I recently finished reading Terry Pratchett’s most recent Discworld novel, Monstrous Regiment, and was a bit surprised when a board search didn’t turn up any threads about it. I know there are a bunch of Discworld fans here, so I thought I’d get the discussion going. I’ll avoid explicit spoilers for now, although there will be some unboxed reference to general plot elements.
To begin, here’s a basic summary of the story:
As the book opens our heroine, Polly, is preparing to run off and join the army. This involves disguising herself as a boy. Her homeland, Borogravia, is in the midst of yet another lengthy war with a neighboring state, and things aren’t going well. But Polly doesn’t really care about politics or the state religion of Nugganism, she’s interested in finding her brother. He went off to serve some time back and never returned. Polly is accepted into the military and makes her way across hostile terrain with a sort of Discworld equivelant of the Band of Brothers. Their youthful spunk catches the attention of Ankh-Morpork journalist William deWorde, who (along with Otto the vampire photographer) helps make them media heroes. Polly and friends also manage to impress Sam Vimes, one of the A-M representatives in the multi-national Alliance against Borogravia. In the end they all play an important role in changing the course of the war and the path of the nation.
Now for the analysis!
Looking at the Discworld series as a whole, Monstrous Regiment seems most similar in tone to the also-recent Night Watch. It’s darker and more serious than most of the other books. There are still funny parts, especially those involving Lt. Blouse, but I wouldn’t consider it a humorous novel. The fantastic Discworld setting is very much in the background. (I don’t think the Great A’Tuin was mentioned at all!) I don’t believe there is any magic, although there is a religious miracle. The only real fantasy elements are several supernatural or non-human supporting characters: a couple of vampires, a werewolf, a troll, an Igor, and a few zombies. Like Night Watch, it’s easy to imagine this book’s setting being shifted to historic or contemporary Planet Earth with only minor rewrites.
The depiction of a society stagnating under an oppressive and corrupt religion/theocracy was reminiscent of Small Gods, but Nugganism doesn’t play the same prominent role in Monstrous Regiment that Omnianism did in that novel. Actually, I felt that Nugganism was rather underexplored, given how important it was to the story. Although Monstrous Regiment most closely resembles two Discworld novels I rank among the best of the series, for some reason it doesn’t seem as good as them. It was still a good book and I enjoyed reading it, but it wasn’t all that I expected or that I think it could have been. I hate to criticize it too much since I didn’t think it was bad, but given all I’ve come to expect from Pratchett/Discworld I can’t seem to keep myself from going over the flaws.
First, there seemed to be too many characters without enough development. The Regiment of the title consists of the heroine plus seven other young recruits, and it was well into the book before I could keep them straight. Even after finishing it I didn’t feel that I “knew” them the way I did other Discworld characters. Several seemed to possess only the traits directly needed to further the plot. Some disappeared for long stretches for little reason.
The twists that came near the end failed to be surprising. Some were repetitive to the point of being silly, but not silly enough to be funny. Worse than that, I felt the book had been building up to something far more shocking about one of the major characters, so the final pay-off was a bit of a letdown. Another late-in-the-game revelation was so predictable that even the other characters barely paid attention. The only surprise was that the character in question had waited so long to reveal a “secret” that by that point was obviously something everyone else would have been completely accepting of. No explanation was given for this strange behavior.
Finally, although the story takes place against the backdrop of a war and our heroes are supposedly in constant danger, their situation didn’t come across as all that menacing to me. I don’t think I’ve ever before come away from a book thinking that it would have been improved by killing off one of the major characters, at least not unless I had a particular annoying major character in mind. In MR there isn’t anyone among the major characters that I’d single out as deserving to die, but if one of them had I think it would have done a lot to bring home the horrors of war. Given that Pratchett has never shied away from killing characters, I’m not sure why he didn’t do this in a book about soldiers fighting in a bloody war. IIRC the only deaths depicted are nameless soldiers and guards, mostly from the opposing side, and there wasn’t even much of that. We’re told that huge numbers of people have died in this war, but we never really “see” it. However, I think Pratchett does do a good job of addressing (and not without humor) the issue of permanently disabled veterans, something not dwelt upon by many war stories.
However, to close on a positive note, I have to really give Pratchett credit for avoiding an easy happy ending. As is usual for the Discworld books the ending is fairly happy, but not improbably so. Borogravia doesn’t change overnight, and there’s still a lot of work to be done. Many of the characters settle into a comfortable, ordinary life, but Polly and one friend strike out into the world once again. They realize that their bed of laurels is a comfortable cage, and are determined to do their best to further practical good in their still-unstable country.
