"Going Postal" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: A con man named Moist von Lipwig is hanged for conning people out of stuff. Except (plot twist!) his death was faked for him, and Lord Vetinari is now foisting upon him a job as postmaster. As it turns out, Ankh-Morpork's mail system is... highly nonfunctional.

 

As in, it only has like two employees, one of whom is obsessed with collecting pins and was raised by peas and one of whom is very old and has some interesting ideas about how to keep in good health.

I find myself grudgingly liking Lord Vetinari, the tyrant of Ankh-Morpork. He is not a nice person, but he has the best interests of his people at heart (unlike basically every other fictional tyrant), and he actually knows what those interests are (I'm looking at you, Vega Jane authorities). Plus he's often hilariously sarcastic.

Anyway, this is where we are first introduced to the "clacks" system: basically the Discworld's version of telegraphs. They're still mostly manned by humans here, although by Raising Steam most of the humans have been replaced by goblins. It's also where we're first introduced to Adora Belle Dearhart, who marries Moist von Lipwig at some point between this one and Raising Steam.

 

This is the first Discworld book I've read in which Death doesn't make at least a cameo appearance. Madness, I tell you!

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor and swearing, probably; either there's starting to be less of it, or I'm building up an immunity.

4 stars. Another one of my favorites.

Favorite lines:

    Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards--not "not doing magic" because they couldn't do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn't. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you knew how easy it was. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again.

    Page 154.

    "I don't think you can have secret postmen," said Moist, briefly seeing shadowy figures skulking from door to door.

    Page 161.

    Oh, boy. It's a plan that will work, Moist thought. It's simple and deadly, like a razor. But it'd need an unprincipled man to even think about it.

    No problem there, then.

    Page 346.

(Endnote: I'm still not completely clear on what the idiom "going postal" means, but I'm pretty sure it's just a pun here.)