Review: Making Money, by Terry Pratchett

[Russ Allbery]

Making Money
by Terry Pratchett

Series:    Discworld #36
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: October 2007
Printing:  November 2014
ISBN:      0-06-233499-9
Format:    Mass market
Pages:     473

Making Money is the 36th Discworld novel, the second Moist von Lipwig
book, and a direct sequel to Going Postal. You could start the series
with Going Postal, but I would not start here.

The post office is running like a well-oiled machine, Adora Belle is
out of town, and Moist von Lipwig is getting bored. It's the sort of
boredom that has him picking his own locks, taking up Extreme Sneezing,
and climbing buildings at night. He may not realize it, but he needs
something more dangerous to do. Vetinari has just the thing.

The Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, unlike the post office before Moist got
to it, is still working. It is a stolid, boring institution doing
stolid, boring things for rich people. It is also the battleground for
the Lavish family past-time: suing each other and fighting over money.
The Lavishes are old money, the kind of money carefully entangled in
trusts and investments designed to ensure the family will always have
money regardless of how stupid their children are. Control of the bank
is temporarily in the grasp of Joshua Lavish's widow Topsy, who is not
a true Lavish, but the vultures are circling.

Meanwhile, Vetinari has grand city infrastructure plans, and to carry
them out he needs financing. That means he needs a functional bank, and
preferably one that is much less conservative.

Moist is dubious about running a bank, and even more reluctant when
Topsy Lavish sees him for exactly the con artist he is. His hand is
forced when she dies, and Moist discovers he has inherited her dog, Mr.
Fusspot. A dog that now owns 51% of the Royal Bank and therefore is the
chairman of the bank's board of directors. A dog whose safety is tied
to Moist's own by way of an expensive assassination contract.

Pratchett knew he had a good story with Going Postal, so here he runs
the same formula again. And yes, I was happy to read it again. Moist
knows very little about banking but quite a lot about pretending
something will work until it does, which has more to do with banking
than it does with running a post office. The bank employs an expert,
Mr. Bent, who is fanatically devoted to the gold standard and the
correctness of the books and has very little patience for Moist. There
are golem-related hijinks. The best part of this book is Vetinari, who
is masterfully manipulating everyone in the story and who gets in some
great lines about politics.

  "We are not going to have another wretched empire while I am
  Patrician. We've only just got over the last one."

Also, Vetinari processing dead letters in the post office was an
absolute delight.

Making Money does have the recurring Pratchett problem of having a
fairly thin plot surrounded by random... stuff. Moist's attempts to
reform the city currency while staying ahead of the Lavishes is only
vaguely related to Mr. Bent's plot arc. The golems are unrelated to the
rest of the plot other than providing a convenient deus ex machina.
There is an economist making water models in the bank basement with an
Igor, which is a great gag but has essentially nothing to do with the
rest of the book. One of the golems has been subjected to well-meaning
older ladies and 1950s etiquette manuals, which I thought was
considerably less funny (and somewhat creepier) than Pratchett did.
There are (sigh) clowns, which continue to be my least favorite
Ankh-Morpork world-building element. At least the dog was considerably
less annoying than I was afraid it was going to be.

This grab-bag randomness is a shame, since I think there was room here
for a more substantial plot that engaged fully with the high weirdness
of finance. Unfortunately, this was a bit like the post office in Going
Postal: Pratchett dives into the subject just enough to make a few wry
observations and a few funny quips, and then resolves the deeper issues
off-camera. Moist tries to invent fiat currency, because of course he
does, and Pratchett almost takes on the gold standard, only to veer
away at the last minute into vigorous hand-waving. I suspect part of
the problem is that I know a little bit too much about finance, so I
kept expecting Pratchett to take the humorous social commentary a
couple of levels deeper.

On a similar note, the villains have great potential that Pratchett
undermines by adding too much over-the-top weirdness. I wish Cosmo
Lavish had been closer to what he appears to be at the start of the
book: a very wealthy and vindictive man (and a reference to Cosimo de
Medici) who doesn't have Moist's ability to come up with wildly risky
gambits but who knows considerably more than he does about how banking
works. Instead, Pratchett gives him a weird obsession that slowly makes
him less sinister and more pathetic, which robs the book of a competent
antagonist for Moist.

The net result is still a fun book, and a solid Discworld entry, but it
lacks the core of the best series entries. It felt more like a skit
comedy show than a novel, but it's an excellent skit comedy show with
the normal assortment of memorable Pratchettisms. Certainly if you've
read this far, or even if you've only read Going Postal, you'll want to
read Making Money as well.

Followed by Unseen Academicals. The next Moist von Lipwig book is
Raising Steam.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2024-01-15

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-06-233499-9.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)             <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>