I definitely agree about the "unfocused" thing. You've got Nutt, you've got the fashion plotline with the girl protagonist, you've got the football plotline with the guy protagonist... and really, none of it is related.


The revelation about Nutt was an almost total nonissue. Oh, wow, he's an ORC. Gee. Maybe that would have been scarier if orcs had ever been mentioned before in the entire series? In a world with policetrolls and a Vampire Temperence League, it doesn't really come as a big shock.


I honestly think that if he had just dropped the football plotline entirely, it would have made the book much, much better. Either that or focused much more on the football, but then you'd have had the generic "Oh look, something modern is in Discworld" plotline that Pratchett sometimes falls into.


There were a ton of great SCENES- I haven't read the book in months, and I can still remember the fashion scenes, the football crowd scene, Vetinari getting drunk, and the stuff about the workings of Unseen Academy.


Basically, when the book was over, I was just going "Yes? And?"