Fantasy

Review: The Fifth Elephant

Jay
Cover of the book, featuring a giant red elephant plunging out of the sky towards an indistinct group of people (or possibly people and animals) on the ground below.

Title: The Fifth Elephant

Series: Discworld #24 (Anhk-Morpork City Watch #5)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, violence, injury, blood (mentions), fantasy racism, transphobia (obliquely), man-in-a-dress jokes, police entrapment, body horror (mild)

Spoiler Warning: This book is 24th in a series, but contains only mild spoilers of previous City Watch books.

Back Cover:

Sam Vimes is a man on the run. Yesterday he was ambassador to the country of Uberwald. Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don’t ask). Sam is out of time, out of luck, and already out of breath.

Review:

I found this one of the better City Watch books. Not that others were particularly bad, but the City Watch sub-series is significantly less funny overall than many of the other Discworld sub-series and tends to tackle a lot of bigger, heavier political issues, which I generally find less interesting. Despite also having more than its fair share of political commentary, though, I enjoyed The Fifth Elephant quite a lot.

This sub-series is definitely about Vimes almost completely now, and I enjoy it. He’s gruff and gets stuff done and is a cop to his core. Everything keeps conspiring to get him out of his comfort zone, though, and it’s always entertaining to see him apply cop logic and strategies to situations where most of us wouldn’t even think to apply it. Vimes has a hammer, so every situation looks like a nail, and somehow it just seems to work. In this book, his hammer of Watch mindset gets aimed at diplomacy.

This book is heavy on the themes. The art of diplomacy, the nature of lies and truth and how we define each, and power and the difficulties of wielding it well are big in this one. But so is the power of belief, traditions, and even the Ship of Theseus quesion. The power of belief has been a big theme in a lot of Discworld books lately – I don’t know if there’s a reason, but it’s interesting.

But just because there’s a lot of themes doesn’t mean there aren’t entertaining things happening. Because there are so many things happening:

  • The Mystery of the Stolen Scone!
  • The complicated politics between werewolves, dwarves, and dwarves!
  • A prison break!
  • Fun facts about werewolves!
  • Not-so-fun encounters with werewolves!
  • The Watch attempts to function with both Vimes and Carrot gone!
  • Carrot and Angua have some Relationship Concerns(TM)!
  • Vimes has to do a diplomacy!

The book even managed to have a bit of a trans rights message without having any actual trans characters, which was a wild experience. I appreciate the message (slightly muddled as it is) and that whole plot thread was fascinating from a story perspective, but I’m not sure how I feel about it with modern eyes. Actually, I’m not sure it was supposed to be a trans-positive message in the first place, but it definitely comes across that way in 2023.

This review has been more descriptive than commentative, and that’s because I don’t have much to say about this one. (Except that I don’t like the new audiobook narrator. My favorite Discworld narrator Nigel Planer got replaced by some guy named Steve, and Steve did a terrible job with Carrot’s voice. But that’s only relevant if you read the audiobook, so I digress.) The Fifth Elephant was entertaining, enjoyable, and a good read all around, but there really isn’t much to note. It’s just, on the whole, good.

The Discworld series:

  1. The Colour of Magic
  2. The Light Fantastic
  3. Equal Rites
  4. Mort
  5. Sourcery
  6. Wyrd Sisters
  7. Pyramids
  8. Guards! Guards!
  9. Eric
  10. Moving Pictures
  11. Reaper Man
  12. Witches Abroad
  13. Small Gods
  14. Lords and Ladies
  15. Men at Arms
  16. Soul Music
  17. Interesting Times
  18. Maskerade
  19. Feet of Clay
  20. Hogfather
  21. Jingo
  22. The Last Continent
  23. Carpe Jugulum
  24. The Fifth Elephant
  25. The Truth
  26. Thief of Time
  27. The Last Hero
  28. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
  29. Night Watch
  30. The Wee Free Men
  31. Monstrous Regiment
  32. A Hat Full of Sky
  33. Going Postal
  34. Thud!
  35. Wintersmith
  36. Making Money
  37. Unseen Academicals
  38. I Shall Wear Midnight
  39. Snuff
  40. Raising Steam
  41. The Shepherd’s Crown