The Fifth Elephant

Pratchett, Terry

ISBN 10: 0552146161 / ISBN 13: 9780552146166

Published by Corgi, London, 2000

About this Item

A Discworld Novel. Sam Vimes is trying to escape the pursuing werewolves. He has fallen from grace, a former Chief of Police, all he now has left is Uncle Vanya's pants.460 pages. Cond: Corners and edges mostly sharp, spine is VG with hinge wear. No tears, folds, marks nor creases. Store stamp on first page. Tight and bright in an orange wrapper with drawing of a mythic elephant swooping down out of the clouds. Clean throughout. Almost giftable. Quote (p.321): "Wolf von Uberwald was sitting on the opposite bank. He was stark naked. A little vapour rose off him, as if he'd just been exerting himself. Muscles gleamed._._._. ". (See my other A.B.E. listings of Pratchett's work.) Size: 12mo.

Seller Inventory # 011647

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Fifth Elephant
• Publisher: Corgi, London
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0552146161
• ISBN 13: 9780552146166
• Binding: Soft cover
• Illustrator: Josh Kirby (cover)
• Edition: 2'nd Printing.
• Condition: VG++
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fantasy

About this title

Synopsis

Creased spine has chipped ends, foxing to the tanned page edges. Shipped from the UK in recyclable card packaging.

Review

Terry Pratchett has a seemingly endless capacity for generating inventively comic novels about the Discworld and its inhabitants, but there is in the hearts of most of his admirers a particular place for those novels that feature the hard-bitten captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Samuel Vimes. Sent as ambassador to the Northern principality of Uberwald where they mine gold, iron, and fat--but never silver--he is caught up in an uneasy truce between dwarfs, werewolves, and vampires in the theft of the Scone of Stone (a particularly important piece of dwarf bread) and in the old werewolf custom of giving humans a short start in the hunt and then cheating.

Pratchett is always at his best when the comedy is combined with a real sense of jeopardy that even favorite characters might be hurt if there was a good joke in it. As always, the most unlikely things crop up as the subjects of gags--Chekhov, grand opera, the Caine Mutiny--and as always there are remorselessly funny gags about the inevitability of story:

They say that the fifth elephant came screaming and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise mountains.

No one actually saw it land, which raised the interesting philosophical question: when millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, and there is no one to hear it, does it--philosophically speaking--make a noise?

As for the dwarfs, whose legend it is, and who mine a lot deeper than other people, they say that there is a grain of truth in it.

All this, the usual guest appearances, and Gaspode the Wonder Dog. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk