Wrapping a cannon in papervine? Don’t try this at home.

Shooting bullets through water? Don’t try this at home.

Thinking? That’s up to you…

In Terry Pratchett’s Nation, the world seems to be going on as it ever has. The Russian influenza takes its toll on even the highest circles of the court. The Sweet Judy gets swept into a hurricane. Mau prepares to leave the Boy’s Island and become a man. Somewhere among the Mothering Sunday Islands lies the Mrs. Ethel J. Bundy’s Birthday Island.

In other words, all is normal and relatively sane. And then the end of the world bursts in to shake things up.

Mau, halfway home to becoming a man, sees the world end and is the only one left to tell about it. The only one, that is, except for the sole survivor of the wreck of the Sweet Judy, a forelorn priest named Ataba, a tongue-tied woman and her baby, a couple of fishermen, one very pregnant wife, and, oh, lots of others who stumble across Mau’s island in the middle of the Sunrise Islands in the Great Southern Pelagic Seas,

And Mau, still only halfway home to becoming a man, becomes chief of the motley tribe.

If you’ve read Pratchett’s books before, you know enough already. If not, expect a wild ride. Pratchett has the knack of taking the simplest questions and turning them on their head. What is a nation? What does it mean for the world to end? For that matter, what does the world mean at all? And, of course, what exactly are the limits of papervine?

So, enjoy the ride.