It’s from Thud. There are other references to his experiences in that book too. 
Did riding the Damn Slam remind anybody else of the ship riding the big wave in Nation?
Ah thank you! I’ve read that one quite a few times, but it’s been a while. And now it’s going to be up next.
Just finished. I liked it, and it was a good addition to the Vimes stable, but not the best in my view. (That would be Night Watch)
Seeing as Thud wasnt very good (way too redundant with The Fifth Elephant and some of the other Watch books)…Funny, though, when I read the plot summary, I thought “Oh, no, another Thud”.
Pratchett has a tendency to repeat himself, sometimes it will still be a good book despite that (like *Making Gold *to *Going Postal *or *Men at Arms *to Guards, Guards), but it tends to leave the reader with a sense of confusion between similarly-plotted books.
Minor nitpick : Making Money not Making Gold.
I liked it. Much better than Unseen Academicals, and the goblins didn’t seem forced at all. Willikins is a treat as always, and the domestic scenes between Sam and Sybil were obviously written by a man long married. In fact, all of the married men seemed very real, and very married.
eta: Death never made an appearance, which is unusual but not unique.
It was a lot better than his last two.
I thought it felt exactly like the other books starring Vimes, which is something I’m not a fan of to be honest.
I always thought that Vime’s story was pretty much done with by the end of Night Watch, but he seems to be Pratchett’s favourite mouthpiece for social observation, something I’m fine with, I just wish he’d use someone else.
That said, less than perfect Pratchett is still better than almost everyone else out there, and although he does retread a lot of themes, we get some nice observations, I particularly liked Sybil’s little point about not confusing value and worth.
This book does give me some hope that he would be able to find a couple more decent books in him, but frankly, at this point, I wouldn’t blame him if he wants to put them aside now and spend some time with his family on a tropical island somewhere, eating potatoes.
I don’t think I could have put it any better. These are my thoughts almost to a tee.
Pretty poor book, even by Nightwatch/Vimes category. Pratchett is best with dialogue but not much in this one. Way too much of Vimes’ internal monologue. (Although there’s something of a dialogue to it, now, I guess.)
Even the part you wait for where the Big Bads do their rants near the end is done badly. Mainly in 2nd hand relating.
Structurally very weak.
Too many times Vimes/Wilikins/etc. anticipating the bad guys’ moves. Way too much.
Ah, creeping humanoid species syndrome. (Which *True Blood *and others also suffer from.) It’s strange there is no attempt to really link it to Unseen. Please folks. Stop adding new species to the universe. Enough already, deal with the ones you have.
I really, really, really think Ventari should forget the Lady and go after the crossword puzzle editor. It would be a match made in heaven. Or some other afterlife place.
And no Death. That’s an automatic negative 400 stars.
But…the fact that we’ve never heard of goblins before is the whole point. Missing that is missing the purpose of the book. They’ve always been there, but they’ve never gotten any space because, you know, they are just vermin after all.
They haven’t been just plopped in. Not entirely anyway. They’ve been described, mostly in passing I’ll admit, in other books. One even got some dialog, I’m pretty sure in Thud!
IIRC then in Unseen Academicals one of the humanoid characters believes he is a goblin, although this turns out not to be the case.
Really? That’s rare. If correct, I guess Pratchett must have been going for some irony.
Or, if there was no organic reason for Death to have a good line, I’d rather Pratchett leave him out than awkwardly shoehorn him in just to please fans.
I liked it, but there were some serious flaws, I felt:
Way too much monologuing, and I always felt Willkins was better as a sort of mysterious character. He was brought out to the fore far too much.
I liked the goblins subplot at lot, even if it did come out of nowhere, and I could see it from a mile away. I have to admit, that’s one thing I did miss - no surprises. I saw all of it coming a mile away.
Everybody seemed a little different. Everyone seemed almost maybe 40 degrees off where they used to be.
And Young Sam’s obsession with poo got dreary after a while. Sure, it was cute to start with, but that was his only characterization - that he liked poo.
The bad guy reminded me a lot of Carcer.
And I got really sick of the “henpecked husband” crap.
All that being said, the book was emotional, it was strong, and it was powerful, so I still liked it.
The image of the murdered goblin girl haunts me a bit. Begging for her life.
I really would have liked to hear more about the soul jar with the little baby that was eaten and had to be given to the other goblin girl. I was really looking forward to that moment, and when it happened, it happened off-screen.
I guess I’m going to have to have another try at it, but… I think this is the only DW book I’ve had to put down because I was unable to finish it. I found it that bad.
I’m going to be charitable and chalk it up to the Alzheimer’s.
Pterry’s mentioned goblins before - in Unseen Academicals, but also in Equal Rites and other books, there is mention of them:
and
Of course, how this gibes with the depiction of gnolls as ambulatory garbage heaps in Jingo and *Feet of Clay * is an exercise left for the reader…
Well, I guess I’ll run counter to the trend and say that I loved it. I agree that the pacing was different than some previous Discworld books, but I quite liked the slower, multi-faceted ending (as opposed to Big Climax followed by Minor Denouement). I loved the look at a changing Vimes - just a bit older, just a bit wiser, just a bit more of a family man.
It was… OK. Vimes is turning into a bit of a Mary-Sue, with everyone knowing who he is and admiring him. A cocktail named after him is instantly the most popular one everywhere, the pub’s renamed after him, everyone on the river loves him even though he wasn’t the one driving the boat… Next up, he’ll get elected God.
I also got rather fed up of Willikins. Yes, he’s a butler who looks weak but is really vicious; I got that the first ten times it was mentioned.
There also wasn’t as much humour as usual.
I’m trying to think of good points to focus on too, but can’t come up with any. A lot of it was OK, but there’s nothing that stands out as particularly good.
There were quite a few deaths, including two significant ones.
I really thought after the last book that Vimes’ story was done. He was Duke, he had a baby on the way, he had pretty much established his credentials and the Watch, he was rich, he was no longer a drunk…I mean it was a great ascension story. This one certainly did feel a bit unneccessary.