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| Mass market paperback, 455 pages Published 2014 (originally 2000) Borrowed from my wife Read September 2019 |
The Fifth Elephant continues the strong run of City Watch novels that came once Terry Pratchett perfected the concept. It's not as good as the novels on either side of it-- but given Jingo and Night Watch are my two favorites, that's nothing to sneer at. Like those two novels, Fifth Elephant takes Commander Vimes to his limits, as he's forced to play diplomat in the foreign land of Uberwald, but (of course) discovers a murderous conspiracy. He ends up on the run from a werewolf in the forest, forced to do anything he can to survive. The action scenes here are gripping and tense, as you know much this all means to Vimes as a person. Meanwhile, werewolf Sergeant Angua travels to Uberwald herself as part of a wolfpack, and her boyfriend Carrot follows here, and meanwhile meanwhile, "nature's sergeant" Colon goes mad with power when he becomes an officer.
Thematically, it's all quite tight: what is the difference between savagery and civilization? What separates the killing that Vimes and Angua must do from the killing that the werewolves of Uberwald carry out? Vimes marches right up to the line, but manages to not cross it by setting up circumstances that let him fairly kill someone. Like Jingo before it, it's at its best when it uses the genre of the police procedural to examine these issues of power and violence that suffuse the heroic fantasy-- and our own society. Vimes really is the best of us, and The Fifth Elephant shows why. Plus the stuff about Colon's going mad with power is hilarious.
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