Raising Steam is the 40th Discworld novel. 40th! I’ve read them all, so at this point I’m a safe bet to read a new one. That’s not a way to sneak into saying that this one is bad or anything. It’s actually pretty good. I’m just not sure how good of a judge I am at this point. The Discworld has trains, now, and in the accelerated way things happen in the Discworld we’re suddenly in the Victorian era, more or less. There’s also a subplot of religious extremeism that is introduced in a rather realistic fashion and resolved in a way that rather feels like wishful thinking to me. But then, I suppose the Discworld books are fantasy.

FuzzyCo grade: A