Thud! A Novel of Discworld - Hardcover

Terry Pratchett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060815221 ISBN 13: 9780060815226

Publisher: Harper, 2005

Synopsis

“Start with Douglas Adams’s comic science fiction (A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and J.R.R. Tolkien’s alternative worlds, mix in James Ellroy’s gritty realism and Jonathan Swift’s unflinching satire and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get something like Terry Pratchett’s Thud!” —Wall Street Journal

City Watch Commander Sam Vimes must solve the murder of a prominent dwarf or watch as Discworld is plunged into a bloody civil war in Terry Pratchett’s brilliant tale of prejudice, ancient feuds, and tender fatherhood.

Long, long ago, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, trolls and dwarfs met in bloody combat. Centuries later, each side still views the other with simmering animosity that has been heightened of late because of one Grag Hamcrusher. The influential dwarf has been fomenting unrest among a section of Ankh-Morpork’s citizenry—a volatile situation made far worse when the petite provocateur is discovered bashed to death . . . with a troll club lying conveniently nearby.

If he doesn’t solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. But more than one corpse is waiting for Vimes in the eerie, summoning darkness of a labyrinthine mine network being secretly excavated beneath Ankh-Morpork’s streets. With war-drums beating ever louder, Vimes must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin, and brave any darkness to find the solution. And the darkness is following him, pulling him deep into the muck and mire of superstition, hatred, and fear—and perhaps all the way to Koom Valley itself.

Until six o’clock every day, when without fail, the Commander goes home to read Where’s My Cow?, with accompanying farmyard noises, to his little boy. Because there are some things you must do.

The Discworld novels can be read in any order but Thud! is the 7th book in the City Watch collection and the 34th Discworld book.

The City Watch collection in order:

• Guards! Guards!
• Men at Arms
• Feet of Clay
• Jingo
• The Fifth Elephant
• Night Watch
• Thud!
• Snuff

About this title

About the Author

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) is the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

From the Back Cover

It's a game of Trolls and Dwarfs where the player
must take both sides to win ...

It's the noise a troll club makes when crushing
in a dwarf skull, or when a dwarfish axe cleaves
a trollish cranium ...

It's the unsettling sound of history about
to repeat itself ... THUD!

It's the most extraordinary, outrageous,
provocative, insightful, and keenly cutting flight
of fancy yet from Discworld's incomparable
supreme creator ... Terry Pratchett

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch admits he may not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer—he might not even be a spoon. But he's dogged and honest and he'll be damned if he lets anyone disturb his city's always-tentative peace—and that includes a rabble-rousing dwarf from the sticks (or deep beneath them) who's been stirring up big trouble on the eve of the anniversary of one of Discworld's most infamous historical events.

Centuries earlier, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, a horde of trolls met a division of dwarfs in bloody combat. Though nobody's quite sure why they fought or who actually won, hundreds of years on each species still bears the cultural scars, and one views the other with simmering animosity and distrust. Lately, an influential dwarf, Grag Hamcrusher, has been fomenting unrest among Ankh-Morpork's more diminutive citizens with incendiary speeches. And it doesn't help matters when the pint-size provocateur is discovered beaten to death ... with a troll club lying conveniently nearby.

Vimes knows the well-being of his smoldering city depends on his ability to solve the Hamcrusher homicide without delay. (Vimes's secondmost-pressing responsibility, in fact, next to being home every evening at six sharp to read Where's My Cow? to Young Sam.) Whatever it takes to unstick this very sticky situation, Vimes will do it—even tolerate having a vampire in the Watch. But there's more than one corpse waiting for him in the eerie, summoning darkness of the vast, labyrinthine mine network the dwarfs have been excavating in secret beneath Ankh-Morpork's streets. A deadly puzzle is pulling Sam Vimes deep into the muck and mire of superstition, hatred, and fear—and perhaps all the way to Koom Valley itself.

Reviews

One problem with writing a comic series is that the later books have to include all the brilliant inventions from the earlier books, leaving less room for new brilliant inventions, which are, after all, the reason for writing the series in the first place. Terry Pratchett wrestles with this problem in his latest Discworld novel, Thud!, and mostly pins it to the mat.

Just how many Discworld novels are there by now? I would guess at least 30, though the actual number seems to be as difficult to locate as Unseen University, a magician's college founded in Ankh-Morpork, principal city of the principal continent of Discworld, about 15 years before Hogwarts and a much tougher place in which to matriculate.

The problems inherent in an amassed back story -- very like, I think, those clanking boxes Dickens's Marley had to tow through the afterlife -- are best shown by a comparison between the current installment and the first book to introduce Discworld, The Color of Magic. There the basic structure and what we might call the rules of engagement were laid out. Discworld, in a universe not quite parallel to ours, is, as the name suggests, a giant disc, containing continents and oceans and many populations, and resting on the backs of four elephants, who in turn stand on a giant turtle, who is swimming steadily, relentlessly, across the universe.

