Pyramids: A Discworld Novel: 7

Product Information

Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. Riddle of the Sphinx: Spoofed. Teppic encounters a Sphinx who asks him this riddle. He's unable to answer, but protests that the metaphor is overly simplistic, forcing it to give a more accurate version covering all possibilities. Teppic answers this and walks off before the Sphinx remembers that it had already told him the answer. It is now up to 12-year-old crown prince Pteppic to save the country. He was signed up at the prestigious Assassin's Guild in far off Ankh Morpork, to become a certified assassin... provided of course, he can survive the grueling training. Pyramids is the seventh novel in the Discworld series. It was first published in 1989 by Victor Gollancz and won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in that year. The cover illustration is by Josh Kirby. The novel is split into four ‘Books' and is really a collection of linked novellas; not a single novel with chapters or sections like Pratchett's later works Going Postal and Making Money or one long chapterless book like most of Pratchett's other works.

Pyramids - Penguin Books UK

Non-Human Head: Many of Djelibeybi's gods have animal heads. Teppic's late father is a bit surprised that Death doesn't have one of these.

Go, tell the Ephebians... Subverted in that it's followed by "What kept you?" as the rest of the Ephebian army marches in. 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. 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. The first part (my favorite) mainly covers Pteppic's assassin training. We learn a lot about the customs of the Assassins' Guild, about the type of people who'd enlist for training, not to mention the extremely difficult graduation exam. So an excellent treat for anyone wishing for Discworld world-building. Cool Mask: The pharaoh's mask, which Dios insists the pharaoh wear. It looks gold, but as Teppic eventually discovers, it's actually just gold paint. Underneath, it's lead.

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

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. This is a paraphrase of ‘Go tell the Spartans,’ which is the beginning of the memorial for the Spartan soldiers who got massacred by the Persians at Thermopylae as a result of Greek treachery. The full quote is given by Simonides (5th century BC) as: Ptaclusp I, Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIb, the pyramid-building dynasty tasked with the construction of the Great Pyramid The Guards Must Be Crazy: Actually invoked by Djelibeybi's hiring policies. They (meaning Dios) prefer guards who aren't terribly keen or interested in things like fighting, in case those guards start getting ideas (such as "hey, why aren't we in charge?") Accidental Aiming Skills: Having realized he doesn't want to kill anyone, Teppic deliberately aims his bow in a random direction and fires. Thanks to Pinball Projectile, it ends up striking the target anyway, and his tester chides him for showing off his Improbable Aiming Skills.Born Terence David John Pratchett, Sir Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was thirteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett - Penguin Books Australia Pyramids by Terry Pratchett - Penguin Books Australia

Try to Fit That on a Business Card: King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King. On formal occasions, it's considered necessary to repeat the entire thing every time he's referred to. Murphy's Bullet: Pteppic decides to fail his Assassin's Guild final exam in style and deliberately aims his crossbow away from the target. The bolt ricochets off several objects before burying itself in the target. The examiner comments that he is not a fan of these new, flashy techniques but passes him as the end result was achieved. This also delves into some time and quantum elements that are hilariously Pratchett and we meet a very unexpected greatest mathematician in the Discworld. Shaggy Frog" Story: Copolymer (the Greatest Storyteller in the World) constantly lapses into this due to his bad memory and short attention span. Likewise, Ptraci is strongly implied to be a virginal concubine. Probably helped by the fact that the old pharaoh was her father.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.