TRUCKERS

A four-inch Moses leads his people in the general direction of the Promised Land—in this funny satire from the author of The Colour of Magic (1985, published for adults but also enjoyed by young people). Thousands of years after being shipwrecked on Earth, the Borrower-like Nomes have forgotten their origins and are living happily under the floors of a department store full of goods and huge, stupid humans, all created for them by their god, Arnold Bros (est. 1905). Thanks to the labors of the Stationeri tribe, the demesnes of Haberdasheri, Ironmongeri and the rest are uneasily at peace; but there are Signs—"Final Reductions," for instance, and "Everything Must Go"—that all is not well in the "world." Then a group of strangers, led by an often-bewildered and always self-pitying antihero named Masklin, appears from the mythical Outside bearing the Thing, a small black box that suddenly lights up and announces that the store will be destroyed in less than a month. How to move several thousand Nomes and all their possessions in a hurry? Desperate, Masklin decides to steal a human truck. How to drive it? No problem: he asks the ingenious inventor Dorcas del Icatessen to form a steering committee! Nomes and readers are both in for a wild ride, as time is even shorter than Masklin thinks. Again, Pratchett gives his cast plenty of personality and fuels the plot with nonstop comedy; he also wields a satirist's blade against human politics, mores, and preconceptions. Though Masklin settles the Nomes in an old quarry, sequels are obviously planned.