I guess I thought there was too much going on.

The first half was about soccer football, then that sort of just got dropped entirely.

I didn't really like the whole "orc" thing. Everyone acted shocked and horrified about a race that had never, not once in over 30 books, been mentioned. Not only that, this is DISCWORLD, a world where there are dozens of races, all of which both simultaneously conform to and subvert their stereotypical characteristics.

We've been reading stories about trolls and vampires as police officers, why should I be so surprised than an orc can be good at soccer?


Plus, I guess I just didn't really care much about the characters. The main female (what was her name?) felt like sort of a poor man's version of any of the other Strong Female Characters Pratchett's written about. And as for her friend the dumb blonde, and the guy (Trevor Likely)... it was an interesting change for Discworld to try to make me sympathize with stupid, annoying characters, but I don't think it fully succeeded. Usually stupid and annoying characters are either abused, mocked, or treated with gentle sarcasm.


Also, and this is a bit petty, I didn't like the shake up of the Unseen University status quo. I LIKE Ponder Stibbons being the computer geek, and the Dean being pompous, and all the rest. These are not particularly deep characters, and that was OK! The wizards were hilarious, and changing their dynamic was.... meh. I think it's good that he tried to do new things with the characters, but honestly, I love the normal UU crowd.

I did like the behind the scenes look at UU, though.

The fashion jokes were pretty funny, too.

Now that I think about it, I think I would have liked it a whole lot more if they had just dropped the whole soccer angle to begin with, and focused on UU.