Well, my thanks to both of you - I'm glad I could help. I must admit that, like Vimeslady, my first reaction was disappointment; indeed, it took me a couple of days to read the first fifty pages. (To give you an idea, I read 80 pages of Soul Music during a 45-minute drive this morning.)

So yeah, Nation is definitely a book that needs the right expectation. It's a shame that the cover design doesn't differentiate more from the DW books - and they should fire whomever wrote the bit about "filled with Terry Pratchett's inimitable comic satire" and decided to stick the "excrutiatingly funny" bit on the back. It gives people completely the wrong idea about the book, and really doesn't do it any favours.