Truckers

This is one of Terry Pratchett's best books. Full of many delicious touches of humour, it also offers genuine sympathy for the plight of human-like creatures four inches high, stranded in a world full of large and dangerous creatures, including full-sized humans.Unlike most of his books, this is science fiction rather than fantasy, and I like that too; although he doesn't really deal with the problem of how the nomes with their smaller brains can have human-like intelligence.The life of nomes in the wild is dealt with realistically, and the life of nomes in the Store is both realistic and richly comical.Unfortunately for their comfort, the Store is facing demolition, and they have to leave it. With that accomplished, the book comes to an end. You have to buy the sequels to read the rest of the story, which is worth reading.The nomes have a traditionally patriarchal society, and there are few female nomes on display here; adding more of them would have scored points with feminists but would probably have contributed little to the story. Pratchett has created plenty of good female characters in his time, but he's a man, and the majority of his characters are men. I'd rather have him concentrate on writing good stories than worry about meeting his quota of female characters.I'm a bit puzzled by the unusual name Masklin for the hero of the story. Rather similar to Masculine, but it also reminds me of Mesklin, the name of the high-gravity planet in [b:Mission of Gravity 525285 Mission of Gravity Hal Clement https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328628795l/525285.SY75.jpg 894625]. I guess that it just came to Pratchett out of the blue and he had no particular motive for using it.