‘In the beginning, there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the Carpet . . .’

That’s the old story everyone knows and loves (even if they don’t really believe it). But now the Carpet is home to many different tribes and peoples and there’s a new story in the making.

The story of Fray, sweeping a trail of destruction across the Carpet, and two brothers, who set out on an adventure to end all adventures.

I received a review copy of the audiobook from the publishers through Netgalley.

If you ask who my favourite author is then I will tell you (without pause) that Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books are my most loved reading experiences.  If I had a shortlist of audiobook narrators then you can bet the house on David Tennant being in the mix.  So here we are at The Carpet People.  It’s not a Discworld but it IS Pratchett and with David Tennant taking the words and giving them voice we are in dream team territory.

Confession time – I hadn’t read The Carpet People until I started this audiobook. Despite having read “most” of Terry’s books multiple times, I haven’t been so dilligent with the non-Discworld titles so there was extra anticipation for me as I fired up a new book. I was also aware of the background to The Carpet Poeple, written by Pratchett when he was very young and this edition released to mark the 50th anniversary of publication.

There were many elements to the story which made it identifiably Pratchett, the clever word plays on names and incidents. The humour was very much in evidence throughout the story and when you are telling an advanture tale humour so often loses out. It was a real treat to be listening to a “new” Terry Pratchett book after all this time.

But it took me a little while to get into the story and that took the shine off it a little.  Initially I struggled to get my head around the key characters and their respective backgrounds.  I found some of the gags had slipped by as I was trying to work out who was speaking and I think that, more than once, some of the Pratchett clever word play was lost as I was listening and not seeing the words on a page.  I think it took about an hour of listening before it all started to click for me – as the book is aimed at children I am not sure all the kids I know would afford it an hour of their time to decide if they were seeing it through.

Which would be a shame as by the end of The Carpet People I was hooked on the story and enjoying seeing the payoff on the various plot threads the author wove into the tale (poor pun there but I couldn’t resist).

A huge part of my enjoyment did come from the fact David Tennant’s narration was pitched perfectly. Plus you can’t go wrong with a group of argumentative characters who all have Scottish accents, it sounds “right”. As you may expect from a multi-award winning actor the delivery and the emotion was spot on and each new listening session would begin with a big smile on my face as his familiar accent started to feed into my ears.

In brief, a slightly rocky start but those niggles soon left me and I enjoyed the wit, humour and devine story-telling of one of my favourite writers.

One final note – the very last words spoken by David Tennant after the book had ended and the credits had been read out were “Thank You For Listening”.  Perfect.  Why do all Audiobooks not thank you for listening?   Audible just hope you “enjoyed this production”.  Can we please have David Tennant thanking us for listening to all audiobooks?

The Carpet People (50th anniversary) is published by Penguin Random House UK Audio