Spotted this in Borders the other day and couldn't resist. I was hoping it would be along the same lines as The Science of Discworld books, explaining fascinating real-life topics (which folklore certainly can be) through Discworld analogy. And I suppose technically that's what it is, but it isn't done nearly as well as the science ones. Most disappointing was what a large proportion of the book was spent just regurgitating stuff from the Discworld books - a pretty pointless exercise, given that nearly everyone who buys this book will already be a Discworld fan, and have probably already read the books.

Where it did get more interesting is in the discussions of real world folklore. Some of the subjects covered were fascinating, and I definitely learnt a lot about both folklore familiar to me (sometimes what I learnt was that what I thought I knew was wrong!) and some that I'd never heard of before. Frustratingly, though, these real-world bits rarely went far enough. Too often the origins of a tradition would be dismissed with a cute "an echo of Discworld must have slipped through to this universe". I'd rather find out what theories there are out there about it, or even just that there are no theories at all.

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