Review: Night Watch

Title: Night Watch

Series: Discworld #29 (City Watch #6)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, murder, injury, war, torture, fire, pregnancy (mentions), animal death (mentions), animal cruelty (brief), police brutality

Spoiler Warning: This book is 29th in the series, but reading beyond this point will expose you to only the mildest spoilers of the previous City Watch books.

Back Cover:

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is back in his own rough, tough past. He must track down a murderer, teach his young self how to be a good cop and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. There’s a problem: if he wins, he’s got no wife, no child, no future.

Review:

I am not generally into books about time travel shenanigans. Not because I have anything against time travel in particular, but it just seems to be rare to have it done well, or at least in a way that I find enjoyable to read about. But, as usual, Sir Terry pulled it off.

I think a lot of that has to do with the character of Commander Samuel Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Due to some unfortunate wrong-place, wrong-time magical happenstance, Vimes ends up in his own past – the Ankh-Morpork of many decades ago, when he had just joined the Watch and things were, objectively, much worse than they are now. But one of the things that I appreciate most about Commander Vimes is that he is a relentlessly practical man. I recognize a kindred spirit in that, but it also means that the situation may be weird and fairly unpleasant, but he gets right on with dealing with it, with very little pining or philosophizing and absolutely no dithering or worrying about paradoxes.

That’s not to say that he’s emotionless, though. In fact, what makes Vimes so stellar as a character to me throughout this whole series is that he is competent, practical, and stays focused on the problem(s) in front of him instead of wasting time with excessive introspection or philosophizing, but he also has a strong set of personal values, cares deeply for the people around him, and feels his emotions intensely. He doesn’t do the introspection on the page because he doesn’t need to; he already knows himself thoroughly and is in control. To use the cliché, he is in touch with his feelings, but though they may tempt him to act against his values, they never control him. In so many ways, he is a paragon of positive masculinity – competent, principled, practical, honorable, caring, willing and able to experience great depth of feeling, never letting his feelings overrule him. He’s the rare character who is great to read about as a character, and also someone I think I would like, or at least respect, in real life.

Apparently this is the Sam Vimes Appreciation Review. That does make sense, because he really is the star of this book. Sure, there’s the whole time travel thing. There’s the murderer he’s tracking who also got zapped into the past and has the same future knowledge that Vimes does. There’s the fact that this point in the past is a particularly sticky one for Ankh-Morpork. There’s the sheer delight of a character being spectacularly good at what they do (some of it because Vimes has future knowledge, but much of it because he’s just a really, really good watchman). All of that is quite enjoyable to read. But this is a book that pushes Commander Vimes to his limits, and that means that he, as a character, is really what carries this story.

The Discworld series doesn’t generally shy away from getting dark in places. But this book is probably the darkest that I’ve read so far, and since the City Watch sub-series tends to be less funny in general, it’s not tempered with humor into something darkly funny. It’s just dark. Not at all in a bad way, to be sure. As I said, these events push Vimes to his limit, and it’s hard to do that without delving into some darkness. But even in terms of sheer numbers of deaths and injuries, this has got to be one of the more violent Discworld books. It’s not unnecessary violence when it comes to the plot, but it definitely goes (and takes Commander Vimes to) some very dark places.

I can’t necessarily say that Night Watch has replaced Interesting Times as my favorite Discworld book. The two are so different in mood, tone, theme, and content that it’s hard to do a direct comparison. But I can definitely say that Night Watch is among my favorite Discword books. If you like Commander Vimes as a character, love stories where protagonists are pushed to their limits, or just enjoy the very specific trope where a character is sent back in time and has to relive a difficult part of their life from a new perspective, I think you’ll agree.

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

Review: Thief of Time

Title: Thief of Time

Series: Discworld #26 (Death #5)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), body horror (arguably), abandonment, injury (mentions), unreality, existential horror, mental illness, suicide, ableism

Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-sixth in a series, but neither the book nor the review contain spoilers of any previous books (but knowledge of the previous books will make this review make more sense).

