QuietI's Full Review: Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant: A Novel of D...
The Fifth Element is the Terry Pratchett's latest excursion to Discworld, his extraordinarily detailed fantasy world consisting of a huge disc, carried by four elephants, riding on the back of a tortoise, swimming through the heavens. On Discworld, you'll find humans, of course, but also trolls, gnomes, dwarves, werewolves, vampires, elves, witches... you get the idea. Eventually, everyone ends up in Discworld.
This volume focuses on the adventures of Commander Samuel Grimes, leader of the City Guard of Discworld's largest city, Ankh-Morpork. The majority of the characters in this work were first introduced in Guards! Guards!, or perhaps I should say, first featured in that earlier book. Pratchett has a way of cycling through his characters so that minor figures in one volume will have starring roles in the next. There is quite a bit of backstory, and Pratchett does a good job of filling in with his detail-laden prose, but I'd still recommend reading Guards! Guards! before tackling this one. You'll just get so many more of the in-jokes if this isn't your first outing on Discworld.
You should be aware that there are "groupings" of Discworld novels: the first several volumes centered on Unseen University, where wizards are trained, and the hapless Rincewind and his invincible Luggage. While these books are fun, as you read the later works, you can really see Pratchett hitting his stride and finding his voice. There are a few volumes devoted to the witches (Granny Weatherwax being my favorite), and some simply smashing books about Death and his horse Binky. My absolute favorite Discworld novel is still Mort, in which Death literally takes a holiday, and impresses an apprentice of sorts to fill in for him while he's gone.
If all that just sounds too weird and not in the least bit interesting, then just skip the rest of this review, there is no point in continuing. But if these very sketchy plot outlines sound intriguing, do press on. Pratchett's humor is British in the extreme. Sometimes it's that sly, snooty sort of British humor (dry laugh, "Ha ha ha") sometimes it's Benny Hill-crude or Monty Python just plain goofy. But this man can write, and write exquisitely well. His works always involve several main characters with interweaving threads of plot, and he always manages to bring everything together in the end. Some of his works are more successful than others. I was completely disappointed by the rather obvious "Moving Pictures," which took on Hollywood, but found "Equal Rites," a rather involved projection of exactly what the implications of the ancient Egyptian's pyramid cult would be, completely enjoyable.
The Fifth Elephant is a good old-fashioned mystery, involving the succession of power among the dwarves, an important relic, threatened revolution, and an unwilling diplomat. Said unwilling diplomat is Sam Vimes, wife of Lady Sybil, who is sent as ambassador from Ankh-Morpork to witness the crowning of the Low King of Uberwald. The fact that Sam's day job is head of the City Guard (think a kind of hands-on police commissioner) and that he hates politics and diplomacy is exactly why his boss, Lord Vetinari, is sending him to Uberwald in the first place. Uberwald is chiefly inhabited by dwarves, werewolves, and vampires. There are some humans, too, but not too many. There's a sort of uneasy truce among all the races to keep them from killing each other off, but the recent "election" of the new Low King threatens to upset that balance.
And you wouldn't think that Ankh-Morpork's Lord Vetinari would care, except that it will massively affect the economy of the great city, and everything comes down to money.
So, just as a copy of the famous relic ("The Scone of Stone") is stolen from the Dwarf Museum in Ankh-Morpork, Sam is shipped out on this diplomatic mission. The rest of the plot is much too complicated to try and get into here. Suffice it to say he brings along diverse and useful companions, including his lovely wife, survives several assassination attempts, escapes imprisonment, and ultimately solves the mystery.
If you couldn't guess from the name of the relic, Pratchett targets literally everything and everyone for parody in his work. The Fifth Elephant manages to both praise and ridicule the current on-going communications revolution. Diversity is a big topic since the City Guard started admitting non-human members, and now there are representatives of nearly every species among the Guard. Sexual identity and cultural attitudes towards sexuality are explored in detail in the light of the fact that dwarves, as a rule, completely ignore it -- something that Sam can't quite wrap his mind around. And all this is done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This work, like nearly all Pratchett I have read, had me laughing out loud in several places, and wiping tears from eyes in a few. Here's a brief sample of what I love about Pratchett:
Constable Shoe sighed. He knew that Mr. Vimes had an unofficial policy of getting ethnic minorities into the Watch, but he wasn't sure this was wise in the case of gnomes, even though there was, admittedly, no ethnic group that was more minor. They had a built-in resistance to rules. This didn't just apply to the law, but to all the invisible rules that most people obeyed unthinkingly, like "Do not attempt to eat this giraffe" or "Do not head-butt people in the ankle just because they won't give you a chip." It was best to think of Constable Swires[a gnome] simply as a small independent weapon.
Along with Sam Vimes, the other major character is Captain Carrot, also of the City Guard, who also happens to be the rightful heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork, which doesn't really exist anymore. Carrot was raised by the dwarves and so is accepted as a Dwarf, despite the fact he is well over 6 feet tall and simply huge. Personally he has always been another favorite of mine, and I was pleased to see him getting some attention in this volume. Several other previously met members of the Guard appear also, as does the talking dog, Gaspode.
Pratchett also introduces us to one new "species", the Igors. Remember that Igor was the name of Frankenstein's assistant, and I'm sure you can imagine the rest. Quite useful chaps to have about, actually, and all the best families of Uberwald have an Igor to run their household.
For a supposedly light fantasy work, Pratchett manages to work in quite a bit of politics and philosophy, as well as some really splendid action sequences, many involving wolves and running through snow-covered forests. The intricate economy and delicate balances in Uberwald are clearly described but without huge expositional paragraphs. (OK, there are one or two, but that's just the way that Carrot talks sometimes.) And, having closed all the loopholes and cleared up all the mysteries, he leaves us with a lovely meditation on The Future, as Sam and Sybil head for a long-overdue vacation, and contemplate all the changes that have just occurred, and the many they will be facing in the years to come.
As a frequent visitor to Discworld, The Fifth Elephant was thoroughly satisfying and delightful to me. I wouldn't recommend this as a first visit; try one of the earlier volumes before coming back to this one. My only criticism is that sometimes Pratchett will leave a group of characters dangling for much too long, as we follow another group through several adventures before we rejoin them. That's more of a problem with editing (I think) than the writing itself; some sections could've been switched around a bit to avoid that. But all in all, the pacing of the book is excellent, it moves along briskly and naturally. The story itself is engrossing, and the characters are people (or dwarves or trolls or -- nevermind) you can really care about.
So come visit Uberwald -- it may be snowing, but the hot springs are fine!
The flat world is supported on the backs of four elephants. But aren t there supposed to be five? Indeed there are. So what happened to the fifth elep...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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