My S.O. (manager of a bookstore) just brought home an Advance Readers Copy of Monstrous Regiment, the new Terry Pratchett book.
I know what I’ll be doing tonight!!!
I feel sorry for poor Vimes. All he wanted was to be a good copper, and now he’s stuck doing politics. And he still can’t wear shoddy boots either. 
Ooooo! Can’t wait until it comes to my local bookshop. I’d also like to get the Truckers/Diggers/Wings (can’t spell Bromilad to save my life) trilogy.
I finished it this morning.
It’s good. It’s got the same sort of feel as Night Watch, another very good Discworld book.
No spoilers here, though. But it’s good…
It’s kind of cool to read Vimes as a non-central character.
Are there any other DW books with him as non-central?
I am near the beginning.
Why is there a different cover? Is it so that they can have a more American style uniform?
That’s not a remotely American-style uniform on the US cover. At any rate, the whole different covers things was discussed in some depth here.
I do find it a little disappointing that Pratchett wrote this absolutely amazing book, and most of the conversations I’ve seen about it have focused on the smegging bookcover, which is like going to see the Mona Lisa and complaining about the picture frame.
Miller I expect most people don’t want to spoil it. I certainly don’t.
The Truth has Vimes and the Watch, albeit as supporting characters.
Hmph. Well, I wasn’t going to ressurect a Monstrous Regiment thread for this, but I did want to say that I was pretty disappointed with it. Of course, that didn’t stop me from going to see Pterry in San Diego Thursday night. Please don’t become homicidal with envy.
An amazingly hysterical book!
Actually, Pterry talked about how much fun it was to write these characters whom we know so well from someone else’s perspective. Vimes in MR and The Truth and Granny in The Wee Free Men and A Hatful of Sky (Which is going to be great, judging by the one scene he described to us.)
At the 1998 Discworld Convention, Pterry personally picked me to serve on his All-Star Discworld Trivia team. Get as envious as you like.
Obligatory plug: if you didn’t already know, next August sees the 2004 Discworld Convention in Hinckley, UK. Pterry will be in attendance, there’ll be at least one reading from an unpublished Discworld book - last year’s Con had readings from Night Watch three months before publication and The Wee Free Men six or eight months before - and all other kinds of lunatic fun. Find details at www.dwcon.org, and I hope to see you there.
OTOH, he’s sort of becoming a policeman for countries, like there wasn’t in Jingo.
I like seeing the Watch and the Times from the outside - you get to see how far they’ve come.
[ultra-pedant]
Actually, the uniform on the American cover exactly mirrors that of the Colonial Williamsburg Fife and Drum Corps, who wear decently historically accurate replica uniforms. Well, almost exactly. They wear pants. Anyway, I am of the opinion that the cover artist visited Colonial Williamsburg, and the image stuck.
[/ultra-pedant]
Pterry was in Santa Clara last night, and I got him to sign the book, but it was so crowded there was no reading and no discussion. Bummer. But he sold a lot of books!
Alright then, let me amend my comment to “Most Americans are too pig-ignorant to recognize that as an American uniform, and probably assume it’s some frou-frou European outfit from the Olden Days, which would be any time prior to, oh, about 1965 or so.”
Or at least, that’s what I thought when I saw the cover.
Waa?! Any info on it?
Another trip to Canada is in order, it seems…(It’s what I had to do for Night Watch).
Who is designing the American covers and what drugs are they taking that they think the covers aren’t crap? I understand why they’re different. I don’t understand why they’re stupid.