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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Thoroughly enjoyed this - Pratchett once again demonstrating how he can use his parallel universe to address serious topics like intolerance This is my third Terry Pratchett book that I have read and I have to say that it has to be my favorite at the moment. My favorites scenes were Sam Vimes reading Where's my Cow to Young Sam. As a mother it just touched my heart I guess. Pratchett can not only make you laugh uproariously at times but can also make you think about the world around you. The anniversary of the battle of Koom Valley, an ancient conflict between the Dwarfs and the Trolls, is coming up, and tension in the city of Ankh-Morpork is rising. Commander Samuel Vimes can smell trouble, and he'll do anything to keep the city safe. When a rabble-rousing Dwarf is murdered, the Dwarfs immediately blame the Trolls, and it looks like blood will wash through the city. Not with Vimes and the rest of the Watch on the case. A sinister secret from the depths is working its way into the real world again, planning to use the animosity between the two races as its entry point, but it keeps getting stymied. Will the Watch solve the case and bring the perpetrators to justice? And just what is the secret of Koom Valley, and what does it have to do with this entity? And will Vimes be able to keep his daily six o'clock appointment with his young son to read Where's My Cow? Trolls & Dwarves, but the story is about Vimes: I enjoy Pratchett, and I especially enjoy his stories that delve into different lifestyles and cultures within Discworld. Well ... I suppose they all do that, but THUD has an extra helping of it, with social interactions between Vampire/Werewolf, Troll/Dwarf, Liberal/Conservative, Lower Class/Upper Class, and of course Vimes/Vimes filling the pages. Vimes is one of my favorite Discworld characters because of his inner conflicts and steady discipline, and those qualities played an important role in this plot. He's always fighting the bad guys, but at the same time he's also always fighting himself -- potentially the biggest bad guy of them all. The story itself was a successful blend of adventure and fun on the surface, with deeper issues about society (and how people can or can't get along within it) bubbling along in the undercurrent. Pratchett's trademark wit and humor are abundant, and the descriptions of Vime's readings of "Where's My Cow?" are delightful - so much so that I might even pick up [[ASIN:0060872675 Where's My Cow?]] to see if it's everything that young Sam seems to think it is. It's not surprising that I'm giving THUD five stars: I like the discworld novels in general, after all. But this is an exceptionally good choice: the characters and the way they interact are even more richly depicted than normal, and the story takes us into some new scenery as well: a few lesser visited corners o Ankh-Morpork (strip clubs, deep cellars, museums) to the wasteland of Koom Valley, which in my mind seems like a post-apocalyptic YellowStone. [Edit: As I am a huge fan of--and therefore inspired by--Terry Pratchett, I feel I'm justified in pointing out my new book [[ASIN:1419682644 Cluck: Murder Most Fowl]]. Many of my fellow Pratchett fans have been early readers and have enjoyed it. Apologies for the shameless self-promotion, -edk] [Edit: As I am a huge fan of--and therefore inspired by--Terry Pratchett, I feel I'm justified in pointing out my new book [[ASIN:1419682644 Cluck: Murder Most Fowl]]. Many of my fellow Pratchett fans have been early readers and have enjoyed it. Apologies for the shameless self-promotion, -edk] no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Download Description (ISBN 0385608675, Hardcover)"It's a game of Trolls and Dwarfs where the player It's the noise a troll club makes when crushing It's the unsettling sound of history about It's the most extraordinary, outrageous, Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch admits he may not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer -- he might not even be a spoon. But he's dogged and honest and he'll be damned if he lets anyone disturb his city's always-tentative peace -- and that includes a rabble-rousing dwarf from the sticks (or deep beneath them) who's been stirring up big trouble on the eve of the anniversary of one of Discworld's most infamous historical events. Centuries earlier, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, a horde of trolls met a division of dwarfs in bloody combat. Though nobody's quite sure why they fought or who actually won, hundreds of years on each species still bears the cultural scars, and one views the other with simmering animosity and distrust. Lately, an influential dwarf, Grag Hamcrusher, has been fomenting unrest among Ankh-Morpork's more diminutive citizens with incendiary speeches. And it doesn't help matters when the pint-size provocateur is discovered beaten to death ... with a troll club lying conveniently nearby. Vimes knows the well-being of his smoldering city depends on his ability to solve the Hamcrusher homicide without delay. (Vimes's secondmost-pressing responsibility, in fact, next to being home every evening at six sharp to read Where's My Cow? to Young Sam.) Whatever it takes to unstick this very sticky situation, Vimes will do it -- even tolerate having a vampire in the Watch. But there's more than one corpse waiting for him in the eerie, summoning darkness of the vast, labyrinthine mine network the dwarfs have been excavating in secret beneath Ankh-Morpork's streets. A deadly puzzle is pulling Sam Vimes deep into the muck and mire of superstition, hatred, and fear -- and perhaps all the way to Koom Valley itself. "(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:25 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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This medieval mystery involves the legend of Koom Valley and the present death of Grag Hamcrusher, a dwarf. The only clue is a heavy club allegedly believed to belong to one of the warring trolls. Naturally, when it comes to Ankh-Morpork, no gets away with murder on Commander Vimes’s watch.
The mayhem of trying to keep the peace between two totally opposite factions such as the trolls and the dwarves, being meticulously audited by A. E. Pessimal, and two enamored female officers is hilarious. To add to the fun, the reader is allowed to venture deeply into the ‘strangely peculiar’ world of dwarves and trolls like never before. Idiosyncrasies abound! (