Pros: Great characters, Stan Vimes in a starring role, excellent plot, good satire
Cons: If you don't have a sense of humour...
The Bottom Line: Personally I just couldn't put it down till I'd finished it. I can't think but that any Pratchett fan (ie right-thinking person) will be exactly the same.
captaind's Full Review: Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant: A Novel of D...
Just in case you're not familiar with Terry Pratchett's work (and I recently found out that such people do exist!), here is a little info about his style of writing and particularly the Discworld series of novels.
It's fantasy-humour, loosely speaking. Since Discworld is a place that exists on the very fringes of reality, many of the fantasy characters you'd expect to see in, say, Tolkein's books are here, elves, dwarves, trolls etc. In Tolkein fashion, each race has a detailed history unique to itself, which affects the way the characters in the book may act and, of course, the plotlines. Often with hilarious results, of course. The humour is mostly very offbeat; frequently including otherworldly descriptions of items that are common in our lives but, put from the perspective of a zombie, for instance, appear quite different! There is also a lot of parody and satirical humour here, and perhaps even a twinge of serious social commentary.
However, unlike some comedy writers, Pratchett's books contain strong plotlines and characterisations throughout. The humour is not the whole of the book, but an active part that makes the rest of the story even more of a pleasure to read.
If you've never read his work before I hope this gives you a good idea of whether it's something you'd want to look into! (Needless to say, his books come highly recommended - and not just from me!)
Now to the actual review:
Reviewing a Pratchett book is a little bit of a strange experience. I can't help feeling that by now, people will either be addicts or have decided they don't want to know. But here goes anyway.
The plot involves the political wrangling of dwarves, Captain Vimes of the watch, his wife Sybil, a smarmy assassin, werewolves, vampires (one of which is a teetotal - no human blood!), female dwarves (with beards- of course), their Sacred Scone (yep you saw right – SCONE not STONE), and lots more. In fact the basis of the plot comes from the theft of the Sacred Scone, and Vimes being sent in undercover to the stronghold (a land full of lard... yep fat deposits are valuable on the Disc) of the Dwarves to find out what has happened and to recover it... or so he thinks. The characters are well drawn, being realistic (if you can believe in a character set on an imaginary world, that is) as well as fun. There are loads of subtle satirical references here, and I'm guessing that I've probably missed a load of them! This could well be the best-plotted of the Discworld books.. but there’s so many all-time classics in this series that it’s hard to tell! Vimes is one of my favourite characters in Discworld, so it’s nice to see him get a proper outing with a starring role.
This is one VERY funny book. I would have thought the humour was rather British, what with him being British and all, and a few of the references are to things that only the British would be particularly familiar with. But everyone, including the Americans (our sense of humour so often seems to differ!), so I guess it has a completely universal appeal. I wholeheartedly recommend it. It stands up very well against even the best Pratchett novels, which is high praise indeed. Unless you completely hate Pratchett’s work (and if so WHY?!?!?!?) then you will enjoy this book.
Everyone knows that the world is flat, and supported on the backs of four elephants. But weren't there supposed to be five? Indeed there were, and wha...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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