Review: The Bromeliad

THE BROMELIAD

By Terry Pratchett

10 GBP(paperback)/ 20 USD (Hardcover)

Okay, it´s been on the list twice, and you wouldn´t vote it in. It´s still brilliant, though, so now I´m choosing it myself.

I don´t actually have this in English, so the version I´ve read is called 'Gnomernes Flugt' (which means, roughly, 'The Escape Of The Nomes').

To start with, I´ll let you know that this isn´t as such a single book. In fact, it´s a trilogy consisting of the books Truckers, Diggers and Wings, but they´re all short enough to be two/three-day reads to a really dedicated reader (that is, slightly more dedicated than me), and furthermore, the version I have is an omnibus, and I don´t think it´s even available in Danish as standalone books. Either way, you cannot read one without having to read the others, so I reckon that they count as one story.

In this book, exceptionally famed and skilled author Terry Pratchett serves us ourselves on a silver platter. We get to follow a small group of Nomes, who almost by coincidence does all the right things and have next to no idea what´s going on around them. With his intensely powerful characters, Pratchett makes a great deal of showing us that there can be many right ways to do the wrong things, and that stubbornness is, in itself, a whole lot more dangerous than stupidity. The way he does this is a masterstroke of its own right: through the Nomes, who are just a bit more human than humans could ever hope to be.

The Bromeliad is, at its core, a nice and exciting story. However, it doesn´t take much of an effort to get through to a different layer of meaning in it – a large, thought-provoking metaphor, where everything is an equivalent to something, even if most things are equivalents to themselves. This is, in fact, spelled out more or less directly through the character Masklin, so you´d nearly have to make an effort to avoid the clear “Oh, I see what you did there!”-moments.

The actual read does, as I mentioned above, consist of three easily-read books, not only for their short-to-medium length, but also for the trademark humour that Pratchett has laid in it. There are a lot of small giggles in the book, but what really stands out to me is the loud laughs that only a handful of authors have created in me – this book is really fun, in the dialogue as well as in the descriptions and the traditional storytelling.

THE CONCLUSION:

Are you the target audience for The Bromeliad?

This book can fall into a vast amount of categories – it is unarguably a good book for Young Adults, either those who loves to read, or those who´d like to start reading more. It also fits into ideas such as Fantasy, Humour and even, to an extent, Science Fiction. I´d say that nobody above the age of, say, eleven, should miss an opportunity to at least give this a chance. It´s also a good way to experience Pratchett´s outstanding writing without working your way through the entire Discworld series.

What are, respectively, the best and worst parts of The Bromeliad?

It is always difficult to find bad parts about something you like as much as I like this book, but I´ll have to give it a try. After all, that´s a part of the reason I made this blog.

There are things in this book that doesn´t quite connect. Minor details, like specific characters changing smaller aspects of their viewpoints a bit too suddenly, but even these instances have some metaphorical value, and put you in uncertainty as to whether it was actually done so intentionally.

As for the best sides, there are two obvious things to mention: The humour and the moral. If you´re interested in the mix that comes from blending Psychology, Theology and Philosophy together, read it for the moral. If you simply love to have a laugh, that´s an even better reason to pick it up.

For me specifically, was The Bromeliad worth buying?

Quite definitely – yes, yes it was.