Haven’t read Thud! yet (saving it as my post-exam treat and avoiding all spoilers).
I did flick through Where’s My Cow? though…I want a baby, just so I can read them this book. That’s wrong, isn’t it? It’s very funny, in a slightly sick way.
“Is that my daddy?”
" Buggrit. Millenium Hand and Shrimp!"
“That’s not my daddy! That’s Foul Ole Ron!”
My daughter likes Where’s My Cow? when hubby reads it ot her. She understands too much and chews on the book though. I have been training her not to abuse books!
The torque thingy is, for practical purposes, infinite power. It could run all the factories, power a subway, and generate heat for the entire discworld. Had we such a device, the big problem would be venting the heat to space because we would generate enough heat to change the world. It is magic, so it doesn’t have practicle limits.
As for the vampire chick thing:That is just narrativm. Isn’t it plain from everything you have watched in TV and movies that the sort of limitation that would require females to end up naked and fighting have to be? It it the nature of that universe.
No duds?! No duds?! I’m the only one who read The Last Continent, then, eh? Terry had a serious slump there for a few years, man. I love that he’s back in the saddle but I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t happen.
I liked The Last Continent. But I will grant that it took three readings or so to get the full effect.
Most of the Rincewind books are duds for me. Interesting Times is the only one of that set that really did anything for me.
Granny Weatherwax has it too. In the same book, she faces down her own dark side and wins.
Granny and Vimes have never met, have they? Now that’s something I’d like to see…
heeey… I liked Last Continent.
I don’t see the point of threads which consist of more than 50% spoiler space and are completely unreadably when you skip the spoilers, so I’m going to keep things in the clear and just try to be a little circumspect about revealing plot points. If you haven’t read the book yet and are really paranoid about such things, don’t read the rest of this post.
While I’ve never actually disliked a Discworld book, Thud! left me a bit… Unfulfilled. As if Pratchett finally started treating his work as a job, which requires talent and competence but not necessarily passion.
The book wasn’t bad, exactly, but there were too may things I found disappointing. There’s the blatant product placement for Where’s my cow of course, which seems to be aimed at fanatical Pratchett collectors rather than at parents with children. There’s the too easy, too convenient, too predictable and too politically correct resolution of the age-old conflict between dwarves and trolls. There’s a lot of elements which hold great promise but don’t really get used to their full potential, such as Mr. Shine. There’s the unimaginative resolution of Vimes’ “affliction”.
In fact, I think the book would have been much better without said affliction – if it had just been about conflicts between humans in various shapes and sizes, as in his other books. Even in a world filled with magic and with fantasy beings, one of the themes of Pratchett’s work has always been that human nature is quite sufficient to explain all of the evil that people regularly do to each other, so a supernatural agitator was quite unnecessary for this story – and indeed, it didn’t really add anything.
And then there’s the use of the various Discworld species as metaphors for our own world. In the earliest Discworld books, those species were just parodies of common fantasy tropes. Later, his writing became sophisticated enough to get you thinking about all kinds of things, but it was still a world of its own – you had to apply its lessons to our own world all by yourself. In Thud, his characters and situations are too tightly and obviously linked to the real world, and that limits his freedom in what he can do with them.
I didn’t mind the various hot naked chick scenes, but they did confirm my general impression of the book: fun in an easy, lightweight sort of way, but a bit disappointing coming from a writer who has been “accused of literature” in the past. I don’t think Terry needs to be afraid of that accusation, this time around.
I think I’ll go and read Night Watch again, or maybe The Fifth Elephant.
Oh yeah? Well, …
Nyah nyah.
Once he chose the secret of Koom Valley as the subject for the book, a resolution was called for that would have some significant effect. Someone in the book — maybe Vimes — even notes this. If we discovered with certainty it were the trolls who started it, or the dwarfs… who cares? Therefore the answer couldn’t be either.
Of course there’s no reason they both couldn’t have been ambushed by a third party. And he needn’t have chosen Koom Valley as a topic at all.
On the contrary. It was essential. Another consistent theme of Pratchett’s is the power of belief to create gods and demons, to make reality follow narrative convention, and so on. If every dwarf believed the trolls were to blame, and every troll believed the reverse, you might get that superstition-being as we saw in the book.
I rather like this aspect of Discworld, where Pterry remains consistent in applying his world’s logic, but I can see how one might find it boring and unimaginative to revisit the same ideas.
That seems about as cynical a take on it as possible. Pratchett’s sold a bajillion books and is already as “rich as Creosote,” so I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that he’s just trying to make more money. My take on it is that Pratchett is writing about the stuff he cares about at this point, and since Vimes and Young Sam are featured so prominently throughout, the whole issue of fatherhood is very important to him. Those scenes came first, and then a separate children’s book came out of that.