If this picture seems familiar, you have seen it in some art from the Indian sub-continent, but Pratchett purloins the concept and goes his own way with it. In The Color of Magic, Ankh-Morpork is a dangerous, seedy, bloody city, whose rulers learn that a tourist has come from some other part of Discworld to take in the sights. Once the disbelief dissipates -- Ankh-Morpork never had a tourist before, nor ever expected one -- the city fathers realize that, if they can keep this tourist alive, they just might have the beginning of a new industry. With this wisp of a hope, they hire a failed magician, a dropout from Unseen University, to follow the tourist around and, if possible, keep him from being slaughtered. That's the setup, and the whole novel is ingenious, brilliant and hilarious.

Terry Pratchett himself is still ingenious, brilliant and hilarious, but by now he has a lot of baggage to lug along. The hero of Thud! is Sam Vimes, an earnest young man who in an earlier book married a wealthy aristocrat, Lady Sybil, which would make him Duke of Ankh-Morpork if he were willing to accept the role. For now, though, he is the local police chief or, to give him the proper nomenclature, Commander of the Watch. And the Watch, instead of the ragtag, corrupt, defeated few hopeless cases who, way back in The Color of Magic, wouldn't even be asked to help keep a tourist alive, is now a serious modern police department suffering from, as so many police departments are these days, political correctness.

An equal opportunity employer, the Watch contains, in addition to Sam Vimes and a few other humans and sorta humans, an array of trolls, dwarfs, golems and one girl werewolf, and is about to integrate their first vampire, a shapely lady named Sally, whose elegance appears to be borrowed from Bela Lugosi's tuxedo.

The primary tasks of this cleaned-up Watch are two: forestall a riot-cum-war between the city's dwarfs and trolls, and solve the murder of a dwarf in a tunnel under the city. The looming riot, if it occurs, will be yet another re-enactment of a battle between the two groups hundreds of years ago, up in the wild country of Koom Valley, a battle out of which both sides emerged feeling betrayed and thirsting for revenge. If an echo of the Balkans comes to mind, I don't think Pratchett would object.

The working out of these two problems, with many asides for Pratchett's corkscrew brain to riff on the material, is the meat of the book. By the end, the members of the Watch even seem to believe they've solved the murder, though I confess I still haven't. But that's all right; the riot is averted, and the farmers and the cowboys -- sorry, the dwarfs and the trolls -- can perhaps be friends. Sally the vampire is becoming girl chums with Angua the werewolf, and peace temporarily stalks the land.

But the plot of a Discworld novel is never the point. The asides and the general goofiness and the imagination run amok are the point, every time and this time, too. And if, for instance, Carrot, the shy six-foot-tall dwarf (you had to be there), seems by this episode to be overstaying his welcome, that's also okay. All in all the only thing to be said about a Discworld novel is: Read it. You'll like it.

Reviewed by Donald E. Westlake
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Starred Review. Ankh-Morpork's City Watch Commander, Sam Vimes, stars in the latest entry in Pratchett's popular Discworld series (Going Postal, etc.). "Thud" is the sound that commences the novel, as a dwarf is bludgeoned to death; it's also the name of a chesslike match that recreates the battle of Koom Valley, a long-ago fight between trolls and dwarfs. As the anniversary of the battle approaches, ancient politics and the present-day murder cause tensions between the trolls and dwarfs to boil. Though Koom Valley was a disaster for both sides, certain community leaders from each side have been spoiling for a rematch—something Vimes is duty-bound to prevent. In the midst of this, a push toward affirmative action forces Vimes to hire a vampire named Sally to the Watch. She's sworn off human blood, but that's cold comfort to the assortment of humans, dwarfs, trolls, werewolves and golems that make up the police force. Vimes and his motley crew of coppers are called upon to not only find the murderer and keep the peace but also, in a jab at The Da Vinci Code, solve the riddle of a painting that reputedly holds the secret to what really happened at Koom Valley. Pratchett's fantastic imagination and satirical wit are on full display.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unwilling to get caught up in the fact that he is the duke of Ankh-Morpork, Commander Vimes still shaves himself and runs the Watch as well as he can. Lord Veternari forces him to get involved in politics, though, because the Watch is incurring serious expense as it grows, and because his multicultural efforts have forced him to hire a vampire as a member of the Watch. Vimes has a lot on his plate, anyway, what with the upcoming anniversary of Koom Valley (a battle between trolls and dwarves that is part of an age-old war), an unsolved murder that reveals the limitations of the Watch in dwarfish eyes, and the theft of a valuable painting from the Royal Art Museum. On top of everything he does as part of his job, he must make it home at six o'clock on the dot every day to read to his young son. Everything is connected, of course--even Sally, the vampire taken on by the Watch. Unsettling secrets are revealed about the true history of Koom Valley, and in a basement in the city, dwarves and trolls are playing the game Thud!, a miniature battle of Koom Valley, together. As always, Pratchett's latest Discworld yarn is funny, fast-paced, the kind of satire that explores serious issues while making readers love it. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Thud!

By Terry Pratchett

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright ©2005 Terry Pratchett
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060815221

Chapter One

Thud ... that was the sound the heavy club made as it connected with the head. The body jerked, and slumped back.

And it was done, unheard, unseen: the perfect end, a perfect solution, a perfect story.

But, as the dwarfs say, where there is trouble you will always find a troll.

