Raising Steam, Terry Pratchett

"To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork - a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all the elements: earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, it's soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear."

Layers upon layers, comedy with a dark edge, observational commentary, society skewering, these are all the things I take with me from every Discworld novel, and in this second to last ever outing, it's still there, despite the author's well documented battles with his health. A third outing for Moist von Lipwig, part of the Industrial Revolution sub-genre RAISING STEAM is about the advent, and changes that a railway brings to the world, and it's also about change in society, how some people resent and others embrace it. Probably this will never be one of the great Discworld novels - the author is failing in health here, and things do go for a bit of a wander in places, but that kind of appealed to this listener in an odd way - it felt human, felt like there was a glimpse into the mind of the genius as it quietly left him. Good fun, and so very sad.

"Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man wi' t'flat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs and some very angry dwarfs if he's going to stop it all going off the rails..."