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This trilogy has been a long time coming for me. A very long time, in fact.
When I was younger, I absolutely loved the stop-motion adaptation of Truckers. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times I watched that miniseries. It was one of those things I would happily watch over and over again without ever getting bored. There was something about those tiny nomes, their adventures, and the strange, enormous world they inhabited that completely captured my imagination. Even now, decades later, I can still remember so much of it.
Despite loving the series, though, I never actually got around to reading the books. I wasn’t much of a reader when I was younger, and the idea of picking up a book for pleasure wasn’t something that particularly appealed to me. It’s funny to think about that now, considering how much reading and writing have become part of my life. But back then, I was perfectly happy watching Truckers on television and leaving it at that.
So, finally sitting down to read Terry Pratchett’s Bromeliad Trilogy all these years later felt like returning to a little piece of my childhood that I’d almost forgotten was there.
And what a wonderful experience it turned out to be.
Starting with Truckers was an absolute joy. From the opening chapters, I was transported straight back to being a kid watching those little stop-motion characters running around. So many moments brought back memories I hadn’t thought about in years. Characters, conversations, situations, even little details about the world of the nomes suddenly felt incredibly familiar. It was almost strange how much of the story had stayed with me, especially considering how long it had been since I’d last watched the adaptation.
But what I loved most was discovering just how much more there was to the story.
Truckers is such a brilliantly imaginative little book. The idea of a civilisation of tiny people living beneath the floorboards of a department store, completely unaware of the wider world and believing that the store represents the entirety of existence, is fantastic. The way Pratchett explores their beliefs, traditions, misunderstandings and reactions to discovering that everything they thought they knew might be wrong is both hilarious and surprisingly thoughtful.
It’s also a perfect example of what makes Terry Pratchett such a wonderful writer. He can take something completely ridiculous and make it feel perfectly reasonable, all while slipping in observations about human behaviour, religion, society and the absurdity of the things we choose to believe. There’s so much cleverness hiding beneath the humour, but it never feels like he’s trying too hard to make a point. It’s just effortlessly entertaining.
And then there’s Diggers.
This was where things became particularly exciting for me because, while Truckers was a wonderful trip down memory lane, I was finally getting to discover what happened next. For years, as far as I was concerned, the story of the nomes pretty much ended where the television adaptation ended. I’d never really given much thought to what might have happened to them afterwards, so reading Diggers felt like being handed a sequel to something I’d loved as a child but never realised I was missing.
And it didn’t disappoint.
Diggers has its own distinct charm. Where Truckers is about discovering that the world is much bigger than you’ve been led to believe, Diggers is about trying to make a place for yourself in that world. The nomes have escaped one set of problems only to discover that freedom brings an entirely new collection of difficulties.
I loved seeing how the characters adapted to their new circumstances, particularly the disagreements about how they should live and what their future should look like. There’s something wonderfully funny about these tiny people trying to organise themselves while dealing with problems that, to us, would seem completely ordinary but, to them, are enormous. Quite literally, in some cases.
There’s also a lovely sense of adventure running through the whole thing. The stakes feel genuinely important, even when the situations themselves are wonderfully absurd. Pratchett has this incredible ability to make you care about characters who are only a few inches tall, and before long you’re completely invested in whether they’ll manage to survive whatever enormous disaster is heading their way.
Finally, there’s Wings, which takes everything the previous two books established and expands it into something much bigger.
I think that’s one of the things I appreciated most about reading the trilogy in its entirety. Each book feels like a natural progression from the last, but each also has its own personality. Truckers has the wonder of discovery, Diggers has the struggle for survival and independence, and Wings has this fantastic sense of possibility and adventure.
Without getting too far into spoilers, Wings really opens up the world of the nomes and starts answering questions that have been hanging over the story since the beginning. There’s a wonderful sense of everything coming together, and I loved seeing how far these characters had travelled, both literally and figuratively, since those early chapters of Truckers.
It’s funny, exciting, occasionally quite touching, and full of the sort of wonderfully inventive ideas that Pratchett seemed capable of producing without even breaking a sweat. By the time I reached the end, I was genuinely sad to be saying goodbye to the nomes.
And I think that’s what makes this trilogy so special. On the surface, these are children’s books about tiny people having adventures in a world built for creatures considerably larger than themselves. But underneath all that, they’re stories about questioning what you’re told, challenging traditions, finding your place in the world, and having the courage to venture beyond what you know.
They’re also incredibly funny.
As usual, Terry Pratchett’s writing is an absolute delight. His humour, his observations, his characters, the way he can turn a perfectly ordinary sentence into something that makes you laugh out loud. It’s all here. There’s a warmth to his writing that I find difficult to describe, and even when he’s poking fun at the ridiculousness of the world, there’s always a great deal of affection behind it.
I also love that these books never talk down to their intended audience. Yes, they’re written for younger readers, but they’re packed with jokes, ideas and observations that adults can appreciate just as much. In fact, I suspect there are things in here that would have gone completely over my head as a child, which makes finally reading them as an adult even more rewarding.
Of course, I can’t pretend that nostalgia didn’t play a huge part in my enjoyment. It absolutely did. Reading Truckers brought back so many happy memories, and there were moments when I found myself grinning simply because I’d remembered something from the television series. It’s not often that a book can make you feel like you’re revisiting a part of your childhood, but this one managed it repeatedly.
However, I don’t think nostalgia alone would have been enough to make me love the entire trilogy as much as I did. After all, Diggers and Wings were completely new experiences for me, and I enjoyed them every bit as much. If anything, they made me appreciate Truckers even more because I finally got to see the whole story rather than just the beginning.
There’s something rather lovely about the fact that a television series I watched countless times as a child has finally led me to discover three books that I probably would have adored back then, had I been interested in reading. It might have taken me a few decades to get around to them, but I’m very glad I finally did.
I went into The Bromeliad Trilogy hoping for a bit of nostalgia, and I came away with so much more. Three wonderfully entertaining stories, a fantastic cast of characters, plenty of laughs, some genuinely clever ideas, and the satisfaction of finally finding out what happened to those little nomes I’d spent so much time watching when I was younger.
I had an absolutely brilliant time with these books. They’re charming, funny, imaginative, surprisingly thoughtful, and just an enormous amount of fun.
Sometimes revisiting something you loved as a child can be a disappointment. You discover that the magic was mostly in your memories and that the thing itself doesn’t quite hold up.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case here.
If anything, finally experiencing the complete story made me love it even more.
Five stars. So much fun, so much nostalgia, and another wonderful reminder of just how brilliant Terry Pratchett was.
