Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Feb 4, 2007

Review: Thud! by Terry Pratchett

Filed in Reviews

As Discworld novels go, this is one that I didn’t really enjoy.

The story left me a little cold. I admit that I don’t like the dwarfs that much to begin with–the individual ones like Corporal Cheery yes, but their fictional culture and behavior not so much. And this is a book about trolls, and dwarfs, and their inbred hatred.

A dwarf is found murdered in Ankh-Morpork. A troll club is found next to it. Therefore, a troll must have killed the dwarf…right? The dwarfs seem to think so. A fundamentalist group of deep-down dwarfs (who never see the light) stir up trouble and try to bring about a periodic
Armageddon known as “Koom Valley,” where a huge and bloody battle was fought between the two sides.

The details of this book are certainly impressive. Going into the origins of the creation myth for trolls, the stupidity of fundamentalism and the way history is twisted to suit the person telling the story, it is intelligent and well thought out. And one of the most searingly poignant parts of it is the way Commander Vimes’ relationship with his baby son is developed–how the love a father has for his child is so intense that it is painful. That, more than anything else, stood out for me.

But what it isn’t is funny–at least, not as I have come to expect Discworld to be funny. It’s dark, and heavy. A deviation, in many ways, from the Discworld story. I found it hard to break into the plot and harder to keep going. I think that the author had many things on his mind, things such as the war on terror, vigilante justice, drug addiction and, quite possibly, The Da Vinci Code. I think that in pondering such things, he took this story at a different angle than the others.

It is not a bad story. It is, in fact, a very good story. As always, the interactions between characters such as Angua the werewolf and her new “partner”–a vampire, with which species she struggles on many different levels–are brilliantly portrayed.

It is just that I did not enjoy it, because when i read fiction I like to be uplifted, not depressed. And this book, for the most part, depressed me.