Back Cover:

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed.

And on Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it’s wasted (like underwater — how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there’s never enough time.

But the construction of the world’s first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time, for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone’s problems.

Thief of Time comes complete with a full supporting cast of heroes and villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous).

Review:

This book is a strange reading experience and not exactly easy to review. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good. But it’s hard to put into words my thoughts on the matter.

First of all, Thief of Time is part of the Death sub-series, and I have struggled with nearly every book in the series for various reasons (although, in the case of Hogfather, that reason was more the circumstances in which I read the book than the book itself). In this case, the book doesn’t follow the same pattern of most of the Death books, wherein Death has a crisis about not being human and makes a stupid decision and the rest of the book is spent trying to fix what he screwed up. In fact, it feels weird to call this a Death book at all, since Death is hardly in it. I think there were Rincewind books that had Death in more scenes than Thief of Time. However, Death’s granddaughter Susan (who is at this point a favorite of mine) does show up and is pretty crucial to the ending, so maybe that’s why it counts? Regardless, Death is not actually a major player in this book.

There are actually a lot of players in this book. If you had to name protagonists, you would probably identify Lopsang Ludd, apprentice History Monk who somehow already seems to know the time tricks the monks are supposed to be teaching him, and Jeremy, obsessive and extremely talented clockmaker with some kind of mental illness. But there’s a definite third-person omnicient vibe in this story. Even if you only count characters who have point-of-view scenes, there’s also Death, Susan, Lu Tze the janitor monk, Nanny Ogg, Myria LeJean the … well, you should just read about that one, Ronnie the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and probably a few others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. And each of those has a cast of secondary characters that only sometimes overlaps. There’s a lot of characters happening. None of them were bad and I liked all of them in their own way, but the frequent jumping between characters and places sometimes left me feeling a bit unfulfilled, like I wanted more out of the scene I just had before it switched to a different scene.

And now that I’ve covered the basic bookish stuff that feels like I should at least say it, let’s get down to the weirdest thing about this book: It does not feel like a Discworld book. It is funny, sure, and full of Sir Terry’s signature wit, but in a way that’s gently amusing, not laugh-out-loud hilarious. Even though the fate of the entire world and existence is at stake, it lacks true urgency. Instead, it’s slightly slower than you would expect for a book so full of characters and stories, it’s thematically rich, and above all it’s deeply philosophical. It pokes fun at a lot of ideas, but it also meditates on the nature of time and what it means to be (or become) a human being. I have really enjoyed most of the Discworld books I’ve read. Many of them have had interesting themes worth thinking about. But this is the only one where I really felt like it was touching on something real and meaningful and was actually expanding the way I think.

I really do not know what to make of this. Out of all of the books in this series, I really want this one to become a movie. I want to study it for the wisdom it contains. It’s a silly funny fantasy story while simultaneously giving me that expanded, slightly-off-kilter feeling of really good magical realism. I’ve learned so much. I know nothing. There are layers of meaning here that I haven’t yet unpacked. A very confused monk apprentice is following his master the janitor on a quest to smash a really fancy clock. Meaning is a glass clock, clear as a mountain stream yet distorted and obscured by joints and angles. This is a Discworld book.

I have maintained for most of my Discworld reading experience that Interesting Times is my favorite. Rincewind is still one of my favorite characters, and not only is it the best of his books, it’s so far the best combination of thematic depth and laugh-out-loud humor. But this one … it is so strangely, confusingly, almost unbelievably good. It does not feel like a Discworld book. It feels momentous. It feels like a book that wins literary awards and deserves them, and like Lu Tze is a powerful monk in the humble guise of a janitor, Thief of Time is a powerful work in the humble guise of a simple funny fantasy story. It hits so far above its weight class and goes so much deeper than it claims that I have no idea how to properly convey what I’m feeling. It’s a good and enjoyable story, but it’s so much more than that. I feel closer to enlightenment having read this. It is such a dramatic departure from anything I expected from a Discworld book, but it is so, so good.

