this meeting, although what it has in fact concluded I shall decide later.' “

I am a football novice, so I can attest that this great novel will be absorbing and funny, whether you follow football religiously, or during the FIFA worldcup, or just the WAG crew. You now have 11 more days till 11th July and the Finale, so hurry up!