Raising Steam

Laugh-out-loud funny…A chuffing wonderful book. * SFX *Terry Pratchett’s creation is still going strong after 30 years as Ankh-Morpork branches into the railway age…There are sly nods to the history of railways and a cheeky reference to The Railway Children. Most aficionados, however, will be on the look-out for in-jokes and references from previous novels – of which there is no shortage…It is at the level of the sentence that Pratchett wins his fans. * The Times *The genius of Pratchett is that he never goes for the straight allegory…he remains one of the most consistently funny writers around; a master of the stealth simile, the time-delay pun and the deflationary three-part list…I could tell which of my fellow tube passengers had downloaded it to their e-readers by the bouts of spontaneous laughter. – Ben Aaronovitch * The Guardian *

Terry Pratchett was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. In all, he was the author of over fifty bestselling books which have sold over 100 million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.