Nation is a Terry Pratchett novel, published in the UK on September 11, 2008. He took his editors by surprise by writing it before the previously scheduled Tiffany Aching conclusion. He has said " I want to write this one so much I can taste it", and that he's been ready to do it for four years. Pratchett said in February 2007, "At the moment I'm just writing. If it needs to be Discworld it will be Discworld. It could be set in this world 150 years ago while still more or less being a fantasy. The codename for it is Nation." Nation is not set on the Discworld but in an alternate history of our world in the 1860s
A Little Of The Plot:
The time is 1860 (the book refers to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species having just come out). The place is a world, strangely like ours, but different in many subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. Scattered across the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean are chains of tiny islands. On one island, a boy named Mau has almost completed his ritual ordeal to become a man. Now he must launch the canoe he has built and sail back to his home island, where he will receive his adult tattoos and be given a man-soul to replace the child-soul he has left behind. His entire village waits on the beach for his arrival. Aboard the schooner Sweet Judy, presently voyaging through the Southern Pelagic Ocean, bound for Port Mercia, Ermintrude ('Daphne') Fanshaw sails to join her father, the Governor of the Pelagic Territories, presently stationed at Port Mercia. In England, the dreaded Russian Influenza has killed all other heirs to the throne. The Gentlemen of Last Resort, a secret organisation serving the Crown, set out for Port Mercia to bring back Daphne's father within the nine months required by the ratified version of the Magna Carta, accompanied by the heir's mother. Thanks to the epidemic, he is now king, and Ermintrude is now heir to the throne of the British Empire. Neither she nor anyone else within ten thousand miles knows this. Far to the south, a volcano erupts, blowing itself to bits and setting off an enormous tsunami. When the wave has passed, only Mau and Ermintrude remain alive, marooned together among the wreckage and corpses on the island called the Nation. Having not received his adult tattoos, Mau considers himself to be without a soul.
Another amazing story from the master himself. A good book should have everything, love, struggle, heroes and excitement. I was upset when the end came all too soon, my fault for not putting it down. The old woman that had to have her food chewed for her had me in stitches. This is a MUST READ book. You will not be sorry.
Nation
An amazing read of a history that could have happened (16 March 2010).
