UNSEEN ACADEMICALS, BY TERRY PRATCHETT

I really wanted to like Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, but the humor misses its beats. I don't know whether Pratchett's increasing Alzheimer's is to blame.

Unseen University needs to play a football game or lose the bequest which supplies most of their food budget. Since the wizards have nine meals a day, this is a serious threat. Lord Vetinari chooses this occasion to tame the violent street game, not because it's lethal—that has no downside for him—but because it's started to damage property.

The side plots are more fun. Glenda, the plain-looking cook in UU's Night Kitchen bosses and takes care of her beautiful but dim co-worker, Juliet. Trevor Likely is Juliet's star-crossed admirer. They support opposite football teams, a deadly problem in Ankh-Morpork. A small goblin, Nutt, works in UU as a candle dribbler (no real wizard uses a plain, undribbled new candle), talks like a professor, and has a secret history.

Lord Vetinari shows a previously unknown human side, which really doesn't work. It's fun when he allows Glenda to barge in on him because he has fond memories of her mother's cooking at the Assassin's School. But there are other scenes which aren't believable. This book was only fair