The Discword 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

Review: The Truth

Title: The Truth

Series: Discworld #25 (Industrial Revoluion #2)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, murder, body horror, drug use (mentions), fire/fire injury, alcohol use (mentions), blood, injury, classism (background element)

Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-fifth in a series, but despite that does not contain spoilers of previous books.

Back Cover:

There’s been a murder. Allegedly.

William de Worde is the Discworld’s first investigative journalist. He didn’t mean to be – it was just an accident. But, as William fills his pages with reports of local club meetings and pictures of humorously shaped vegetables, dark forces high up in Ankh-Morpork’s society are plotting to overthrow the city’s ruler, Lord Vetinari.

Review:

It seems like every Discworld book that takes place in Anhk-Morpork somehow involves a threat to overthrow Lord Vetinari. Most of them so far have been City Watch books and had the Watch thwarting the plot. In this case, though, despite the Watch definitely being present, it was investigative journalism that uncovered the answer.

The Truth is the second of Discworld’s “Industrial Revolution” books. In the first one, Moving Pictures, the Discworld got introduced to movies and Hollywood Holy Wood glitz and glam. In The Truth, the Discworld gets journalism. The thing I love most about it is that it happens entirely by accident. There’s something really appealing to me about stories where the protagonist didn’t mean to do all that, they just had a good idea for something small and it got out of control. Which is exactly what happened with William de Worde, who didn’t actually intend to become a journalist, he just thought a moveable-type printing press would make his letter-writing easier and it spiraled from there.

As with most other Discworld books, this one has some interesting themes and questions. The big obvious one is journalism – the nature of the press, what is considered news, journalistic judgement, what people want to read versus what “the public” needs to know, and some very pointed and un-subtle digs at tabloids. And if the title didn’t make it painfully obvious, it also mulls over the nature of truth and how journalism and printing affects the perception of what’s true. (It also tried to say something about privilege during the climax, I think, but that one was very muddled.) This book has a lot of interesting themes and ideas, but it is not particularly subtle about them.

I’m not often much for mystery plots, but I didn’t mind this one. Part of that is because it’s less of “a mystery” than many smaller mysteries in a trench coat. William is trying to untangle all the pieces of who framed Lord Vetinari. But there’s also a cast of fascinating characters and strange happenings to keep that from feeling too mystery-heavy. The talking dog is back, and he’s at least in an interesting situation this time, even if he’s no more likeable. There’s a vampire on staff at the newspaper who takes photographs and is experimenting with using flashes of darkness instead of light to take pictures. There’s the New Firm, a pair of hit men who go by the names Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip. They start out somewhat comedic (at least in Mr. Tulip’s desperate attempts to pick up a drug addiction, consuming all sorts of weird and unpleasant things along the way), but turn into one of the darkest plot lines I recall happening in a Discworld book. And there’s also the Watch, trying to do their jobs with all of William’s meddling.

The Truth is definitely less funny than some of the other Discworld books, but it was entertaining the whole way through and quite fun at times, even if I didn’t end up actually laughing. It has interesting things to say (even if they are SIGNIFICANTLY less subtle than I’ve come to expect from Sir Terry) the plot is solid and kept my interest, the cast of characters was strong, and the ending wrapped everything up neatly, including a few plot threads I had forgotten about. On the whole, it’s an enjoyable, if a bit in-your-face, entry into both Discworld canon and the Industrial Revolution arc.

(And as a note that’s only relevant to the audiobook, my favorite Discworld narrator Nigel Planer has still been replaced with some guy named Steve, the guy who did a terrible job on Carrot’s voice in The Fifth Elephant and also did a terrible job on Death’s voice in The Truth. It’s not relevant unless you read the audiobook, but I am not a fan of Steve.)