I know next to nothing about Pratchett himself; I was assuming it was all semi-autobiographical and that he’s recently had a child. Even if not, that doesn’t change my take on it much – it seems pretty crass to dismiss it as a marketing opportunity.
“Politically correct” how? The book is allegory and takes place over a limited frame of time, but the basic truth of it is universal: there’s no “age-old conflict” so complicated that it can’t be overcome just by showing personal responsibility and overcoming your prejudices. It’s simple, and it’s true. Whenever people in real-life situations fall back on the convenient “politically correct” phrase, it’s just laziness. It’s much easier to say that there’s just too much history there to ever find a solution, than it is to deal with our own prejudices and get over them.
Well of course, Discworld is a series of books, and people are already wondering what’s left to talk about. If he weren’t introducing new characters with more to be resolved, then there wouldn’t be much left to write about.
Again, the book is allegory. And I think the Summoning Dark was essential for that – it showed that it wasn’t just a case of an age-old conflict with thousands of years of political machinations and distrust that can be overcome with working together; that would’ve actually been more pat than saying “a demon did it.” The point is made much stronger by making a character out of racism and prejudice and revenge.
He makes a point of repeating how Vimes is always straight and dependable and does what’s right, then shows how even Vimes can be overcome with this irrational hatred and lust for revenge. And then Vimes uses his common sense and human nature to cast it out. It’s not just a conflict or misunderstanding, and it’s also not some ridiculously complicated history of transgressions and political machinations too involved to overcome. It’s just stupid, simple, irrational hatred that turns good men into evil ones.
That’s a fair criticism. I don’t agree with it, but I see your point. I think that in this case, Pratchett made the right choice in showing that the metaphors didn’t need to be veiled or sophisticated, because the issue is a simple one. Racism and prejudice are stupid, and there’s no excuse for them.
As for subtlety, I think he did a good job in having Angua and Sally involved so heavily in the story. None of the dwarfs or trolls really get a chance to become characters, but he tells a lot of the story from Angua’s POV. And that’s what gives the bigger story some depth – you see a parallel level of racism in Discworld, you see how it’s not just as simple as “dwarfs v. trolls” (or “black v. white” or “western v. Asian” or whatever your pet interpretation would’ve been from reading thing book), and you see how it affects everyone, even the good guys.
It wasn’t until I read this thread that I took them as “hot naked chick” scenes. I thought they were all played up for comedic effect. As well as more not-so-subtle allegory – once Angua and Sally were forced to drop all the surface (their clothes), they can recognize that they’ve got more similarities than differences, and they have similar problems.
I wasn’t overwhelmed with Thud!, but it’s a solid entry and the message of it is indisputable. I wouldn’t point to it as a great work on its own, but I think it can be accused of literature in the context of the rest of the series.
Fish and SolGrundy, thank you for your responses – both of you make very good points. My apologies, but it may be another day or so before I can reply to them…
I wonder: way back when Pratchett wrote a science-fiction novel about space explorers discovering a flat world. I wonder if the Devices are going to turn out to be relics of a quasi-scientific origin for the Discworld? With magic turning out to be based on some Clarkenly advanced super-science?
Christ, I hope not.
Heh, no worries. And on re-reading, I see that it sounds like I’m being more argumentative than I’d intended, so no harm meant on my part.
In re: the Hot Naked Chick scenes… they were very familiar. And then I figured out why.
This is a Carl Hiaasen novel, is what it is. We’ve had a Dortmunder novel too, (Guards, Guards)
Or het could have chosen to not reveal the secret. Koom Valley started out as a one-line joke in Men at arms, about how each side had its own history about who started the battle and who won it. That happens all the time, and doesn’t really need an explanation. Delving into what really happened is a bit like trying to explain a joke. And the “it was all a big misunderstanding” explanation seems like a cop-out. As if the author is saying that if there really had been an ambush of one side by the other, then their descendents many centuries later would be justified in keeping the feud going?
I don’t mind that part; in fact, I usually like that theme in Pratchett’s work as much as you do. It’s just that in this case, it seems that the concept didn’t really go anywhere and wasn’t integrated with the rest of the story. He’s done the same thing much better, several times already.
Also, consistency with his previous work is exactly what I missed in this one, in certain ways. Go back to the earlier books (before Feet of Clay, approximately) and re-read how dwarves and trolls were originally portrayed, and compare that with Thud!. Mind you, I’m not saying I would have wanted him to stick with those original one-dimensional, one-joke characters troughout all thirty-odd books. But the price that Pratchett (and his readers) pay for having fantasy species used as transparent allegories for ethnic groups in our own world, is that the real, non-cultural differences between the species have to get downplayed almost to the point where they don’t exist anymore. And thus, the Discworld loses a bit of what makes it special.