The troll saw.

It started out as a perfect day. It would soon enough be an imperfect one, he knew, but just for these few minutes, it was possible to pretend that it wouldn't.

Sam Vimes shaved himself. It was his daily act of defiance, a confirmation that he was ... well, plain Sam Vimes.

Admittedly, he shaved himself in a mansion, and while he did so his butler read out bits from the Times, but they were just ... circumstances. It was still Sam Vimes looking back at him from the mirror. The day he saw the duke of Ankh-Morpork in there would be a bad day. "Duke" was just a job description, that's all.

"Most of the news is about the current ... dwarfish situation, sir," said Willikins, as Vimes negotiated the tricky area under the nose. He still used his granddad's cutthroat razor. It was another anchor to reality. Besides, the steel was a lot better than the steel you got today. Sybil, who had a strange enthusiasm for modern gadgetry, kept on suggesting he get one of those new shavers, with a little magic imp inside that had its own scissors and did all the cutting very quickly, but Vimes had held out. If anyone was going to be using a blade near his face, it was going to be him.

"Koom Valley, Koom Valley," he muttered to his reflection. "Anything new?"

"Not as such, sir," said Willikins, turning back to the front page. "There is a report of that speech by Grag Hamcrusher. There was a disturbance afterwards, it says. Several dwarfs and trolls were wounded. Community leaders have appealed for calm."

Vimes shook some lather off the blade. "Hah! I bet they have. Tell me, Willikins, did you fight much when you were a kid? Were you in a gang or anything?"

"I was privileged to belong to the Shamlegger Street Rude Boys, sir," said the butler primly.

"Really?" said Vimes, genuinely impressed. "They were pretty tough nuts, as I recall."

"Thank you, sir," said Willikins smoothly. "I pride myself I used to give somewhat more than I got if we needed to discuss the vexed area of turf issues with the young men from Rope Street. Stevedore's hooks were their weapon of choice, as I recall."

"And yours ... ?" said Vimes, agog.

"A cap-brim sewn with sharpened pennies, sir. An ever-present help in times of trouble."

"Ye gods, man! You could put someone's eye out with something like that."

"With care, sir, yes."

And here you stand now, in your pinstripe trousers and butlering coat, shiny as schmaltz and fat as butter, Vimes thought, while he tidied up under the ears. And I'm a duke. How the world turns.

"And have you everheard someone say 'let's have a disturbance'?" he said.

"Never, sir," said Wilkins, picking up the paper again.

"Me neither. It only happens in newspapers." Vimes glanced at the bandage on his arm. It had been quite disturbing, even so.

"Did it mention I took personal charge?" he said.

"No, sir. But it does say here that rival factions in the street outside were kept apart by the valiant efforts of the Watch, sir."

"They actually used the word 'valiant'?" said Vimes.

"Indeed they did, sir."

"Well, good," Vimes conceded grumpily. "Do they record that two officers had to be taken to the Free Hospital, one of them quite badly hurt?"

"Unaccountably, not, sir," said the butler.

"Huh. Typical. Oh, well ... carry on."

Willikins coughed a butlery cough. "You might wish to lower the razor for the next one, sir. I got into trouble with her ladyship about last week's little nick."

Vimes watched his image sigh, and lowered the razor. "All right, Willikins. Tell me the worst."

Behind him, the paper was professionally rustled. "The headline on page three is: 'Vampire Officer For The Watch?,' sir," said the butler and took a careful step backwards.

"Damn! Who told them?"

"I really couldn't say, sir. It says you are not in favor of vampires in the Watch, but will be interviewing a recruit today. It says there is a lively controversy over the issue."

"Turn to page eight, will you?" said Vimes grimly. Behind him, the paper rustled again.

"Well?" he said. "That's where they usually put their silly political cartoon, isn't it?"

"You did put the razor down, did you, sir?" said Willikins.

"Yes!"

"Perhaps it would also be just as well if you stepped away from the washbasin, too, sir."

"There's one of me, isn't there ..." said Vimes grimly.

"Indeed there is, sir. It portrays a small, nervous vampire and, if I may say so, a rather larger-than-life drawing of yourself leaning over your desk, holding a wooden stake in your right hand. The caption is 'Any good on a stakeout, eh?,' sir, this being a humorous wordplay referring, on the one hand, to the standard police procedure -- "

"Yes, I think I can just about spot it," said Vimes wearily. "Any chance you could nip down and buy the original before Sybil does? Every time they run a cartoon of me, she gets hold of it and hangs it up in the library!"

"Mr., er, Fizz does capture a very good likeness, sir," the butler conceded. "And I regret to say that her ladyship has already instructed me to go down to the Timesoffice on herbehalf."

Vimes groaned.

"Moreover, sir," Willikins went on, "her ladyship desired me to remind you that she and Young Sam will meet at the studio of Sir Joshua at eleven sharp, sir. The painting is at an important stage, I gather."

"But I -- "

"She was very specific, sir. She said if a commander of police cannot take time off, who can?"

Continues...

Excerpted from Thud!by Terry Pratchett Copyright ©2005 by Terry Pratchett. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060815221
• ISBN 13: 9780060815226
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384