Appraising one of Pratchett’s novels,Tom Paulin commented on the richness of the vocabulary, saying any novel that used interesting words like ‘drumlin’ could not be all that bad, but after examining it closely he was overwhelmed. “It’s like picking up a stone,” he said, “and seeing millions of insects crawling in all directions – all you can do is put it back and leave them to it.”
This is the type of put-down one might expect from an admirer of William Hazlitt. Paulin requires slowness, focus, density, tonal variation, a layered seriousness of presentation while Pratchett seems to be constantly reiterating, “Isn’t this a topsy-turvy rollicking nuthouse of a universe!”