Thud!

Hard to believe this is my first Discworld audio book, I think it's one of those pleasures postponed and holy crap the narrator is Rivers Of London level good, easily. Manages to absolutely embody the characters, the place, the prose, the dialogue and every joke comes through, every wonderful warm emotional beat that only Pratchett could deliver.

Thud - Pratchett
Audio performance by Stephen Briggs
4 stars

More fun with Sam Vimes and the Watch in Ankh - Morpork and Uberwald. It’s silly, very silly. More than enough good laughs and just enough underlying truth and wisdom.

As usual, Commander Vimes copes with the overseeing the Watch while containing the crimes and criminals of Ankh-Morpork. But, his most pressing commitment is his daily exploration of literature with his infant son. Anyone who has ever gone down the text wormhole of a young child’s favorite inane text will appreciate the the predicament of Sam Vimes reading, Where’s My Cow?. Pratchett absolutely nails it. All of the plot points, the character interaction, the wordplay and nonsense of this book boils down to show more the overriding importance of the bedtime book ritual. It’s such a winning combination; absurdist humour with all the fuzzy warm feels of love and loyalty.

And then there was this little side plot. Sargeant Angua (werewolf) and Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom (dwarf), inaugurate Constable Sally von Humpeding (vampire) into the Watch with a girl’s night out. Somehow this ends with the two shape-changing characters returning to human shape, naked and in the mud in the basement of a strip club. This is truly high class, priceless literature. It’s possible that some people might have been offended. Does it expose Pratchett as a sexist pig? I don’t know. I just know that I laughed until tears came. show less

Jeeze, every time I read a Discworld novel, it's always like coming back to a very funny home full of angry dwarves and pissed trolls doing their best to get drunk and start a war over some ancient grudge that no one alive actually understands.

In other words, like Thanksgiving Dinner.

Or something like that.

Indeed, it's actually a police procedural with the glorious Vimes as he tries to stop another civil war on the streets of Ankh-Morpork the best way he can... by cutting through all the red tape and bull-heading his way through every single problem.

Or going berserk while yelling a kid's bedtime story, thoroughly destroying the morale of his enemies.

It's the little things.

I love these books. :)

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Your grace."

"I know that one," said Vimes. "Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal."

"Ah, but who watches you, your grace?" said the inspector, with a brief smile.

"I do that, too. All the time," said Vimes. "Believe me."

[b:Thud!|62530|Thud! (Discworld, #34; City Watch #7)|Terry Pratchett|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320495268s/62530.jpg|819104] continues the tradition of the City Watch series digging into bigotry and racism. There's the feud of centuries between the dwarfs and trolls on the anniversary of the long ago battle of Koom valley which no one remembers for sure who first attacked who. But does it really matter? They hate each other. They've always hated each other.

At the same show more time, Vimes' watch has been adding more and more diverse officers over the books. Now, he finally has to accept one he never accepted: Sally the Vampire. She's an interesting character, but in particularly, it's really interesting to read her interactions with Angua. It's the same tension of centuries on a much smaller, more personal scale.

Overall, it's the little details of the world that really make this story. It's not as funny as the early Discworld books, but it's a lot more solid. There's a reason people suggest that you start with the City Watch books, [b:Thud!|62530|Thud! (Discworld, #34; City Watch #7)|Terry Pratchett|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320495268s/62530.jpg|819104] in particular.

With that, there's only one more in the City Watch subseries: [b:Snuff|8785374|Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch #8)|Terry Pratchett|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1302694636s/8785374.jpg|13659124]. It's bittersweet. I'm looking forward to it... but I don't really want them to end.

So it goes.

Aside:

“Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even 2 minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five minutes, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go for five minutes, then you'd go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours...and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o'clock, prompt. Every day. Read to young Sam. No excuses. He'd promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.”

With a 16 month old little boy at home, the scenes where Vimes (et at) moves heaven and earth to make sure he's back at precisely 6pm to read to his 18 month old son are pretty awesome. show less

Another excellent Discworld book. Pratchett once again seamlessly blends serious issues (intolerance, racism, fatherhood) with a galloping plot, and the little details which make his books so special. Auditors, pole-dancers and violent butlers, without forgetting the masterpiece of "Where's my cow?". Briliant.

folks, we've hit a sweet spot. Yes this has some of Sir Terry's Patented Benign Racism, which makes me roll my eyes, but then yknow makes up for it with the ending. (But also good god please Sir Terry.) It also has things I LOVE--Vimes being competent even when he doesn't know all the clues, Vimes having People to Protect (the addition of Young Sam is the smartest thing Sir Terry ever did to keep me personally reading,) Sybil being a badass and also competent, The Colon and Nobby Show... It's just like a beautiful mix of so much that I already love about these characters, all rolled up into one.

Just a real delicious payoff of all the previous Watch books I've read, a delightful fun time, and a good ending that made me feel good.

Thud is unusual but also only an averagely good Terry Pratchett book by his standards, complimented by a spin-off board game. Is Koom Valley, the core of the story, a geographical place or has it become a concept in the mind? What is Koom Valley is a question along the same lines as What is Calvary, a basic hill or a fate or the concept of a stage before redemption that anyone can go through? I can’t be sure whether the Discworld board game (dwarves against trolls) inspired this book or if the book inspired the board game but the game is in parody (not tactical simplification) of the ancient battle described in the book and the book describes the game as if it exists already and which side usually wins, so vice versa. A children’s show more book called Where’s My Cow? appears to be a secondary spin-off commercialisation of this same novel. Talk about cashing in. In other words, it’s another piece of the convoluted and self-referencing Discworld series. The plot concerns an ancient battleground about which it’s not known for sure whether the dwarves ambushed the trolls or perhaps it was the trolls who ambushed the dwarves. The dwarves and trolls have their own opposing theories, in which they are both the respective victims and that’s why they can never get along, why the feud will never be settled. They get drunk and re-enact their prejudices, which isn’t against the law. This time though there’s been a murder, which is of official interest but who wants to get in the middle of a dwarf/troll argument? Step forth the author’s favourite character, Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch, a kind of grizzled detective, balancing his own light and darkness of the soul. Pratchett explores in this a parable that could fit into our world, as seen through the distorted lens of fantasy. The humanist message we’re supposed to pick up is that sectarian violence is pointless and leaves no winners. Most of us have a Koom Valley deep within the psyche. It’s often an historical event, usually a piece of ancient craziness or national injustice, which helps to define our identity, a beacon for the disaffected and anchor of tribal identity that we need to feel safe. We weren’t there but do take it personally and will teach the next generation to carry it on. Of course, things rumble on. The Cranberries summed it up with “In your head, they’re still fighting”. George Orwell studied the motivations of socialist intellectuals much like himself and he concluded that if you set aside the words they say, it’s easy to see they don’t actually like the poor and don’t want to help them; they just hate the rich. It’s the psyche gone primal again. So the leaders of both sides say it’s all fun and everyone’s gone mild and reasonable after the long years, in much the same way that diamonds are squishy. Can anyone really win now? Pratchett thinks so and, against the odds and entrenched personalities, there’s hope of reconciliation. I wouldn’t pin much hope on that but this is a fantasy. Thud is a thought-provoking book, but isn’t outrageous fun, just fantasy delivering rationality, a sweetened pill to encourage the reader to re-evaluate whatever they secretly hate but won’t admit to. It says Thud on the cover. You weren’t expecting it to be light? show less