The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

by Terry Pratchett

Cover image

Series: Discworld #28
Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright: 2001
Printing: 2008
ISBN: 0-06-001235-8
Format: Mass market
Pages: 351

Buy at Powell's Books

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is the 28th Discworld novel and the first marketed for younger readers. Although it has enough references to establish it as taking place on Discworld, it has no obvious connections with the other books and doesn't rely on any knowledge of the series so far. This would not be a bad place to start with Terry Pratchett and see if his writing style and sense of humor is for you.

Despite being marketed as young adult, and despite Pratchett's comments in an afterward in the edition I own that writing YA novels is much harder, I didn't think this was that different than a typical Discworld novel. The two main human characters read as about twelve and there were some minor changes in tone, but I'm not sure I would have immediately labeled it as YA if I hadn't already known it was supposed to be. There are considerably fewer obvious pop culture references than average, though; if that's related, I think I'll prefer Pratchett's YA novels, since I think his writing is stronger when he's not playing reference bingo.

Maurice (note to US readers: Maurice is pronounced "Morris" in the UK) is a talking cat and the mastermind of a wandering con job. He, a stupid-looking kid with a flute (Maurice's description), and a tribe of talking rats travel the small towns of Discworld. The rats go in first, making a show of breaking into the food, swimming in the cream, and widdling on things that humans don't want widdled on. Once the townspeople are convinced they have a plague of rats, the kid with the flute enters the town and offers to pipe the rats away for a very reasonable fee. He plays his flute, the rats swarm out of town, and they take their money and move on to the next town. It's a successful life that suits Maurice and his growing hoard of gold very well. If only the rats would stop asking pointed questions about the ethics of this scheme.

The town of Bad Blintz is the next on their itinerary, and if the rats have their way, will be the last. Their hope is they've gathered enough money by now to find an island, away from humans, where they can live their own lives. But, as is always the case for one last job in fiction, there's something uncannily wrong about Bad Blintz. There are traps everywhere, more brutal and dangerous ones than they've found in any other town, and yet there is no sign of native, unintelligent rats.

Meanwhile, Maurice and the boy find a town that looks wealthy but has food shortages, a bounty on rats that is absurdly high, and a pair of sinister-looking rat-catchers who are bringing in collections of rat tails that look suspiciously like bootlaces. The mayor's daughter discovers Maurice can talk and immediately decides she has to take them in hand. Malicia is very certain of her own opinions, not accustomed to taking no for an answer, and is certain that the world follows the logic of stories, even if she has to help it along.

This is truly great stuff. I think this might be my favorite Discworld novel to date, although I do have some criticisms that I'll get to in a moment.

The best part are the rats, and particularly the blind philosopher rat Dangerous Beans and his assistant Peaches. In the middle of daring infiltration of the trapped sewers in scenes reminiscent of Mission: Impossible, the rats are also having philosophical arguments. They've become something different than the unaltered rats that they call the keekees, but what those differences mean is harder to understand. The older rats are not happy about too many changes and think the rats should keep acting like rats. The younger ones are discovering that they're afraid of shadows because now they understand what the shadows hint at. Dangerous Beans is trying to work out a writing system so that they can keep important thoughts. One of their few guides is a children's book of talking animals, although they quickly discover that the portrayed clothing is annoyingly impractical.

But as good as the rats are, Maurice is nearly as much fun in an entirely different way. He is unapologetically out for himself, streetwise and canny in a way that feels apt for a cat, gets bored and mentally wanders off in the middle of conversations, and pretends to agree with people when that's how he can get what he wants. But he also has a weird sense of loyalty and ethics that only shows up when something is truly important. It's a variation on the con man with a heart of gold, but it's a very well-done variation that weaves in a cat's impatience with and inattention to anything that doesn't directly concern them. I was laughing throughout the book.

Malicia is an absolute delight, the sort of character who takes over scenes through sheer force of will, and the dumb-looking kid (whose name turns out to be Keith) is a perfect counterbalance: a laid-back, quiet boy who just wants to play his music and is almost entirely unflappable. It's such a great cast.

The best part of the plot is the end. I won't spoil it, so I'll only say that Pratchett has the characters do the work on the aftermath that a lot of books skip over. He doesn't have any magical solutions for the world's problems, but he's so very good at restoring one's faith that maybe sometimes those solutions can be constructed.

My one complaint with this book is that Pratchett introduces a second villain, and while there are good in-story justifications for it and it's entangled with the primary plot, he added elements of (mild) supernatural horror and evil that I thought were extraneous and unnecessary. He already had enough of a conflict set up without adding that additional element, and I think it undermined the moral complexity of the story. I would have much rather he kept the social dynamics of the town at the core of the story and used that to trigger the moments of sacrifice and philosophy that made the climax work.

The Discworld books by this point have gotten very good, but each book seems to have one element like that where it felt like Pratchett took the easy way out of a plot corner or added some story element that didn't really work. I feel like the series is on the verge of having a truly great book that rises above the entire series to date, but never quite gets there.

That caveat aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this and had trouble putting it down. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh was one of my favorite books as a kid, and this reminded me of it in some good ways (enough so that I think some of the references were intentional). Great stuff. If you were to read only one Discworld book and didn't want to be confused by all the entangled plot threads and established characters, I would seriously consider making it this one. Recommended.

Followed by Night Watch in publication order. There doesn't appear to be a direct plot sequel, more's the pity.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2023-04-30

Last spun 2023-05-31 from thread modified 2023-05-14