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

Review: The Fifth Elephant

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

Review: Carpe Jugulum

Title: Carpe Jugulum

Series: Discworld #23 (Witches #6)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), blood, injury, violence, religious bigotry (mentions, in past), body horror (mentions, comedic), animal death (mentions), mind control, fatphobia, body shaming

Spoiler Warning: This book is 23rd in a series, but contains spoilers only of previous Witches books, especially Lords and Ladies.

Back Cover:

In a fit of enlightenment democracy and ebullient goodwill, King Verence invites Uberwald’s undead, the Magpyrs, into Lancre to celebrate the birth of his daughter. But once ensconced within the castle, these wine-drinking, garlic-eating, sun-loving modern vampires have no intention of leaving. Ever.

Only an uneasy alliance between a nervous young priest and the argumentative local witches can save the country from being taken over by people with a cultivated bloodlust and bad taste in silk waistcoats. For them, there’s only one way to fight.

Go for the throat, or as the vampyres themselves say…Carpe Jugulum.

Review:

I have struggled with the Witches sub-series in almost every single book. (Except for Equal Rites, but I read that one several years before I really got into the Discworld books so I don’t think it counts.) I love the ideas, but I don’t so much love the characters or the plots. And that sentiment held with Carpe Jugulum.

Granny Weatherwax is still a mean old lady and one of my biggest issues with the series. Her excessive pride gets in the way so much and she’s incredibly frustrating. But I’m also not used to a Granny who can be scared and defeated and run away, which is also what happens here. There’s a dichotomy between everyone expecting Granny is indomitable and will fix it and the reality of her genuine limitations. It was a weird and not exactly pleasant experience to watch her be mean and prideful while running scared.

This was not a very character-centric story. They were there, but more as vehicles to push the story along than for actually getting any focus. Nanny Ogg was herself, as usual. I loved seeing Magret with a spine, but she was a very minor character. I liked Agnes, but she didn’t get any more nuance or growth here. A random priest of Om who gets dragged along on the witches’ antics got more focus as a person than any of the other characters (although to be fair, his religious consternation was extremely relatable).

The plot had some really good ideas. It was mainly “vampires are trying to take over and need to be stopped,” but these are, in true Discworld style, not your ordinary vampires. They flipped the tropes on their heads, and were neat for that. But the vampires themselves were obnoxious, and the plot dragged until the end. The climax and conclusion were really good, but everything before that was honestly a bit dull.

Reading this book, I generally felt like I was missing the point. There’s so many elements – religion, the power of names and words in general, royalty, tradition, the power of belief, and probably more – but they’re all mixed up together so there was no obvious central theme. I feel like there was supposed to be some point to the first three-quarters of the story, before it actually got entertaining in the last quarter, but I couldn’t find it. The humor traded Sir Terry’s wit and quips for humor in trope subversion, which didn’t always land. And I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to get out of this.

For a Witches book, it’s not bad. I generally find the subseries less fun than other Discworld books. But at least with this one, I never felt the urge to DNF it, and I did quite enjoy the last quarter of it. So on the whole, it’s fine. Not spectacular, but I’ve certainly read worse Witches books.

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

Review: Jingo

Title: Jingo

Series: Discworld #21 (Ankh-Morpork City Watch #4)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Blood (mentions), death, violence, injury, war, racism, racial slurs, hate crimes, xenophobia, murder, injury (mentions), fire, crossdressing jokes

Spoiler Warning: This book is twenty-first in a series, but the book and this review contain only mild spoilers of the previous Ankh-Morpork City Watch books.

Back Cover:

Throughout history, there’s always been a perfectly good reason to start a war. Never more so if it is over a ‘strategic’ piece of old rock in the middle of nowhere. It is after all every citizen’s right to bear arms to defend what they consider to be their own. Even if it isn’t. And in such pressing circumstances, you really shouldn’t let small details like the absence of an army or indeed the money to finance one get in the way of a righteous fight with all the attendant benefits of out-and-out nationalism.

