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I'm a huge Discworld fan and enjoyed "Making Money," which is a continuation of "Going Postal," but I couldn't quite shake the feeling that Terry Pratchett wrote this latest installment on automatic, or else got a golem to write it for him. All of the right characters are included---some like Death in cameo roles, and others like Lord Vetinari, almost too visible (a little of Ankh-Morpork's Patrician goes a long way). It's got all of the right standing, falling, and knocking-people-down-with-ladders jokes, plus Punes, or plays on words. But for a Discworld novel, "Making Money" lacks Pratchett's usual shoot-from-the-hip-and-mouth-and-other-body-parts originality. Maybe Moist von Lipwig, former Postmaster General and current trouble-shooter at the Royal Mint, is too slight a character to have the weight of two Discworld novels resting on his shoulders. Maybe his antics at the Mint are too similar to his antics at the Post Office. Or maybe it's because I can't stand his girlfriend, Adora Belle---Gladys the Golem has a nicer personality. Heck, the villain, Cosmo Lavish has a nicer personality, which is another one of this book's problems. We don't have a villain we can really hate. I spent the last half of the novel worrying about whether Cosmo's thumb would fall off, not whether he would succeed in replacing the Patrician at Ankh-Morpork's grubby helm.

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