I enjoyed Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and Tiffany Aching stories. The first page always grabbed me and the climaxes made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. We lost a great writer when he passed away last fall. The last few books as he struggled with Alzheimer’s were uneven in spots. He wrote the important passages and his assistant stitched them together. Even then, they were wonderful stories. His passing left a void.
His publisher is attempting to fill that void with The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner and Other Stories, the second collection of stories written when he was a 17 year old junior reporter for the local paper. These are good stories, though juvenile as you would expect. Terry was not a child prodigy. There are bits that foreshadow his adult work, e.g., “Blow this for a lark.” The last story in the collection is the core of the Bromeliad Trilogy.
I bought this book, rationed the stories, and will now donate it to the library. I will check out the first book if it’s available. If not, I may wait until I’m hungry for any new Terry Pratchett book, even a 17 junior reporter’s one.