Thoughts on Monstrous Regiment and the new Thud!

[owl]

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.

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Oh, MR is most definitely Peninsular War at the very earliest. Terry has been moving Discworld along so that now, after Going Postal, it's in the height of the late Victorian period - and Thud implies that at least child-rearing has moved into the early to mid 20th century. Although Sybil was *always* there. You could stick Sybil in a Sayers book and no-one would blink twice. She could be Peter Wimsey's aunt quite easily.

[owl]

Well, it doesn't have to be linear time, does it? Even in the last, say ten years or so of Vimes' lifetime Discworld tech has moved on far more rapidly than the Roundworld equivalent. It doesn't map exactly. The clacks are evidently meant to be the equivalent of email. Then, considering the glued-together nature of Discworld history, it could be the Discworld's genuine 19th century in Borogravia while it's late-20th in Ankh-Morpork.

Yes, Lady Sybil was always in the 1920s or so. Although IMO she'd be more at home in a Christie than a Sayers.

[hermione-like.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I can't wait for Thud. I love the Watch books the best. :) I hope we see more of Polly and Maladict(a) as well. I haven't seen a lot of people saying they liked Monstrous Regiment, and while I wouldn't call it my favorite Pterry book, I still enjoyed it. :)

[niff.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely. Me too. Add in Igorina!!! I did enjoy MR a lot - probably b/c Maladicta reminds me of my good friend. :-)

When does Thud come out again?

...looking forward to another Watch book...!

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I love the Watch books. My majour Pterry-related bummer right now is that the ones I haven't read are all Rincewind books. I know I'll like them, just since they're PTerry, but still.

[niff.livejournal.com]

Heh. I can understand the sentiment. I'm on the DEATH books, and they are funny, but I miss Vimes and Carrot :-)

[misscato.livejournal.com]

I know people somewhere are probably saying, 'Oh, not another City Watch book! We're sick of Vimes!'

who's saying that????!!!

ACH! im gonna give you such a kickin'!!!!

[owl]

Oh, not me! I love Vimes with a great and t00by love. It's just a few people on discworld and AFP that I've seen saying that there are too many Vimes books.

Pfft. As if there could be too much Pterry, in any form!

[conuly]

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.

*blinkblinkblink*

*cracks up*

I have to write this now. All I need is an illustrator.

[owl]

I think Pterry is already writing it :-D

[dazz.livejournal.com]

How many other wars are you familiar with where shell-shocked soldiers talk about helicopters and looking out for Charlie? =p

[owl]

Well, I'd never heard of 'Charlie', and most armies have helicopters.

[lastingtwilight.livejournal.com]

I want a 'where's my cow' picture book :D

[owl]

I think it's being published at the same time as Thud.

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

I always secretly pray for another Watch book, so right now I feel as if my good luck has to run out some time - we've been getting so many.

I think they (along with the stand-alone semi-Watch books) just provide the most scope for storytelling. Pterry is on record as saying he can't really think of anywhere else to take Granny Weatherwax after Carpe Jugulum, Rincewind has found a niche in the SoD series, and Susan needs a threat to the existence of the universe to set her books in motion. (The trouble is, Death/Susan's traditional enemies are the Auditors, and they've been...done to death, a little. They need a new threat.)

But Pterry could write a history of economics in nineteenth century Romania and we'd still read it. (He could probably make it interesting, too.)

[owl]

Pterry is on record as saying he can't really think of anywhere else to take Granny Weatherwax after Carpe Jugulum

Hah! I knew it!! Am I good, or am I good? I hadn't actually heard that before I wrote this post.

What's SoD, if you don't mind my asking?

[oliveoyl.livejournal.com]

I am so excited! I love Watch books. I hope Carrot gets something interesting to do in this one. :D

[bethos.livejournal.com]

Hooray! More Vimesy! :D

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think Rincewind has undergone a little bit of character development, in that he's sort of changed from a sneaky coward, to a nicer and more philosophical coward, to a coward who does brave things because he knows he'll be forced into them anyway. Still, though, he's usually quite static WITHIN a book. I definitely think we'll be seeing less of him in the future, although he might show up for some cameos, since he's back in Ankh-Morpork and all.

I get the feeling that one appealing thing about the Vimes/Watch books is that they can bring in a lot of other inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork, and sort of use the city as a character. Of course, there are an increasing number of books that do this without concentrating on Vimes, like The Truth and Going Postal.

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

There was a note in The Art of Discworld saying that there was at least one more Rincewind book "out there".

[undeadgoat.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to Thud! mostly because we'll see Angua and Carrot interacting, which hasn't really happened in any new books since I started reading Discworld, or for a while before that. I want to know what they talked about on the way home in Fifth Elephant, dammit, not see brief cameos of them speaking to each other in The Truth -- I think they were both on-camera at once, at any rate . . .

Also, I absolutely positively cannot get enough of Ankh-Morpork. Never never never. So I like Watch books.

[kemi.livejournal.com]

I'm really looking forward to the cow book. XD

[psychedellic.livejournal.com]

Any idea when the Thud paperback is out? I never seem to find the hard bound versions anywhere. :(

[dreamkin.livejournal.com]

My best bet would be some time next year.

[karet.livejournal.com]

Vimes is my favorite. More Vimes!

[rosin-dubh.livejournal.com]

Maladict(a) is indeed hallucinating scenes of the Vietnam war - in particular from the movie Apocalypse Now in some instances.

Freaky movie. If you don't like war, don't watch it. It's been 10 years since I saw it, and it still freaks me out.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

Borogravia exported fine and expensive chocolates until Nuggan forbid his followers from eating chocolate. *shakes head* That was such a bad god.

[byrons-brain.livejournal.com]

YES! another watch book.... I'm really looking forward to it.....

[gillianboardman.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure that Susan is played out. Pterry could always try writing about her in her governess job and not have her saving the world. I'm sure her sharp wit would be amusing without a threat by the auditors.

Maladict's hallucination...

[(Anonymous)]

I think Maladict was hallucinating about a war from a different time - it was fought in a jungle, had flying machines, and the enemy was called Charlie.
I think...

XD