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Thoughts on Monstrous Regiment and the new Thud!
I was rereading Monstrous Regiment lately. It strikes me for some reason as being set in the 18th/early 19th century Discworld equivalent. Recent Ankh-Morpork books have a very contemporary feel, apart from the lack of electronics and the internal combustion engine.* MR has exhausted armies trekking through forests and fields full of root vegetables with vaguely Slavic names. (Borogravia is somewhere near Uberwald, isn't it? BTW, was is Borogravia or Mouldavia who were the chocolate exporters in ToT? Chocolate seems a very unlikely product for the Borogravia of MR!) It's got a War and Peace or Crimean feel about it.
Then there's the cartoon in the Times: it looks very like the ones that are always being shown as primary sources for 19th century history, except that it's funnier. Hmm...Fizz...Phiz?
I wouldn't mind seeing more of Polly and Maladict(a) in the Borogravian army in future books. Do you think we shall? Speaking of Maladict, what was she hallucinating when deprived of coffee? Vietnam?
Title: Thud!
Details: An old-fashioned murder mystery with political overtones.
The first line will be: "Thud! That was the noise the body made when it hit the ground."
It stars the City Watch, particularly Vimes, and takes place in Ankh-Morpork while a civil war is going on between the dwarfs and the
trolls and barricades are going up around the city.
Vimes' life is being made difficult by a government inspector looking into the Watch's efficiency. The inspector keeps sending Vimes memos along the lines of: there were two policemen in Sator Square all morning but no crimes were committed there - what, then, was their purpose? Vimes eventually drags him out onto the streets for a taste of real policing.
Lady Sybil is worrying about Vimes' health and trying to make him eat several portions of fruit and vegetables a day. In one scene, she makes a constable promise to make the Commander eat the apple she gives him, much to the constable's discomfort.
It features a scene where the Patrician persuades Vimes to hire a female vampire as a Watch officer. The vampire is 51 years old but
looks about 16.
Vimes is trying to get home on time every evening to read Where's My Cow to his young son. He puts an Ankh-Morpork twist on the story by including as characters some of the people he has met during his day:
Where's my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes 'Buggerem! Millennium hand and shrimp!'
That is not my cow. That is Foul Ole Ron.
Nobby gets a pole dancer girlfriend called Tawny - very classy, even has her own pole - whose physique is best described by saying that whenNobby stands in front of her, he's sheltered from the rain. She was once Miss May and two weeks in June. Their eyes meet when Nobby slips an IOU into her garter.
Transworld summary: Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarves, or the dwarves ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see the battle fought again, right outside his office.
With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him.
Summary taken from here
I can't wait *grin* I've been expecting a vampire in the Watch at some point since Jingo!. When Vimes was so adamant against it, it just had to happen. And the Watch seems to be 'crumbling' a lot in late books. What'll happen this time? (I make one prediction: the river patrol's boat will sink/have sunk. How. exactly, does one sink a boat in the Ankh, anyway? With a shovel?) Vimes being made to eat healthily? Priceless. Where's My Cow? Wonderful! I'm sure we could all add more. How about:
Where's my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes 'Hot sausages! Inna bun!'
That is not my cow. That is C. M. O. T. Dibbler. Do not buy his sausages-inna-bun!
ETA: Where's My Cow? is also being published in October as a separate book.
I know people somewhere are probably saying, 'Oh, not another City Watch book! We're sick of Vimes!' But Vimes, as a character, is still changing and developing new facets. There's the whole supporting cast of the Watch, Vetinari, Dibbler, the guilds and the wizards to play with.
Take the witches sequence. Granny Weatherwax is a pretty powerful character. Perhaps she has reached the end of her literary life. And now Magrat's a mother and Agnes is the new maiden...I don't want another Witches book if it means the death of Granny. And she's fine in Tiffany Aching, where the focus is on Tiffany and Granny is a supporting character. She doesn't need to develop there.
Then there's Rincewind. There's a limit to what you can do with Rincewind, because he's a static** character. All he does is run away from various things in various places. Pterry sends him to an exotic part of the Disc, he runs away, he accidentally saves the world, the end.
Death and Susan probably still have wiggle room for more stories, and at least I don't have to worry about Death dying. It's probable, though, that we may see more stand-alone books which aren't in one of the existing sequences (3 out of the last 5 have been), or the establishment of a new sequence.