Review:

This is the most thematic Discworld book I’ve read yet. Most of the ones with strong themes have a main plot with the themes underneath. Jingo‘s whole plot is “war is stupid, so is nationalism, and so is racism too for that matter.” It makes its point very well (in my opinion), but my experience with other theme-heavy Discworld books did not lead me to expect the message to be so in-your-face.

Interestingly, somewhere along the line the City Watch sub-series has shifted protagonists. There’s a lot of major characters in the watch, but the series started off with Carrot as the main protagonist. Somehow, without my really noticing, it shifted to Vimes. Carrot is still there and being himself, but now Vimes is the one that the story is following. Which feels like a natural progression, all things considered. Carrot’s whole thing is that he is a simple Dwarven boy in the big city whose innocence and general good humor encourage those around him to be better. He was entertaining, but there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for growth, which makes him a poor choice for the protagonist of an eight-book sub-series. Vimes, on the other hand, is a great candidate in terms of character growth. Considering the first City Watch book opened with him drunk off his ass and laying in the gutter in the rain and I know from reading Snuff first that he ends up with a wife, a kid, and a nice vacation home in the country, there’s a ton of room for him to grow and adapt. And though I did like Carrot, I’m glad to see the focus shift.

Anyway. I’m not really sure what Vimes’ goal is in this book, and to be honest I’m not sure he does either. Things go very badly very quickly, and he’s just trying to keep things together and do his job while they people around him dissolve into warmongering and xenophobia. Technically his job description is “keeping the peace,” so obviously this whole war thing is gonna put a wrench in that. He’s very much had enough of this nonsense (which is a character trope I thoroughly enjoy), but gods damn it he is going to do his job even if he has to arrest both armies to do it. He got to be a nuanced character with solid motivations and definite flaws and strong emotions and I enjoyed it very much.

Some parts of this book, though, didn’t quite land. There’s a bit about Vimes’ wife being unhappy that he’s gone so much, but there is so much other stuff happening in the book that there’s no time to do anything with that plot thread. The climax also had a weird quantum parallel universe bit where you find out what would have happened if Vimes had made a different choice earlier in the book. It was interesting in a bizarre way, but I’m not entirely sure what the point was.

Considering this book isn’t unreasonably long, there’s a lot going on. I generally like fast-paced books, and I don’t have any particular objections to breakneck paces. But I do think it could have benefitted from being just a little longer and slowing down. This book tackles a lot of heavy topics about war, xenophobia, racism, and tensions between countries, and it’s hard to process all that when the plot is rocketing by you at a thousand miles an hour. Even Vimes’ strong emotional moments don’t have time to land. Just a few breaks to give the reader a chance to breathe, reflect, and process would have been beneficial in my opinion.

As it is, though, Jingo is still quite good. Despite everything happening, it wasn’t hard to follow. It was entertaining throughout and had its amusing moments (although less flat-out humor, which fits with the more serious topics discussed). And I’m quite pleased with the direction the City Watch sub-series is taking. There are still several more City Watch books to go, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

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

Review: Hogfather

Title: Hogfather

Series: Discworld #20 (Death #4)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, injury, violence, murder, ableism (mentions), parent death (mentions), unreality

Spoiler Warning: This book is 20th in a series, but this book and this review contain only mild spoilers of the previous Death book, Soul Music.

Back Cover:

It’s the night before Hogwatch. And it’s too quiet.

There’s snow, there are robins, there are trees covered with decorations, but there’s a notable lack of the fat man who delivers the toys….

He’s gone.

Susan the governess has to find him before morning, otherwise the sun won’t rise. And unfortunately her only helpers are a raven with an eyeball fixation, the Death of Rats (‘the grim squeaker’) and an oh god of hangovers. Worse still, someone is coming down the chimney. This time he’s carrying a sack instead of a scythe, but there’s something regrettably familiar….

