THUD! A novel of the Discworld

I never used to like Terry Pratchett.

Back in the late 1980s, I read one of his books, didn't find it funny, and wrote him off as an author that just wasn't for me. And I didn't look at his stuff for 15 years or so.

In 2004, I attended Noreascon Four, that year's World Science Fiction Convention. Mr. Pratchett was the Guest of Honor. I didn't meet him or hear him speak, but enough people I like were praising his work that I picked up a couple of books. And they weren't all that funny. In particular, I found his The Colour of Magic and Sourceror to be unpleasant because their lead character, Rincewind, irritates me mightily.

As it turns out, the problem (if you can call it that) was that Pratchett has gotten better over time. His recent books are far, far better (to this reader's taste) than his early stuff, as you can see in this review. And as I finally get to it, THUD! is the best of the Discworld books that I've read.

The Discworld stories center around different protagonists. There's the Rincewind sequence, the Witches of Lancre set, a bunch that deal with the incarnation of Death, and the Watch books. THUD! is a Watch book. I've read only the first and last (to date) of the Watch books, so the transition was quite sudden. If you have not read earlier Discworld books, spoilers will follow this point.

When we first meet Sam Vimes of the Watch, he's a drunken, broken-down man with no life beyond the Watch, and no respect for his role in the Watch. The Watch itself doesn't deserve any respect. It's as if the Keystone Kops were much more corrupt. By the beginning of THUD!, Sam is a teetotalling Duke(!) respected not just in his own city of Ankh-Morpork but throughout the known world. And he's got a wife and kid that he adores. It was quite a shock for this reader (who probably shouldn't have skipped the intervening books).

The story is almost all Sam (although some chapters follow the werewolf Sergeant Angua) as he deals with the problem of multiculturalism in a world of thousands-of-years-old ethnic and racial hostility. No kidding, that's the theme of the book and central conflict. It's humorous fantasy, so it's warfare between the dwarfs and trolls, but the relevance to our own world is not meant to be hard to spot. In the end, the entire thing comes down to Sam himself.

Don't get the idea that it's dead serious. THUD! is hilarious. As a former Blackberry administrator, I liked Sam's interactions with his Gooseberry personal assistant (although it's really more like a Palm device than a Blackberry ...). The dialogue is masterfully witty and funny.

I think what makes this better (again, for this reader) than some of Pratchett's earlier stuff is twofold. One, Vimes is enormously more sympathetic than Rincewind. And two, Pratchett has learned better how to balance the funny parts of the story with the more serious parts.

I strongly recommend THUD!.

Thud! THUD! The Book

Thud! THUD! The Audiobook

The Armies of Memory (John Barnes)

The Armies of Memory is billed as the "Climactic Conclusion" to the series Barnes began with A Million Open Doors, and continued in The Sky So Big And Black and Earth Made of Glass.

The Armies of Memory (Giraut Series #4)

Barnes is an oddity in the field of SF. He writes adventure stories with supercompetent heroes a lot of the time, but often the heroes are totally ineffectual. Giraut, the protagonist of Armies, is a spy, a swordsman, a famous and widely-loved singer, composer, and musician, and as the story opens is having a love affair with a gorgeous, brilliant, utterly-desirable woman. He could be the answer to the question "What if James Bond was a musical star?" And yet, he has the attribute of so many Barnes heroes: he can't affect anything.

Yes, for all his combat skill, acknowledged brilliance, and network of powerful friends and allies, Giraut is a helpless ping-pong ball batted around by forces he is (at first) mostly unaware of. In the end, the novel is more about Giraut's reactions to events than the traditional protagonist's ability to influence them. It's rather like an Icelandic or Old Norse saga or a Greek tragedy, with the hero's fate predetermined and the story mostly about how he deals with it.

Please don't misunderstand this as saying the book isn't worth reading. I enjoyed Armies a lot. Giraut and his supporting cast are interesting people, the plot is fun even if Giraut can't control it, and Barnes does a fine job of writing. It's just not your usual adventure story. This is a recommendation, actually.

You'll notice I'm not describing the plot. It's the fourth book in a series, after all. If you haven't read the first three, you won't care about this one. If you have, all I could accomplish by describing anything is to spoil plot points.

I do have a question or two. Okay, two. For one, is Giraut meant to be Steven Brust? I mean, he's about the right age now, he's a swordsman, he's a musician, he spends a lot of time describing food in a way Steve Brust characters might ....

Second question: Is the character Raimbaut meant to be a reference to Stallone's Rambo?

As usual (and like all bloggers who aren't famous) I'm delighted to receive any comments.