|
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.
Book
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.
Author introduction
Terry Pratchett
sold his first story when he was thirteen, which earned him enough money
to buy a second-hand typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy
entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin
Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer,
writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his
first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he turned to
writing full time, and has not looked back since. To date there are a
total of 33 books in the Discworld series, of which three (so far) are
written for children. The first of these, The Amazing Maurice and His
Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good
Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime
bestseller, and will be reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early
2006. His new Discworld novel, Thud!, will be published this fall.
Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language
satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an
Officer of the British Empire “for services to literature” in 1998, and
has received four honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick,
Portsmouth, Bath, and Bristol. His acclaimed novels have sold 40 million
copies worldwide and have been translated into 33 languages.
Terry Pratchett lives in England with his family, and spends too much
time at his word processor. |