Still, as long as there's more Discworld, it's all good with me.
*Apart from in the rooms of Leonard da Quirm, where it is probably forming part of an experimental toenail-clipping machine.
**According to the Theory of Special Relativity, Rincewind is stationary in Rincewind's frame of reference. Everything else tends to move backwards very rapidly, though.
Then there's the cartoon in the Times: it looks very like the ones that are always being shown as primary sources for 19th century history, except that it's funnier. Hmm...Fizz...Phiz?
I wouldn't mind seeing more of Polly and Maladict(a) in the Borogravian army in future books. Do you think we shall? Speaking of Maladict, what was she hallucinating when deprived of coffee? Vietnam?
Title: Thud!
Details: An old-fashioned murder mystery with political overtones.
The first line will be: "Thud! That was the noise the body made when it hit the ground."
It stars the City Watch, particularly Vimes, and takes place in Ankh-Morpork while a civil war is going on between the dwarfs and the
trolls and barricades are going up around the city.
Vimes' life is being made difficult by a government inspector looking into the Watch's efficiency. The inspector keeps sending Vimes memos along the lines of: there were two policemen in Sator Square all morning but no crimes were committed there - what, then, was their purpose? Vimes eventually drags him out onto the streets for a taste of real policing.
Lady Sybil is worrying about Vimes' health and trying to make him eat several portions of fruit and vegetables a day. In one scene, she makes a constable promise to make the Commander eat the apple she gives him, much to the constable's discomfort.
It features a scene where the Patrician persuades Vimes to hire a female vampire as a Watch officer. The vampire is 51 years old but
looks about 16.
Vimes is trying to get home on time every evening to read Where's My Cow to his young son. He puts an Ankh-Morpork twist on the story by including as characters some of the people he has met during his day:
Where's my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes 'Buggerem! Millennium hand and shrimp!'
That is not my cow. That is Foul Ole Ron.
Nobby gets a pole dancer girlfriend called Tawny - very classy, even has her own pole - whose physique is best described by saying that whenNobby stands in front of her, he's sheltered from the rain. She was once Miss May and two weeks in June. Their eyes meet when Nobby slips an IOU into her garter.
Transworld summary: Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarves, or the dwarves ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see the battle fought again, right outside his office.
With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him.
Summary taken from here
I can't wait *grin* I've been expecting a vampire in the Watch at some point since Jingo!. When Vimes was so adamant against it, it just had to happen. And the Watch seems to be 'crumbling' a lot in late books. What'll happen this time? (I make one prediction: the river patrol's boat will sink/have sunk. How. exactly, does one sink a boat in the Ankh, anyway? With a shovel?) Vimes being made to eat healthily? Priceless. Where's My Cow? Wonderful! I'm sure we could all add more. How about:
Where's my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes 'Hot sausages! Inna bun!'
That is not my cow. That is C. M. O. T. Dibbler. Do not buy his sausages-inna-bun!
ETA: Where's My Cow? is also being published in October as a separate book.
I know people somewhere are probably saying, 'Oh, not another City Watch book! We're sick of Vimes!' But Vimes, as a character, is still changing and developing new facets. There's the whole supporting cast of the Watch, Vetinari, Dibbler, the guilds and the wizards to play with.
Take the witches sequence. Granny Weatherwax is a pretty powerful character. Perhaps she has reached the end of her literary life. And now Magrat's a mother and Agnes is the new maiden...I don't want another Witches book if it means the death of Granny. And she's fine in Tiffany Aching, where the focus is on Tiffany and Granny is a supporting character. She doesn't need to develop there.
Then there's Rincewind. There's a limit to what you can do with Rincewind, because he's a static** character. All he does is run away from various things in various places. Pterry sends him to an exotic part of the Disc, he runs away, he accidentally saves the world, the end.
Death and Susan probably still have wiggle room for more stories, and at least I don't have to worry about Death dying. It's probable, though, that we may see more stand-alone books which aren't in one of the existing sequences (3 out of the last 5 have been), or the establishment of a new sequence.
Still, as long as there's more Discworld, it's all good with me.
*Apart from in the rooms of Leonard da Quirm, where it is probably forming part of an experimental toenail-clipping machine.
**According to the Theory of Special Relativity, Rincewind is stationary in Rincewind's frame of reference. Everything else tends to move backwards very rapidly, though.
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