God of Darkness: The night goddess Nuit appears in the night sky over Djelibeybi (a fantasy version of Ancient Egypt) as a cosmically massive woman with a mournful face looking down on the world. From the perspective of people standing on the earth, her face is upside-down. Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: King Ashk-ur-men-tep, who died a thousand years previously, speaks in this. This is a blisteringly funny satire on religion, faith and loyalty taking place in the blisteringly hot desert of Discworld in the Old Kingdom of Djelibeybi (which is of course analogous to Egypt in our world). Implausible Deniability: Dios insists Teppic cannot be Teppic when he catches him breaking Dios' rules. Since Dios is the one proclaiming this, no-one dares argue the fact. Later on, Teppic's father is a little dubious at the story of Teppic killing himself then fleeing on a camel. Bait-and-Switch: Teppic's father tells an ancestor, recently freed from his pyramid, that he hates pyramids. The ancestor tells him that he does not, seeming to imply Teppic's father is obligated to be in favour of pyramids. He then clarifies that what he means is that what Teppic's father feels for pyramids is a mild dislike— if he hasn't been trapped in one of the damn things for a few thousand years, he can't know what it is to truly hate them!

Terry Pratchett - Pyramids Audiobook Terry Pratchett - Pyramids Audiobook

Pyramids is one of those rare books in the Discworld series, being a total stand-alone. Its characters and events do not recur elsewhere in the series (brief cameos by Death and the Librarian excepted) and its events are barely referred to elsewhere. It's a viable jumping-on point for new readers, although in terms of quality it's not among the best books in the series, though certainly not among the weakest either. It's a middling Discworld book which, fortunately, means it's pretty good. In 2008, Harper Children's published Terry's standalone non-Discworld YA novel, Nation. Terry published Snuff in October 2011. Deliberate Under-Performance: Camels are revealed to be an entire species of this. They are extremely intelligent, and also realize that if humans knew of this they would have camels doing all sorts of things constantly. Therefore camels behave in a way that makes them barely suitable for work, which means humans don't expect them to do more than the bare minimum while still providing food and shelter and the camels are left with plenty of time to themselves. The fabric of space-time is a conceptual model combining the three dimensions of space with the fourth dimension of time. Albert Einstein helped develop the idea of space-time as part of his theory of relativity. According to the best of current physical theories, space-time explains the unusual relativistic effects that arise from traveling near the speed of light as well as the motion of massive objects in the universe. It is therefore not surprising that lines like, ‘the fabric of time and space was torn asunder’ are common ones throughout science fiction writing, good and bad.As it always is with Pratchett, the "stuff" doesn't really matter. I can't point to a single part of this book and tell you why it's my favourite in the series, because I've forgotten all of the funny parts that made me laugh, because jokes are fleeting and of the moment. And yet it's those jokes that make me love this book above his others. Teppic is one of the better characters I've come across in the Discworld. There are funny moments littered throughout and I did end up feeling sorry for him throughout this book. And that's the holy grail when writing characters isn't it, make me feel for them. Pratchett certainly does so here. Rescue Romance: Subverted in the end, when Teppic and Ptraci find out they're half brother and sister. Ptraci still wants to go through with the romance, while Teppic — who spent much of his formative years in the more modern Ankh-Morpork — is thoroughly against it. Stable Time Loop: Dios, to the point he may exist purely because of the loop — not even having been born but just existing. After numerous adventures and misunderstandings, Teppic (now Pteppicymon XXVIII) is forced to escape from the palace with a handmaiden named Ptraci, who was condemned to death for not wishing to die and serve the last king in the afterlife (despite Teppic wishing to pardon her). However, during the attempt, Dios discovers them and decrees that Teppic has killed the King (as the King is only recognised whilst wearing the Mask of the Sun and Dios reasons that Teppic's actions to save Ptraci would not be those of the King) and should be put to death. Meanwhile, the massive pyramid being built for Teppic's father (or, rather, in reaction to Dios's rejection of the old pharaoh's wish not to be buried in a pyramid) warps space-time so much that it "rotates" Djelibeybi out of alignment with the space/time of the rest of the Disc by ninety degrees.

Pyramids | Discworld Wiki | Fandom Pyramids | Discworld Wiki | Fandom

Due to the Dead: As an Ancient Egypt analogue, giving the proper due requires rather a lot of effort. A handmaiden gets in trouble for not volunteering to accompany the king. Shaggy Frog" Story: Copolymer (the Greatest Storyteller in the World) constantly lapses into this due to his bad memory and short attention span. Book III is The Book of the New Son which puns on the title of the Gene Wolfe SF novel The Book of the New Sun. Improbable Aiming Skills: The narration describes camels as the world's greatest mathematicians, whose innate grasp of complex trigonometry is used solely to spit at people with uncanny accuracy. You Bastard spends most of his time in Ephebe hitting seagulls out of the air with olive stones.Dramatic Sit-Down: Dios the High Priest is so nonplussed to find that Ptraci isn't actually hiding where he was sure she was after doing a dramatic "Ah-HAH!" reveal that he sits down on a chair which happened to contain a model ship for the king's tomb. The ghost of the king notes that it's the first time he's ever seen Dios do anything comical. Later on he also has to sit down on the temple steps when the entire pantheon is coming to life. Likewise, Ptraci is strongly implied to be a virginal concubine. Probably helped by the fact that the old pharaoh was her father. Young Prince Teppic is sent far away from his desert homeland to the city of Ankh-Morpork for the best education money can buy. Which just so happens to be at the Assassins' Guild. Cats Are Mean: Dios insists cats must be worshipped, but Teppic can't help but feel if he has to worship cats they should be elegant-looking creatures, not the vicious, yellow-eyed little bastards who claw him the minute he gets near.