Terry Pratchett's Dodger

Done, I am finally done reading Dodger by Terry Pratchett.  The book to miss-quote Khan this book “Tasked Me!” Like most of Terry Pratchett’s books the writing is smart with the assumption that the reader is well educated.  The book was also written in an older style of the English Language with some British Slang that is rather out of date.  So unlike a modern book this is one of those books you have to pay attention to while reading.  I had to pay attention to the point of having to look up a couple of slang terms and a couple of characters from the book because it was a historical fiction and some of the people appearing in the book were famous.  In the end the book took a lot longer to read and I had to put it down for a few days at a time to let the information percolate through my brain (it did not help that real life was a bit busy at the time).  In the end Dodger was a very satisfactory book to finish.

I must say that I really did enjoy reading Dodger.  It was the story of a young man finding work where he could and making money where money was to be made in the sewers of London.   The story covers the adventures that bring him to a better place in the end.  During his adventures he meets a number of people who would become famous people in power and such (not to give anything away).  Just be assured that it was all very entertaining.

My only real complaint about Dodger and something about making the book a struggle not just to read but at times to finish is the style in which the book was written.  The book being a historical fiction was written in the same style of books from the age of Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew.  It read much like the Victorian books such as Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin.  Of course it also reads like a Dickens’s story or a Sherlock Holms story from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  If you like stories set in that time period you might enjoy Dodger.  While I would much rather read another Discworld book by Sir Terry Pratchett I am glad he is able to write something new and different if he wishes.  I especially enjoyed the short afterword he wrote about Dodger.