Ho. Ho. Ho.

It’s true what they say…. ‘You’d better watch out….’

Review:

This book was difficult to get through and frequently hard to follow, and that’s entirely not the book’s fault. One of the drawbacks of reading books as audiobooks at work is that I am, in fact, at work and have to be doing other things. The past two weeks at work, I was given two different projects (a large customer order that four other people were also working on and training a new person) that required me to do a lot of coordinating with people. It’s hard to both listen to a book and talk to someone about something entirely different at the same time. So I listened to Hogfather in fits and starts, a few minutes here and a few minutes there, chopping the story up into smaller bits that did not at all help my enjoyment or comprehension of the story.

Which really sucked, because for as much as I’ve struggled with the previous Death books, this one didn’t have a lot of the issues I had with the others so far. Yeah, Death was busy doing things that weren’t his job, but he hadn’t completely stopped doing his own job, and he wasn’t doing other things on a whim. Those other things did actually need to get done. And sure, in the end nothing really changed, but in this story that’s a good thing, as the main point was less making things happen then preventing bad things from happening.

As seems to be the case in the Death series, Death doesn’t get a whole lot of page time. Although there were a lot of other characters doing their own stuff throughtout this book as well.

• There were Death and Albert trying to get the hang of delivering toys on Hogswatch night (and making some distinct social commentary about class and wealth disparity in the process).
• There was an absolutely off his rocker assassin doing … I’m not entirely sure what. Tooth fairies were involved. Somewhere in my disjointed reading experience I missed exactly what he was up to.
• There was Susan, who I actually quite enjoy now that she’s an adult. She is completely Fed Up With This Bullshit, and she may not be able to escape the supernatural nonsense but she can and will hit it with a fire poker. I hope she gets to be a bigger player in future Death books because adult Susan is fantastic.
• Then there were the wizards. The bounce in and out of the other characters’ stories, and they’re also doing their own stuff. There’s a bit of musing about the nature of belief and sentience – and also a couple computer programmer jokes – with Hex (Ponder Stibbons’ computer-like invention), and a very weird subplot about Archchancellor Ridcully’s new bathroom. I’ll be honest, I do not at all understand the point or purpose of the bathroom plot.

It’s entirely a coincidence that I picked up the holiday-themed Discworld book around the holidays, but it was fun. There were some musings on the nature of holidays and their traditions, what it means to believe and how belief affects the world, and how different the world looks through the eyes of children, plus mentions of holiday gift-giving as an illustration of wealth inequality and the ancient and significantly-less-cuddly roots of most treasured traditions. And if you wanted to call this book Death and his Granddaughter Susan Save (Discworld’s Version of) Christmas, that would also be valid.

Even reading it in fits and starts, making it unnecessarily confusing and at times hard to follow, this is probably my favorite Death book so far. I can only imagine how much more I would have liked it if I’d been able to read it straight through like normal. I’m really hoping the rest of the Death sub-series is like this, because I had a remarkably good time with this book.

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

Review: Feet of Clay

Title: Feet of Clay

Series: Discworld #19 (Ankh-Morpork City Watch #3)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood, injury, sexism, misogyny, fantasy racism, body horror (mild-moderate), murder, suicide (mentions/discussion), animal death (mentions), child death (mentions), grief (mentions), parent death (mentions)

Spoiler Warning: Reading beyond this point may expose you to mild spoilers of previous books in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch sub-series.

Back Cover:

Who’s murdering harmless old men? Who’s poisoning the Patrician? As autumn fogs hold Ankh-Morpork in their grip, the City Watch have to track down a murderer who can’t be seen. Maybe the golems know something — but the solemn men of clay, who work all day and night and are never any trouble to anyone, have started to commit suicide.

Whom can you trust when there are mobs on the street and plotters in the night and all the clues point the wrong way?

