The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett
Waterstones Synopsis
Maurice, a streetwise tomcat, has come up with the perfect scam. Inspired by the Pied Piper tale, cat and kid lead a band of rats from town to town to fake invasions of vermin. The rewards to get the rats out of town are plentiful. It works perfectly – until their little con game is sussed.
This is a children’s Discworld novel, and number 28 in the series. The star of the show is Maurice, a cat who has learnt how to think and talk like a human. With his new intelligence he teams up with equally intelligent rats to con humans our of money by paying the rat’s Pier Piper to get rid of them.
Once again, Pratchett has taken a classic tale and put his own spin on it, and of course, it was a good book. It isn’t my favourite, but there were some wonderful moments in the story – like tap-dancing rats and the rat-catches drinking a whole load of laxatives! I liked the rat’s names as well – they were just random words taken from discarded packets of food.
As ever, this book was gripping, entertaining and well worth reading. It can be read as a stand-alone book as the only character which features in any of the other books that appeared in this one was Death. Of course, being my favourite Discworld character I was pleased with this!
I enjoyed this book and think that this is a must-read series.
3/5