The Fifth Elephant (1999)

A wonderful story about love, friendship, and politics ( )

The dwarves in Uberwald are about to crown a new king - only there is trouble brewing. The King elected isn't the one that everyone thought it would be, and now the scone of stone on which he's crowned has gone missing. Co-incidentally, so has the replica scone that was in the dwarf bread museum in Ankh Morpork, which is now the largest dwarf city on the disc and had a large part to play in the election.



The city needs to send an Ambassador to Uberwald for the crowning and The patrician decided to send Vimes - not the obvious candidate, as he loathes all diplomacy and politicing as lying! Uberwald is in a state of turmoil, there's trouble between dwarves, the werewolves (who happen to be Angua's family) are interferring and the vampires are watching everything closely, prepared to lend a hand when necessary to keep the equilibrium.



Vimes tries to act the diplomat, with predictable results. But finally he stops acting and starts being the policeman he is at his core. There's trouble in all quarters, but a settlement is reached and Vimes regains his composure just in time for Sybil to drop a bit of a bombshell..." ( )

More Night Watch procedurals, except this time Vimes goes on vacation! (Sort of.) I adore the Uberwald characters and setting, so Vimes vs. the werewolves totally works for me, the mystery is clever, the ruckus back home is amusing although ultimately inconsequential, and the continuing plot where the dwarves discover gender continues to be interesting. ( )

This was a perfect palate cleanser after two different audiobooks that disappointed me. I always enjoy Pratchett, and Stephen Briggs (who narrates all of Pratchett's audiobooks) makes me smile every time. So that made things all much better.

If you haven't read Terry Pratchett before (audio or text) go do so now, because you are missing out. Unless you are very serious and don't much enjoy levity. In which case you are not missing out, carry on. ( )

From vampires in Carpe Jugulum to werewolves. This time it's a trip to Uberwald to see the new dwarf king being crowned and, with Vimes playing ambassador to Ankh-Morpork I knew this wasn't going to be a cut-and-dry event. Especially when he's bringing Detritus and Cherry into the fray. So I was all geared up for a good read.
I wasn't disappointed.
As so often with the Watchman books, there's a heavy mystery going on underneath (literally in this case, we are dealing with dwarves here). Somebody's stealing stone scones that are big enough to serve as a chair. Wait ... no they aren't. In fact, we're not even having this conversation. How foolish to suggest it. People are certainly not stealing scones. And they most definitely aren't trying to start a war amongst the dwarf factions.
But as I said, there are werewolves. Angry werewolves. Spearheaded by Angua's family, most notably, her insane brother. To say the boy's got a serious problem is putting it mildly.
Of course, there's stuff going on at the home front of good old Ankh-Morepork, but as the mystery gets on, the 'little stuff' they were dealing with back there seemed rather dull and I completely forgot about it (as you would when dealing with werewolves) until the end whomped me with the 'little problem'.
On the other hand, I'm starting to see Carrot in a different light. ( )