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The Fifth Elephant: A Discworld novel by: Terry Pratchett

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Rating: - Entertaining and imaginative

I'm an unashamed Pratchett fan, and Vimes is one of the better characters from this alternate world. While some would argue this is a bit more of a 'Whodunnit' than some of the others, it is engaging and has a nice selection of characters and circumstances. A good book will guide the mind to form a picture, and this one does it well for me.

Rating: - His back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions

More sublime wit from the pen of Terry Pratchett - starring my favourite Pratchett character, Sam Vimes, who is sent by Ankh Morpork's benevolent Tyrant, Vetinari, as diplomat to the Uberworld whose chief inhabitants are Vampires, Werewolves and above all Dwarves. The Low King is about to be crowned but someone has stolen the Scone of Stone, without which the coronation cannot take place. The star is Vimes, but a big part is also played by Angua, the Watch's only werewolf member, not least because the chief villain is her rather nasty brother Wolfgang - not at all the sort of werewolf you'd want to meet on a dark night without whatever it is that wards off werewolves (is there anything?). Further character-development is given to the ineffably good and love-lorne Captain Carrot, brought up as a Dwarf, even though he's around six feet and still counting and somehow or other connected to the defunct throne of Ankh Morpork - not that he would ever wish to claim it.

The wit flashes effervescently throughout - one of its best features is the extended metaphor: "He sagged to his knees. He ached all over. It wasn't just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn't cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn't got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions."

This novel is funny, adroit, oddly prescient with its dwarf priests as rabidly anti-progress as a wagonful of Taliban militia, and a sheer pleasure to read.

Rating: - the fifth elephant

One I must have missed.It had all I expected of a discworld novel , a clever story and humour in abundance.On display as usual is Prachett's perceptive view of the human race with all it's foibles.

Rating: - One of the best

Once an author is turning out a novel a year in a growing series he can be forgiven for getting rather stale. That isn't really a problem with Terry Pratchett: his output can be a bit uneven but overall the Discworld fantasies just seem to be getting better, and "The Fifth Elephant" is one of the best.
The wonderful Sam Vimes - clever, upwardly mobile but basically honest and down-to-earth chief of police of Ankh-Morpork - is sent with his aristocratic wife on a diplomatic mission to troubled realm of Uberwald. Why did the city's ruler Lord Vetinari, a man who could give Machiavelli lessons in deviousness, chose Vimes of all people for this delicate task? What exactly is going on in Uberwald, where the uneasy balance of power between dwarves, werewolves, and vampires seems to be breaking down? All is revealed in a book that is both dark and humorous, engrossing and highly entertaining.
Many of the usual characters we have come to know from the Discworld novels are here, and trying to make the best of an unfamiliar and threatening place and understand the peoples and their politics.
Once again Pratchett is the master not only of plot and character but also of the little aside, the fascinating but not overdone individual, the sly and amusing reference. We learn, for instance, that it is a social blunder to use the word "bath" to an upper-class werewolf when he is in human form, it makes him uncomfortable. We are introduced to a vampire equivalent of AA where members help each other keep off the human blood and get through "vun night at a time". We discover that the Low King of the Dwarves must be crowned sitting on a large, hard item called the great Scone of Stone - a clever one this, referring not only to the durability and lethal solidity of dwarfish bread as explained in previous novels but also to the Stone of Scone (pronounced "Skoon") on which for centuries the kings of Scotland were crowned. And much more...
If you know the characters you will enjoy the book even more, but Pratchett newbies could find a worse place to start than this one.

Rating: - Enter the Werewolves....

Number 24 (gulp!) in the Discworld series has Sam Vimes (and assorted Watch colleages) sent on a diplomatic mission to Uberwald, along the way encountering viscious werewolves and a whodunnit mysery as a vital Dwarf artifact goes missing just as a new King is about to be crowned...

The obvious comparison with 'The Fifth Elephant' is the preceeding Discworld novel 'Carpe Jugulum', as where that novel had the witches of Lancre encountering Uberwald's vampires now it's the turn of the Watch to meet another Uberwald 'monster' race in the shape of the werewolves. Concerning the Watch's own shapeshifter Angua it's nice to get some more background on her family, but in a way this novel has a feel of Pratchett going back to the same well of inspiration a bit too often, with this being the second novel in a row to feature lurching self-made Igors and vampires with a modern outlook on life.

This isn't a particularly amusing book by Discworld standards, but Pratchett's writing is of a high enough quality that this is still a well-crafted and readable novel, and the mystery of the missing Dwarfish Stone of Scone is enough to keep the pages turning, but one does get a faint whiff of formula here, and while this is still a good Discworld book Pratchett has written better.

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