Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel is as funny as ever. Well, almost. See, for a while now his books have had a message. Freedom of the Press. Feminism. Fate. Etc. And in this one seems a bit heavy-handed. Sam Vimes, Commander of the Watch in the fabulous city of Ankh-Morpock, is attempting to deal with two racial minorities who brought ancient grudges with them. On the one hand, we've got the industrious cave-dwelling mine-making dwarves, who live 18 to a room and are busy entrepreneurs. On the other hand, we've got giant trolls made of rock who speak in monosyllables and whose entrepreneurship is of a shadier kind. 'Snot exactly subtle, is it? Thud! delivers the usual Pratchett pratfalls and wraps everything up in a nice tidy bundle at the end (Can't we all just Get Along? And spend more time with our kids?). He even, amazingly for this kind of book, manages to deliver emotional payoff. Vimes is a good character.
I'm not going to say it's not good. Because it IS good. I'm just getting a bit tired of the whole delivering-a-moral-while-pretending-not-to schtick.
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that's weird. when i first logged on, the amazon ads were generic, just "shop & save". then they went back to being for the individual book, but now they're ugly and orange again.
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