Well, I can only judge the book by its contents, and it does feel like product placement. I don’t know his motives, it’s true that he doesn’t seem like the kind of author who would stoop so low, and it’s certainly true that he doesn’t need the money. All I can say is that it rubbed me the wrong way.
But this is not a real-life situation, it’s a book, and the author controls everything that happens in the book. In the real world, if evidence turned up that the historical foundation for the centuries-long bloody strife between [pick any two ethnic groups] was based on a misunderstanding, and relations between the two groups improved as a result, I’d be elated. In a book, it smacks of lazy writing and avoidance of the big issues. As I said to Fish: if it had turned out that one side did ambush the other, would that justify the hatred between their descendants today? That’s what I meant by saying that plot point was too easy and politically correct.
Maybe that’s my problem: I’m just not a great fan of allegory. By all means use your story to make me think about real-world issues, but the story should stand on its own as well. And if you are going to use your book as a not-too-subtle way of pushing a message, it’d better be something more original than “racism and prejucide are bad, mmkay?” I mean, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that message, it’s just that most of us have already heard it many times since childhood, and fortunately most of us already agree with it.
For a great example of Pratchett treating the same kind of theme in a much more interesting way, see Jingo. It starts out seemingly predictably, with the stupid bigoted Ankh-Morporkians oppressing and victimizing the poor Klatchians who are just trying to make a living. But then he brings both sides to life (even though the story is told mostly from the Ankh-Morpork p.o.v.) and shows us the complexity and humanness of the “enemy”, warts and all.
“Truly treat all men as equal, mister Vimes – allow us Klatchians to be scheming bastards as well.”
Apart from being a nice twist, it also gets you thinking about how the stereotypical KKK/Stormfront/“those lazy criminals should go back to their own land instead of living on welfare over here” racism is not the only kind, and there are other kinds which are more benign but which still assign a subtle kind of inferiority to a group of people, by denying them their individuality. And maybe it gets you to look inside yourself and question whether or not you are as free from biases as you thought you were.
Now that is literature! I’m not saying it’s a completely original concept of course, but it’s much more interesting to me than Thud!'s rather bland treatment of a rather bland (however worthy) message.
Sure, but in the case of Mr. Shine, there’s too much implicit promise and too little delivered. From the trolls’ point of view, it’s like having a book in which Jesus Christ returns to Earth in all his glory, and then doesn’t really do anything except run a Bible study group and give the protagonist a couple of hints every now and then. Maybe it’s because there is too much “telling” and not enough “showing” about what he is, a problem which Pratchett doesn’t normally have.
Sure, it’s a simple issue, and what you say is certainly true. It’s just that Pratchett often manages to make me look at something from a different angle, or point out the complexity underlying a seemingly simple subject. That doesn’t mean he should have tried to muddle the water of “racism is bad”, but if that’s really all there is to say about it then maybe he should have picked a different subject for a book-length allegory.
Just to make this clear: I don’t hate Thud!, I think that by most standard’s it’s a good book and I certainly don’t disagree with its message. It’s just that Pratchett manages to raise my expectations even further with almost every new book, and inevitably he had to fail to live up to them sooner or later. Doesn’t mean there weren’t parts I liked or anything, it’s just that I found it a bit disappointing compared to his best work.
I was going to write up a big, long post on why Carrot’s role in the book was not beliable, but I lost the spirit of the post and it died. Instead, I’m going to comment on something else that somebody already hit on:
[spoiler]Vimes will be the next Patrician. We see that he’s really been groomed by Vetinari, and now the last piece of the puzzle is in place: Vimes understands the importance of intelligence and information. With the Goosberry and what’s-his-face the clerk turned watchman, Vimes will become on par w/ Vetinari in terms of power and influence. He is perfectly placed to be Patrician. Obviously, there are a host of issues that would make the story of his ascent quite interesting.
Carrot, then, will/should be the next watch commander. Hopefully that will bring back his basic Carrotness, i.e., the real, but uncrowned king of Ankh-Morpork.[/spoiler]
I wondered if they were a sort of nod to Strata(was it?). Indestructible and possibly as old as the Disk. I’m sure PTerry will not resort to a Lucas style rationalization of magic. How the heck could any technology generate narrativium 
[del]Thud[/del]Bump! I just returned this to the Towson Library. I can’t find anything I didn’t like about it, and I simply don’t see the points expressed by those who did. A great book, all the way round.
P.S. Vimes being drilled to be the leader is too obvious. He might think/get paranoid that he is being drilled, however…