In the gloom of the night, Watch Commander Sir Samuel Vimes finds that the truth may not be out there after all …

Review:

The City Watch subseries seems to have only one plot: Preventing people from doing a monarchy. Someone wants Ankh-Morpork to have a king again and start scheming to make it happen, and the Watch has to step in and stop it from happening.

In the first City Watch book, Guards! Guards!, they crowned a dragon king. In the second book, Men at Arms, there was a scheme to replace the patrician with a king (although that scheme did generally fade into the background of the book as a whole). And this one is a murder mystery and, again, another plot to crown a king.

When I first started reading the City Watch subseries, I thought Carrot was going to be the protagonist, or perhaps a deuteragonist with Commander Vimes. But Carrot really took a back seat in this one. He was there and useful, but not a major player. The characters with the most page time in this one were Vimes (expected) and Angua (less expected). Vimes was just Vimes, now with a small taste of married life, but Angua got a lot of development – not growth exactly, but learning more about her inner thoughts and what makes her tick.

She was also the driving force for a couple of the themes this book had going on. One of the bigger ones was workplace sexism, both benevolent and less so. A more minor one, and one that’s run as an undercurrent through the other City Guard books as well, is racism/prejudice against undead people. And there were some non-Angua-related themes as well. There was the question of what people really want from government, which came up a few times. And the more major theme of who gets to be a person was explored through the murder mystery, since that plot involves a lot of golems.

I’m not normally much for murder mysteries, but this one didn’t feel like a traditional murder mystery. Perhaps it’s because there’s so much else going on, perhaps it’s because it quickly ends up being more focused on finding the suspect than determining the whodunnit. But regardless, it was a solid story. The side characters were great, Ankh-Morpork is such a fun setting, and the whole book is entertaining and often funny. It’s a good story all around, and maybe my favorite City Watch book so far.

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

Review: Maskerade

Title: Maskerade

Series: Discworld #18, Witches #5

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, murder, fatphobia, body shaming, ableism, blood (mentions)

Spoiler Warning: This book is 18th in a series, but this book and this review contain only mild spoilers of the last Witches book, Lords and Ladies.

Back Cover:

The Opera House: where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by a strangely familiar evil mastermind. But Granny Weatherwax is in the audience and she doesn’t hold with that sort of thing. So there’s going to be trouble…

Review:

Granny Weatherwax is a pretty neat character idea, but she’s also my biggest frustration with the Witches subseries. She’s mean, passive-aggressive, won’t admit she’s wrong, and determined to make people do what she thinks is best for them regardless of their opinions on the matter. Luckily for my enjoyment of this book, Granny is slowly starting to get a little bit better, and Agnes, the third protagonist along with Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, is even more fed up with Granny than I am.

Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg have decided that Agnes should become their third witch now that Magret has escaped from under Granny’s thumb. Agnes, though, hates the very idea, and instead takes her spectacular vocal talent to Ankh-Morpork to become an opera singer. Granny and Nanny come up with an excuse to follow her there and interfere. Also the plot of Phantom of the Opera is going on, complete witha mysterious black-suited mask-wearing opera house “ghost,” murders, and a gorgeous lead singer named Christine (although this Christine can’t actually sing).

Agnes is prodigiously fat, and though this doesn’t bother her in the slightest, there is a lot of fatphobia from others and some of the humor is based around fatphobic jokes. Although there is quite a bit of actual humor, as well. It’s definitely not as funny as some of the other Discworld books, but I think it’s the funniest of the Witches books so far.

There’s not really anything here that I would call a main plot. There’s the whole Phantom of the Opera thing, which mainly becomes a whodunit mystery trying to figure out who is the opera house ghost so they can stop him from murdering people, Agnes trying to find where she fits into the world of opera, Granny doing her best to meddle in everything (with Nanny cheerfully along for the ride), and a very bizarre subplot about an Ankh-Morpork-born opera singer pretending to be a foreigner and really hating how everyone goes out of their way to feed him foreign food that he doesn’t like but requesting the Ankh-Morpork food he does like would blow his cover. No, I’m not sure what the point is supposed to be either.

