acaleyn@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
Review of 'Fifth Elephant, The' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
reread 6/5/13
494 pages
English language
Published Nov. 5, 2000 by G.K. Hall.
The Fifth Elephant
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. So where is it?...When duty calls. Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork constabulary answers. Even when he doesn't want to. He's been "invited" to attend a royal function as both detective and diplomat. The one role he relishes; the other requires, well, ruby tights. Of course where cops (even those clad in tights) go, alas, crime follows. An attempted assassination and a theft soon lead to a desperate chase from the low halls of Discworld royalty to the legendary fat mines of Uberwald, where lard is found in underground seams along with tusks and teeth and other precious ivory artifacts. It's up to the dauntless Vimes -- bothered as usual by a familiar cast of Discworld inhabitants (you know, trolls, dwarfs, werewolves, vampires and such) -- …
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. So where is it?...When duty calls. Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork constabulary answers. Even when he doesn't want to. He's been "invited" to attend a royal function as both detective and diplomat. The one role he relishes; the other requires, well, ruby tights. Of course where cops (even those clad in tights) go, alas, crime follows. An attempted assassination and a theft soon lead to a desperate chase from the low halls of Discworld royalty to the legendary fat mines of Uberwald, where lard is found in underground seams along with tusks and teeth and other precious ivory artifacts. It's up to the dauntless Vimes -- bothered as usual by a familiar cast of Discworld inhabitants (you know, trolls, dwarfs, werewolves, vampires and such) -- to solve the puzzle of the missing pachyderm. Which of course he does. After all, solving mysteries is his job.
M@ reviewed The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
Review of 'Fifth Elephant, The' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This book feels like it was simply found whole, dusted off, and presented for publication.
I've read numerous quotations from writers on how their characters, at a certain point, take on lives of their own. In this, our fifth visit with Sam Vimes and Carrot Ironfounderrson, these two must have been so fully formed within the authorial imagination that they'd been campaigning for voting rights in the narrative governance and a forty-hour workweek.
If you then take these self-aware figments and put them into a meticulously-crafted world built in 23 previous novels, world-building on the sort of spectacular attention to detail that one expects a model train to come rolling through it, writing this novel had to be like falling off of a bicycle.
His job came down to having one bit of his imagination wander freely through another bit of his imagination, jotting down what happened, doing a second …
This book feels like it was simply found whole, dusted off, and presented for publication.
I've read numerous quotations from writers on how their characters, at a certain point, take on lives of their own. In this, our fifth visit with Sam Vimes and Carrot Ironfounderrson, these two must have been so fully formed within the authorial imagination that they'd been campaigning for voting rights in the narrative governance and a forty-hour workweek.
If you then take these self-aware figments and put them into a meticulously-crafted world built in 23 previous novels, world-building on the sort of spectacular attention to detail that one expects a model train to come rolling through it, writing this novel had to be like falling off of a bicycle.
His job came down to having one bit of his imagination wander freely through another bit of his imagination, jotting down what happened, doing a second pass to add glib commentary, doing a polish pass on the puns, and then fixing the typos that invariably follow when you type while chuckling.
When I click "submit", Goodreads will ask me if I want to recommend this book to a friend. Recommendation is absurd with a work like this. If you like Terry Pratchett's writing, and you enjoy the adventures on the Discworld, you've either already read this or would stick up a liquor store to pay for a copy. (Even if you were just planning on checking it out from the library.)
Subjects
- Vimes, Samuel (Fictitious character) -- Fiction.
- Discworld (Imaginary place) -- Fiction.
- Large type books.