Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

Hm, I usually try to come up with a witty opening section, but I've been sitting on this review for far too long as it is :-p So without further ado, we have the next book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

Overview
It's a busy time for the Watch, now that they've expanded from night duty to 'round-the-clock City Guard. One result of this is the opening of CSI: Ankh-Morpork. (Okay, so maybe the new forensics division consists of a single dwarf who managed to blow the Alchemist Guild sky-high one too many times, but it's a start) And it turns out that they need all the extra hands they can get, because someone is poisoning Vetinari and someone else is killing harmless old men. It looks like a golem is responsible for the murders, but these fantasy equivalents of robots aren't allowed to hurt people, so what's going on?

Recommended for: Everyone :-p It's not a bad place to start, if you're new to Discworld, but if you've got a choice, Guards! Guards! or Men at Arms might be better.

Parental Worries: Hmm, minor language and violence? I can't remember exactly, so probably not much. A bit of religious spoof, if that's your idea of a bad time.

Audiobook Comments: Read by Nigel Planer, who does a wonderful job as usual.

Ramblings
Three books into Discworld's Watch sequence, and various schemers in Ankh-Morpork are still trying to put a king on their ancient (and rotting) throne. Everyone seems to want a king, and if a willing candidate does not appear, they're ready to make one out of the commonest materials.

Since we've spent the last two books listening to why Vimes doesn't like kings (and you still get a bit of that, don't worry), it's interesting to finally get Carrot's side of things. Why hasn't he stepped up to claim his obvious birthright? (other than the threat of Vimes, that is) The most forthcoming answer is that the desire for power is completely against Carrot's character, a subconsious thing that ironically makes him even more suited to the throne. But assuming it's all subconsious does Carrot a bit of a disservice--as Angua points out in this book, you have to be very complex to appear as simple as Carrot. It's quite possible that he's been avoiding the crown for his own sanity; it appears that kingship tends to drive people mad, and just in case the idea hadn't occured to him before, this little adventure provides a very good demonstration.

An interesting point that I just discovered: According to The Annotated Pratchett, (which is an excellent guide to all the little historical, literary and popular references in the books) golems originated from Jewish legend, which is why they all have Yiddish names and speech patterns (at least in this book, I don't think that's kept up in the golem's later appearances).

Quotes!

"Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk [...]"--Carrot, quoting Vimes

"I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE."

"People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they´re standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don´t look quite like real science.(That is to say, the sort you can use to give something three extra legs and then blow it up) But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity."

"'Is It Frightening To Be Free?'
'You said it.'
'You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves?'
'Seems to be a major human activity, yes.'"
- Dorfl the golem tries to understand human nature

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Men at Arms was the first Discworld book I read that actually belonged to a continuing character arc, so I've always considered it to be a flagship of the series. It's not a bad place to start, either, since several new characters are introduced and the old ones are expanded upon, but there's not so much backstory that the reader gets lost. It's an excellent book, both on its own and as part of the series.

Overview
Affirmative action has come to Ankh-Morpork, but because this is Discworld, the Watch's new minority hires consist of a dwarf, a troll, and a . . . well, women aren't technically a minority, but everyone assumes that's the group Lance-Corporal Angua is representing. Captain Vimes is not thrilled with the new arrangement, but since he will shortly be married and retired, he figures it's not his problem.

Meanwhile, the young assassin Edward d'Eath, outraged at his family's fall into poverty and obscurity and increasingly obsessed with ancient royalty, thinks he has discovered the long-lost heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork and plots to put him back in his rightful place. A half-crazed assassin shouldn't have been too much trouble, but Edward manages to get his hands on a strange new weapon that gives him incredible power--the gonne. In a world where the crossbow is the height of weapons technology, even a single firearm can cause quite a bit of trouble, especially since this one seems to have a mind of its own.

Other topics on the table for your enjoyment include clowns, dogs, monarchy, the properties of springs and the superconductivity of silicon. They all fit together, I promise.

Recommended for: Everyone. You don't have a good enough excuse not to.

Parental Worries: As before, these books are written for adults, but the target audience mostly comes through in the jokes. Unlike most Discworld books, there is some sex, but never actually 'on screen' as it were. You can figure out what happens, but they don't spell out any details.

Audiobooks: Read by the amazing Nigel Planer, who takes the already colorful characters into a whole new dimension.

Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Low)
One of the reasons I'm particularly fond of this book is that Carrot and Vimes are both over the growing pains from their first novel. Carrot is no longer the green kid that arrested the leader of the Thieves Guild--he's solid gold, and so is everything he touches from here on out. It would be annoying, if he didn't make up for it by being embarrassingly earnest and completely hopeless at anything involving subterfuge. Vimes is . . . well, I can't say he's entirely reformed his ways, 'cause that's half his charm, but he's definitely benefited from having Sybil to look after him, and this book is where he really starts moving up in the world. (kicking and screaming all the way, but moving up nonetheless ^_~ )

I can't decide what Pratchett is trying to say (if anything) about gun control in general, because the circumstances in the story don't really apply to anything in the real world today. (One gun in the world vs. a world full of guns) He makes a couple of points that seem to be ridiculing bits of gun rights activism, but Pratchett is too smart to suggest that all guns should be illegal, he actually makes a point in another book about the stupidity of outlawing all weapons, so that only criminals are armed. I doubt it's even an issue in Britain, so the gonne may just be a convenient plot device, and not a social commentary :-p

Quotes Time!

"'There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad.'
Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror.
'Gosh.'"

