2009 books, #63

This one deserves a post on its own.

Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett. London: Transworld/Doubleday, 2009.

Brilliant. Pratchett takes on the Beautiful Game and wins. We get everything from Real Football, or whatever it was called in the days of bearbaiting, cockfighting and other lethal sports, to the start of the modern game; in conjunction with Ridcully, Rincewind, the Bursar, Ponder Stibbons and a host of new and wonderfully drawn characters. There's academic and sporting rivalry, dwarfmail modelling and serious pie-making.

There's the usual combination of extreme funniness and heartbreaking serious truth; there's a lovely non-typical romance and some Beautiful People; there's that sense you get in the best of the Pratchett books that This Is the Way the World Turns, and occasionally the Way It Should Turn; and there's a bit on the Offside Rule and the Nature of Celebrity.

Wonderful and another Pratchett tour de force.