The Summoning of Dragons

A textbook dangerous book, in the most literal sense: the danger is not that reading it corrupts you, but that following the instructions works.

What makes it worth an entry rather than a footnote is the causal weight. Pratchett’s Watch sequence — arguably the best thing he wrote, six or seven novels of genuine political fiction — begins because a group of resentful mediocrities stole a library book. Not a prophecy, not a chosen one, not a dark lord stirring. A theft from a lending collection, committed by men who thought they could control what they were borrowing.

Set it beside Secrets of the Darkest Art, which is filed on the same shelf from a different universe. Both are books removed from a school library because someone in authority understood what a determined reader could do with them. Rowling’s headmaster locked hers in his office and it still got out. Pratchett’s Librarian is an orangutan who tracks his down personally, which is, on the evidence, the more effective security policy.

On the readability rating. We see it used and we see what it does. Of the text, effectively nothing — the summoning itself happens off the page and by committee.