"There were such things as Dwarf gods (...) they'd seen the need for gods as a sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, 'Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-coninuum!' or 'Aaargh, primitive-and-out-moded-concept on a crutch!'"

"Dwarfs are very attached to gold. Any highwayman demanding ‘Your money or your life’ had better bring a folding chair and packed lunch and a book to read while the debate goes on."

"But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
--Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.

"‘Coalface? In the Watch?’
Dink. ‘Corporal Carrot says there’s some good buried somewhere in everyone,’ said Detritus.
‘And what’s your job, Detritus?’
Dink. ‘Engineer in charge of deep mining operations, sah!’"

"Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness."

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

I guess it’s about time I started reviewing Terry Pratchett books on here, least any Discworld fans lured in by the blog’s title accuse me of false advertising. Not that I need an excuse to re-read any of them for the fifth or six time, I’d do it eventually anyway ^_^

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is a series of fantasy comedy/satire--Douglas Adams meets Tolkien, Mark Twain with a more whimsical twist, Monty Python in novel form. They're not only hilarious and fun, but full of little truths and big truths that make you stop and think.

Discworld books tend to follow several different sets of characters; the most closely followed are the wizarding faculty of Unseen University, a trio of witches in the small mountain kingdom of Lancre, and the city watch of Ankh-Morpork, Discworld's largest city. Several minor sets of characters also feature in multiple books, and a few books stand alone, with no more than cameo appearances by the more well-known faces. It's basically huge jumbled mess, and that's part of the charm.

Guards! Guards! is the first book in the Watch sequence, and a very good place to start if you're new to Discworld. (I would, in fact, not recommend starting with the earliest published books: The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites. They're still very good books, but not Pratchett's best, and Discworld's fractured character lines mean that you aren't missing anything)

Overview
It's very hard to summarize a Discworld book; the bits I really want to talk about aren't necessarily related to the main plot. That's because plot is only a small measure of what a Discworld book is actually about. The plot of Guards! Guards! is that a giant dragon is terrorizing the city, and since the ruling tyrant has no daughter or half-kingdom to offer as a reward for killing it, it's up to Ankh-Morpork's Night Watch to save the day. Unfortunately, Ankh-Morpork's Finest are a pack of dysfunctional misfits, and that's also what it's about: underdogs, whether they be down-on-their-luck policemen or evolutionarily challenged swamp dragons (smaller cousins of the one terrorizing the city). And to top it all off, Pratchett manages to fit in a general grab bag of satire and irony along the way. (kings and magical swords, proper dungeon upkeep, and the mysterious workings of statistics all come to mind)

Recommended for: Anyone and everyone.

Parental worries: The books are written for an adult audience, so there might be a few jokes that fly over younglings' heads, but there's not much to actually educate in those areas. (okay, make that a lot of jokes, including a city Guild of Seamstresses who aren't very good with needlework, if you know what I mean) Also some mild language, if memory serves me correctly.

Audiobook comments: Read by Nigel Planer, who does a truly wonderful job. The colorful characters of Discworld require some real vocal acrobatics, and he's spot on for all of them.

Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Low)
The Watch is my favorite set of Discworld characters, so here's a quick run-down on them:

First of all, there's Captain Sam Vimes, who we first come across lying drunk in a gutter, mumbling about his love/hate relationship with the city. Vimes develops into one of the coolest, most bad-ass characters in Discworld and probably all fiction, so don't let this unpreposessing introduction fool you. He's a copper's copper, with a scorching disdain for the upper classes and no illusions about the lower ones.

Next up is Carrot Ironfoundersson, who was informed by his parents at the tender age of 18ish (and height of 6 feet) that he was not, as he had always assumed, a dwarf. Turns out he's a human who had been adopted by dwarves and raised in a mine. The fact that he had to be informed of this tells you quite a bit about Carrot. His family decides that he needs to be near his own kind, so they arrange for him to join the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch. Before he leaves, however, his father gives him a sword that was found not too far from the spot where they'd discovered the infant Carrot. So, we've got a young man, born in mysterious circumstances, heading off to the big city to seek his fortune, carrying an ancient sword. Oh, and he has a birthmark shaped like a crown. I'll let you do the math.

Next up in the ranks is Sergeant Fred Colon, who is "one of nature's sergeants". Fred is the Watch's Everyman, in a way that Vimes and (especially) Carrot fall a bit short of. He's also great comic relief, particularly when paired up with Nobby Nobbs.

Years ago, Corporal Nobbs was Ankh-Morpork's Artful Dodger, but now he's all grown up and learned that he can get away with multiple minor malfeaseances much easier from the enforcement side of things. He's still a cheeky, lovable urchin on many levels, but it's slightly less cute from an adult. And by slightly less cute, I mean that Nobby is the only person in Ankh-Morpork with a certificate signed by the Patrician affirming that he is indeed a member of the human race. Otherwise, there might be (and still is, occasionally) some confusion.

One of the coolest things about the Discworld books is that at some point, all the humor and slapstick fall away, and what you're left with is a wonderful story, with a beautifully cinematic climax. That's what sets Discworld above and beyond Douglas Adams, Monte Python and the rest of the comedy and satire world. Pratchett not only knows how to make us laugh, he's also mastered true narrative--he can make us feel, and make us think.

And here's the part where I get to put in some of my favorite quotes from the book ^_^ Have fun!

"People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh.Sorry. I thought you were someone else." --Carrot's voyage to Ankh-Morpork

"It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing."--Vimes

"Never trust a ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn't in the job."--Vetinari (Patrician of Ankh-Morpork)

"There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side."-- The Elucidated Brethren see the light