For those of us in the journalism trade (assuming that newsletter I used to put out for my family when I was five counts), a world without papers and magazines, press releases and, God, the internet, is unthinkable. The idea that anyone could get by merely on gossip is inconceivable to us... although, perhaps less so to anyone who's only source of news is E!

Nevertheless, there was certainly a time when carrier pigeon was the most sophisticated manner of communication, and when messengers were routinely shot for bringing the wrong kind of news to the King. (Clearly, these messengers had never studied at the CNN school of journalism, or they'd have learned how to make even the most devastating of defeats sound like glorious victories.) And in a time such as this lived that pioneer, William de Worde, who invented the world's first newspaper. The Discworld's first newspaper, that is.

Scion of a wealthy house and a denizen of the great, thriving metropolis that is Ankh-Morpork, de Worde earns a meagre living by writing down the news of the day and sending it out to the various far-flung kingdoms on the Disc. And although it occasionally irks him that his correspondents seem to prefer he send them an account of the city's wildest rumours, National Enquirer-style, and not anything so pedestrian as the truth, he enjoys writing his little news letters, and enjoys even more his independence from his family.

Enter, then, a revolutionary new printing method created by some dwarves, a plucky assistant in the shape of the lovely, puritanical Sacharissa, and the implication of the city's dictatorial Patrician in an embezzling/muder plot, and suddenly newsman William is at the heart of the biggest story Ankh-Morpork has even seen!

And that's not even mentioning the comedy vegetables

It doesn't take long for The Ankh-Morpork Times to get competition, but this doesn't stop the intrepid William from being a pre-industrial Woodward (or possibly Bernstein, whichever was cuter), and solving the case all before the venerable City Watch have a chance to realise just what is going on.

In the course of doing this, William must contend with his ever-increasing staff (including a reformed vampire photographer who turns to dust every time he uses his flash), a pair of crazed assassins (one of whom goes around saying -ing! a lot), and the indifference of a city populace who care not for the real news, but only for the pretend kind (women giving birth to snakes, for example). But he does it, and he does it well. As, typically, does Terry Pratchett.

In this, the twenty-fifth of his now thirty-eight Discworld novels, Pratchett proved once more that he is the best of all the "comedy" fantasy novelists around. But in The Truth, he brought something new to the equation: he got serious. Oh, certainly his other novels have taken on such grave topics as war (Jingo), faith (Small Gods), and Music With Rocks In (Soul Music), but in The Truth, Pratchett examines the nature of that title's very ephemeral quality, especially in regard to the media that we expect to dispense it.

And he's damn funny about it.

All in all, this is yet another wondrous installment in the Discworld legend, a novel that has changed the face of this world; it won the Pulitzer and Booker Prizes, and has been hailed as containing within its pages the cure for many fatal diseases. It has been designated the new Bible by a cult in Montana, been condemned by many an evangelist for promoting "the sin of not lying", and has been read by such spiritual leaders as the Dalai Lama, the Pope and Justin Bieber. Isn't that amazing?

But then, you can't always believe everything you read.

  -- Rachel Hyland

FURTHER READING

The Top 13... Genre Parodies, Issue 1
Geek Speak's Unseen Academicals review, by Rachel Hyland