Though I can’t say I’m a particular fan of how things worked out for Agnes in the end, overall this was a solid book. It kept me interesting, it made me laugh, I liked Agnes a lot, and Granny Weatherwax’s more enraging aspects were toned down. It’s not my favorite Discworld book, but it’s definitely not my least favorite, and it may be my favorite of the Witches books so far.

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

Review: Soul Music

Title: Soul Music

Series: Discworld #16 (Death #3)

Author: Sir Terry Pratchett

Genre: Low Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death, parent death (mentions), fantasy racism, war, animal death (mentions), alcohol use, violence

Spoiler Warning: This book is sixteenth in a series, but this book and this review contain only mild spoilers of the first Death subseries book, Mort.

Back Cover:

It’s hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe – especially when you have to face the new music that has entered the Discworld. It’s got a beat and you can dance to it, but… It’s alive. And it won’t fade away.

Review:

The books in the Death subseries follow a similar pattern. Death has a crisis about something (usually something related to how he’s fundamentally not a human). Death does something royally stupid about it (in Mort, that was take an apprentice like a human would; in Reaper Man and now Soul Music, that’s just not doing his job). Things go very badly. And fundamentally, nothing changes.

I think that’s the root of my frustration with the Death books. At the end of each one, Death seems to realize that he’s fundamentally different from humans – he can’t be one or even act like one without horrible consequences. But then in the next Death book, he does it all over again. He learns nothing, and his actions overall change nothing. It minimally affects people he interacts with or who have to deal with him not doing his job, but consequences are always fixed by the end of the book. In fact, in this book, absolutely everything is undone and everyone forgets what happened, so there’s barely a point to having the story happen in the first place.

I don’t know if it’s some kind of commentary on the unchanging nature of death or what, but I wish he’d learn his lesson already. He is an interesting character, and I want to see him in plots where he actually gets to actively do something instead of just run away from his job and fail at being a human.

The books in the Death subseries are never all that much about death, either the character or the concept. Soul Music was instead about music. But it doesn’t actually get there initially. Death tries to master the human art of forgetting by joining the Klatchian Foreign Legion and drinking a lot of alcohol. Since we can’t have the exact same plot as Reaper Man, Death’s granddaughter Susan fills in for him. Her sections started off some interesting themes of education getting in the way of observable reality and how humans cope. And then it just lost the track of those because the music is the big thing in this book.

Although Susan is a fairly major player and Death gets some page time, the bulk of the plot focuses around Imp. He’s a country lad who came to Ankh-Morpork to make music, where he forms a band with the troll Cliff and the dwarf Glod and invent “Music With Rocks In.” It’s an obvious parody of rock music, and the band quickly becomes obvious parodies of rock stars – Imp’s full name even translates to “bud of the holly.”

I had a hard time with the characters. For supposedly being a book in the Death subseries, Death gets hardly any page time at all. Susan was supposedly seventeen, but she acted more like she was twelve. And Imp didn’t get much of a chance to be a character because he spent most of the book being basically possessed by music. The characters really seemed to be second to the ideas: Music, its effects on people, its role as a fundamental part of the universe. And a very heavy satire of young people and the rock and roll craze of 1960s-1990s. (A full half of the Discworld Wiki page for this book is a list of rock and roll culture references this book makes.)

That’s not to say it was all bad. There are plenty of Sir Terry’s signature witticisms and several genuinely funny moments. Characters from previous books, including the Unseen University wizards and C.M.O.T. Dibbler, are involved – and Archchancelor Ridcully is frankly hilarious. But this is the most specifically and heavily satirical Discworld book I’ve read so far, and since most of the rock and roll culture being satirized happened before I was even born, most of the satire fell flat for me. It’s not necessarily a bad book. It’s just not one that particularly worked for me.

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