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jeriendhalShort Summary: Racism is bad, m'kay?
Longer Summary: After much prodding from his wife, Lady Sybil, Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpock City Watch finally takes a much delayed vacation in the countryside. Him being a cop and this being a novel, he naturally finds a body and a deep well of dirty secrets.
Review: It's hard to come down harshly on this book. If anyone has an excuse to write something unfocused, it's Pratchett right now. Nevertheless, compared to previous Discworld novels and especially City Watch books, this one isn't terribly good.
I suppose I shouldn't be churlish and complain about the book taking an unexpected direction (But I will anyway). What starts out as a promising and amusing look at Vimes as a fish out of water, leaving his beloved city for the terrors of the open countryside and fresh air, takes a sharply serious turn as he discovers the oppressed and abused colony of goblins, who are the novels' stand in for pretty much every tribe out there that's been abused when someone larger, tougher and with higher tech comes along. Which would have been fine, except we have weird diversions with an expy of Jane Austen and her sisters, and then another with Fred Colon getting hit by a goblin curse left in a cigar, niether of which really lead anywhere significant, except for an excuse for the City Watch to look at what "civilized" goblins look like in Ankh-Morpock.
The next problem is with Vimes himself. There's a mysterious Committee running the town, who are behind the abduction and enslavement of most of goblin village three years ago, and when Vimes starts poking around investigating, they try to arrest him.
Let me repeat. The local lords, tinpot rulers of a little village, try to arrest Lord Vimes, the City Watch Commander of the most powerful city on the Disc. Vimes reacts to this with predictable irritation, but at no point does he bother to point out that they are creating a diplomatic incident over someone they have no authority over. This is probably because Pratchett is trying distract readers away from the primary contradiction of the story. Vimes comes in as an outsider, trying to overthrow the System. But the problem is that he is the System where he comes from, and even here is he husband of Lady Sybil Ramkin, and therefore on the same level or even higher than the lords on the local Committee.
The other, bigger problem, is that Vimes is now a superhero. Okay, Pratchett doesn't say as much, but he is. Remember the Summoning Dark from Thud? Turns out it never really left Vimes, which means he now has superpowers, such as the ability to see perfectly in the darkness, speak Goblin fluently, and use a demonic entity as an Expert Witness. I found the idea pretty irritating, and frankly Pratchett uses it as a crutch to shove the story along instead of having Vimes do any more actual detecting.
And finally, there are the villains.
They get away with it.
The kidnapped goblins? All dead (though Vimes does save a second group). The Committee, and most importantly Lord Gravid Rust, get the Discworld equivalent of slap on the wrist. Lord Rust's flunky, Stratford, does get his comeuppance, but only after an overlong series Capture, Get away, Catch Again, Get Away again, three times in a row, only to be taken out with a deus ex Wilikins. I suppose it's Pratchett's way of acknowledging that racism can't be easily fixed or justice had, but then he subverts that by having a Goblin harp prodigy put on a show in Ankh MOrpock that magically convinces all the nations of the Disc to suddenly write up laws that end centuries of anti-Goblin prejudice right away.
All and all I can't really recommend this book, in comparison to Pratchett's other works. It's his version of Cryoburn. An interesting addition, some good points to it, but overall not very satisfying.
Longer Summary: After much prodding from his wife, Lady Sybil, Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpock City Watch finally takes a much delayed vacation in the countryside. Him being a cop and this being a novel, he naturally finds a body and a deep well of dirty secrets.
Review: It's hard to come down harshly on this book. If anyone has an excuse to write something unfocused, it's Pratchett right now. Nevertheless, compared to previous Discworld novels and especially City Watch books, this one isn't terribly good.
I suppose I shouldn't be churlish and complain about the book taking an unexpected direction (But I will anyway). What starts out as a promising and amusing look at Vimes as a fish out of water, leaving his beloved city for the terrors of the open countryside and fresh air, takes a sharply serious turn as he discovers the oppressed and abused colony of goblins, who are the novels' stand in for pretty much every tribe out there that's been abused when someone larger, tougher and with higher tech comes along. Which would have been fine, except we have weird diversions with an expy of Jane Austen and her sisters, and then another with Fred Colon getting hit by a goblin curse left in a cigar, niether of which really lead anywhere significant, except for an excuse for the City Watch to look at what "civilized" goblins look like in Ankh-Morpock.
The next problem is with Vimes himself. There's a mysterious Committee running the town, who are behind the abduction and enslavement of most of goblin village three years ago, and when Vimes starts poking around investigating, they try to arrest him.
Let me repeat. The local lords, tinpot rulers of a little village, try to arrest Lord Vimes, the City Watch Commander of the most powerful city on the Disc. Vimes reacts to this with predictable irritation, but at no point does he bother to point out that they are creating a diplomatic incident over someone they have no authority over. This is probably because Pratchett is trying distract readers away from the primary contradiction of the story. Vimes comes in as an outsider, trying to overthrow the System. But the problem is that he is the System where he comes from, and even here is he husband of Lady Sybil Ramkin, and therefore on the same level or even higher than the lords on the local Committee.
The other, bigger problem, is that Vimes is now a superhero. Okay, Pratchett doesn't say as much, but he is. Remember the Summoning Dark from Thud? Turns out it never really left Vimes, which means he now has superpowers, such as the ability to see perfectly in the darkness, speak Goblin fluently, and use a demonic entity as an Expert Witness. I found the idea pretty irritating, and frankly Pratchett uses it as a crutch to shove the story along instead of having Vimes do any more actual detecting.
And finally, there are the villains.
They get away with it.
The kidnapped goblins? All dead (though Vimes does save a second group). The Committee, and most importantly Lord Gravid Rust, get the Discworld equivalent of slap on the wrist. Lord Rust's flunky, Stratford, does get his comeuppance, but only after an overlong series Capture, Get away, Catch Again, Get Away again, three times in a row, only to be taken out with a deus ex Wilikins. I suppose it's Pratchett's way of acknowledging that racism can't be easily fixed or justice had, but then he subverts that by having a Goblin harp prodigy put on a show in Ankh MOrpock that magically convinces all the nations of the Disc to suddenly write up laws that end centuries of anti-Goblin prejudice right away.
All and all I can't really recommend this book, in comparison to Pratchett's other works. It's his version of Cryoburn. An interesting addition, some good points to it, but overall not very satisfying.
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