The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Hardcover)

The best characters within the book by far have to be 'Darktan', the rat with a good instinct for traps within his own trap disposal squad and 'Sardines'; the rat who wears a home made hat and tap dances to scare humans. Hilarious. do not miss!!! I have never read such a well scripted book, the jokes are great. 'Amazing Maurice and his educated rodents'; a book i would recommend to anyone and everyone. Even those who dont like rats, after reading this book you'll be in love with Terry Pratchetts educated rats and as for 'Maurice', we all knew that there is something very sly going on in cats minds when they wrap themselves around our legs...and purr so innocently at us. A little insight into what our feline friends are REALLY thinking.

Excellent!, brilliant!, hilarious!, A thoroughly enjoyable book for all ages.
Go read it now!!!!

While the only regular characters that appear are The Grim Squeaker and Death (only cameo appearances), the story of Darktan, Maurice and the rest is typical Pratchett.

The Story has a rather dark sense of humour, which most kids will love, but it's this darker motiff that will enable most adult fans to enjoy this book to.

Personaly, I hope there will be a sequel, as the Rats certainly have lots of character.

Ignore the fact its aimed at children and try it, you WILL like it.

So, to finally hold a children's book (award-winning children's book, I should say) by Pratchett, set in the margins of the Discworld, is to snap me back into my childhood with the joyous g-force of a sharp and plunging twist on a rollercoaster.

The Amazing Maurice is not a long book, and as ever it takes but the beat on an eyelid to read it through. But this is not about skimming quickly to the end, it is about the thrall of a Pratchett book, the way you sink into it from the very first page, never really looking up until you've finished the last. So: you will read it quickly, maybe in just a day, but you will find at the end of that day, that you have not dressed, eaten, nor remembered to go to work.

The plot here is pared down from those evident in the adult Discworld. It is, indeed, and as advertised on the cover, a Discworld fable. A version of the Pied Piper fable, retold with style. What is does brilliantly, though, and in its own right, is cosset the reader in the murk of the rat tunnels in which so much time is spent. You are underground, swaddled in darkness throughout, and though much of it is funny, there is a real and urgent sense of fear in the book. There is malice and fright and wit and death and laughter, all underpinned by the particular brand of common-sense, ethical and humane logic that makes Pratchett so much more than just a fantasy author.

The characters are, perhaps, a little too typical of the Discworld. Animals made intelligent by magic who go on to demonstrate how unintelligent humans can be. It is a trick we have seen before. The Amazing Maurice, like Gaspode the Wonder Dog, is a street-wise, self-regarding voice at the heels of the humans. But then, Maurice seems a little less sure of himself than Gaspode, a little more fearful behind the bravado. And this difference, though possibly too subtle for the occasional Pratchett reader, is beautifully played out when Maurice battles with his own mind and that of Spider. It is a superbly written sequence, balanced wonderfully against the joyous new character of Sardines. Now he really is a rat to remember.

The Amazing Maurice, I think, would have been my favourite book if I had read it when I was a child. As an adult it still registers as a wonderful, pacy, atmospheric tale that, within the limits of the children's fable, rates as highly as anything Pratchett has ever done.