The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents: (Discworld Novel 28) (Discworld Novels)

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It's an A-list voice cast saddled with a screenplay that’s just not up to their skill set. “The Amazing Maurice” is also another computer-animated film that never gets visually ambitious enough. Oh, it threatens to do so, with village streets that promise adventure down every alley, but the world-building here is surprisingly weak given the source material and the potential of the story to get weird. It’s almost as if the producers knew they had a bizarre book to adapt but never really embraced the quirkiness of this riff on the Pied Piper. Some of the rats are delightfully bizarre, but the character design is never as adventurous as it should be. I've only got a couple more Discworld books I've not read, both part of the Tiffany Aching y-a series. And then I will (after many years of negligence) be 100% up-to-date with the series! A movie, available in theaters and streaming on Hulu, directed by Toby Genkel (and starring Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke among others) and called "The Amazing Maurice", was released 5 February 2023 in the USA and Canada. Pardon My Klingon: The Clan and Maurice swear in Rat and Cat respectively. Apparently as a result of spending so much time with the Clan, Keith (the stupid-looking kid) also swears in Rat. Darktan – the leader of the rats' Trap Disposal Squad. After his near-death experience and the death of Hamnpork, Darktan becomes the Clan's new leader. Darktan, although an older rat, is much more progressive than Hamnpork. He is well-respected by all the rats because his knowledge of how to disarm traps helps keep them alive.

Combat Pragmatist: Darktan, especially in the fight against the terrier. In particular, biting its testicles. Maurice tells a town of people that they have a plague of rats, illustrated by various rats terrorizing the townsfolk and convinces them to pay for Keith, the pied piper, to lead them outside of the town. Outside the town, the rats are revealed to be sentient and literate, working with Keith and Maurice to defraud towns. Big Damn Heroes: Sardines rescues Darktan from certain doom, and later Maurice rescues the Clan from Spider. But Bad Blintz is different. This is a town that REALLY HATES RATS! There are full-time Rat Catchers paying 50 cents a tail and traps and poisons and a mysterious voice that gets inside your head and Malicia, a book-loving girl who won't stop talking.

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and Mr Vogel had his trousers off because he’d torn them on a nail …’ said the sergeant, not looking at the mayor.

I'm not sure what was up with the less interesting kid people of the story. I KNOW Pratchett can do better than this. In fact, he can do amazing (see the Tiffany Aching series for pretty much the coolest little girl heroine from like ever). Enough about the stupid humans. A Bloody Mess: Maurice is searching for the lost Dangerous Beans and Peaches when he discovers a trail of red liquid, which he follows to find... the rats' copy of Mr. Bunnsy, lying abandoned in a puddle of water and leaking red ink. He notes that this is, in its way, just as disturbing as finding the body of one of the rats, because Peaches and Dangerous Beans take great care of the book and the fact that it's been abandoned means something dire must have happened to them. Shut Up, Hannibal!: Spider offers to help Dangerous Beans protect his swarm and get revenge on the humans. Beans sees right away that Spider is just a vindictive monster with delusions of grandeur who sees other rats as his pawns, and he gently but firmly rejects Spider's offer. The Quiet One: The stupid-looking kid doesn't talk much. Maurice didn't even know his name until they were introducing themselves to Malicia. I remember being given a copy of Reaper Man when I was a wee boy. When Death took on the prototype mechanical harvester, my first major author-crush began and it's never let-up.Spider is interested in Dangerous Beans; other rats he can control, but Dangerous Beans has a mind similar to his: one that thinks for others. Dangerous Beans refuses Spider's offer of jointly ruling, as Spider wants to wage war on humans. As this happens, Malicia and Keith, under Spider's control, are about to set free the trapped rats. Spider tries to destroy Dangerous Beans' mind; this is felt by his army of rats, and Maurice. Dangerous Beans is able to resist, but Maurice reverts to being a cat, and the cat instinct tells him to pounce on Spider, though enough of his mind remains to tell him to sever the knot in Spider's tails.

The Amazing Maurice is a talking cat, who leads his Educated Rodents, a group of talking rats, as they go from town to town being a plague so that their accomplice, a boy piper, can "lure them all away" from the town, after which they share the money the piper makes. The rats had gained intelligence from eating the waste from the rubbish tip behind Unseen University; Maurice gained it after eating one of the rats, Additives before he was capable of realizing that they were no longer proper rats. Maurice, a talking cat, leads a group of talking mice and a stupid-looking kid into a town called Bad Blintz looking for one last score with their pied piper scam. Only Bad Blintz has troubles of its own...Sugar Bowl: The Mr. Bunnsy books portray a world like this. The rats (particularly Dangerous Beans) treat the books as gospel, Malicia treats them as garbage. Blind Seer: A downplayed version. Dangerous Beans, who is an albino and virtually blind, doesn't have actual prophetic powers - but he is leading his people on a quest, issuing commandments, and facing down evil on their behalf. Upon arriving in town, the group discovers that the people are convinced of a massive rat infestation, and have spent much of their savings on two rat catchers. Despite their efforts, food continues to disappear from the town. Hamnpork dies of injuries sustained while fighting in the rat coursing pit, and Darktan reluctantly assumes control of the Clan. ...