Discworld: The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

Published: 2015
Read: May 2023

This is the last Tiffany Aching book and, indeed, the last Discworld book full stop. Like the other late-period Discworld I've read, one senses that it's not Pratchett at the height of his powers—though it is considerably better than the final City Watch novel.

Like all the books, it's about Tiffany's progression into adulthood and responsibility, and also about her connection to her place of origin. Like all Discworld books, it has some brilliant moments... that said, the book doesn't feel totally unified, on either a plot or thematic level. Seemingly important subplots vanish for big chunks; things are set up that go nowhere. Apparently Pratchett would write a complete draft, then go back and flesh it out by adding scenes, and I think you can tell he didn't get all the way through the process here. It's good, and certainly if you've read every other Tiffany book you'll want to read this one, but I think it's not as great as it would have been had Pratchett not been cruelly snatched away from us too soon.

Still, the adventures of the boy witch and his goat were hilarious. And all the stuff about Granny is amazing.

Hugos 2023: Ballots for Novel, Related Work, and Lodestar

Here is my last set of Hugo ballots: these are all the book-based categories, including the biggie, Best Novel. I don't think I nominated in any of these categories, but I'm not sure. I really should have made a note somewhere.

---

Best Novel 

[UNRANKED] The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi / Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

In previous years, I have made it a rule to read every single novel finalist, no matter what I think I will think of them. In some years this has worked out well for me; despite finding the first book of the Machineries of Empire just okay, for example, I ended up really enjoying the second. However, I have read enough John Scalzi to know that I am very much not a fan of what he generally does, and everything I heard about The Kaiju Preservation Society lead me to believe it was the Scalzi I dislike at his most Scalzi. Similarly, having ranked both books one and two of the "Locked Tomb" trilogy (now four books long) in sixth place and finding both unremitting, confusing slogs, it seemed unlikely to me that I would get much out of the third book, nor that I would want to spend a week reading its five hundred pages. So, for the first time, I have foregone reading two finalists. Maybe it will turn out I have missed out on some brilliant work... but I doubt it. (If one of them wins, I will eventually get to it as part of my project to read all Hugo-winning novels I have not previously read... in 2055.)

4. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

I did not like this at all, a mediocre novel with no interesting characters and no stakes and bleh prose. See my review linked above for more.

3. No Award

I try not to be an overdramatic hater, but really, if Legends & Lattes wins, it will be one of those books that makes me question the judgement of my fellow Worldcon members so much that I will wonder why I am even participating in this process.

3. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Up until the last third or so, I thought this was going to slot in above The Spare Man. I wasn't in love with it, but it was doing some kind of interesting stuff. But the revelations near the end and the overly neat ending brought it down for me. Ultimately it came across as an unambitious novel that ought to have been ambitious. Spare Man, I think, largely does what it says it will do, but this does not.

2. The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

Sometimes ranking almost feels too easy, you know? Like, you want ranking to be a challenge because that means you have a lot of very good books. (Or, well, a lot of very bad ones.) But The Spare Man has a very obvious slot to take. It was not incompetent or annoying, so it clearly goes above No Award, but I also didn't think it came across as one of the best books of the year, or even a great one, so clearly below Nettle and Bone.

1. Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher

Interestingly, I think Legends & Lattes and Nettle and Bone have a bit in common—even beyond the use of the "[NOUN] & [NOUN]" title format. (I think the Kingfisher was actually Nettle & Bone in the US, but I read the UK edition.) They're both fantasy novels that aim to provide reassurance to the reader in the face of darkness of the world: but while Legends & Lattes does this by having no stakes and mediocre humor, aiming for "heart," Nettle and Bone really does have heart because Kingfisher knows that in fiction, you can only get reassurance by having darkness to be reassured about. Nettle and Bone was an easy favorite for me as soon as I read it.

---

Best Related Work

6. Buffalito World Outreach Project: 30 Translations of "Buffalo Dogs" by Lawrence M. Schoen

 

This book is made up of the English-language science fiction short story "Buffalo Dogs" and its translation into thirty different languages, including French, Italian, Hindi, Tamil, two varieties of Spanish, and Klingon. (Author Schoen is the founder of the Klingon Language Institute, and seems to have done that translation himself.) "Related works" are usually nonfiction, but according to the Hugo guidelines, works must be either "non-fiction or, if fictional... noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text..." So we're not being asked to assess the story here, but the project. (Along similar lines, a new translation of Beowulf was a finalist in 2021, and ended up winning.) For this to work, I think the paratext would have  to make the case that this was a worthy project... but in his introduction, Schoen devotes only about a paragraph to the book itself, and it pretty much just says, "I thought it would be fun, so I did it." Any sense of why this might have been a noteworthy idea, much less an award-winning one, is absent.

On top of that, I found the story in question pretty bad. I know we're not supposed to judge this category on the basis of its fictional aspects, but it's about a hypnotist who abuses his powers to violate people's consent in order to carry out illegal acts for not really any reason at all other than that he is greedy. Wow, what a hero! I also found the worldbuilding pretty unconvincing; it's clearly there to make the story work, but doesn't make sense on its own merits. The cover blurb for the book says, "Maybe, just maybe, the power of the buffalitos will bring us all together and we’ll begin treating one another better," but it's about a guy who goes around treating other people quite horribly! If you want to pick a story to bring the world together, there had to have been a better one. Anyway, I wouldn't give this an award, and I certainly wouldn't give it this one, which is much better aimed at nonfiction in my opinion, if not that of the other nominators.

5. Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History, Volume 1 by Yang Feng

 

The Hugo voter packet contains this 402-page book in its entirety... in Chinese. There's also a 24-page PDF in English, but all that has been translated is the table of contents and introductions to each section. The book has seven sections, each interviewing one key figure in Chinese sf. There's not really much for me to judge here as a result, other than the general intentions of the book. In other circumstances I probably would have just left it off my ballot, but it seemed a much worthier winner than Buffalito World despite my lack of access to it.

 

4. Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir by Wil Wheaton

Back in 2004, Wil Wheaton published an edited collection of some of his blog posts with additional linking material to turn it into a coherent narrative under the title Just a Geek. Last year, Just a Geek was republished with extra blog posts, but more importantly, footnotes. These footnotes clarify some stuff from the original book, apologize for bad writing or insensitive jokes, and expand on stuff he didn't say back then, about how his father emotionally abused him and how his mother deprived him of a childhood in her drive to turn him into a child star. I found it a bit of a mixed bag: the "comedy" footnotes were generally not funny and soon got wearying, the ones apologizing for misogynist early 2000s Internet discourse were necessary at first but not at the one hundredth iteration. 

 

I found myself wishing that the material about his parents had been worked in as extra essays; what's frustrating is that the most important one (about the abuse he and his sister went through on the set of the film The Curse) doesn't appear until very late in the book, but it provides important context for a lot of what you've been reading. Aside from this, the best material in the book was generally the original contents of Just a Geek: I liked the discussion of his cameo in Star Trek Nemesis a lot, as well as his interactions with his TNG castmates, which were very sweet. There's a good "found family" vibe to it. But given the best stuff is from 2004, and the new 2022 material—which is what makes this Hugo eligible—is not so great, I find it hard to rank it highly even though I did enjoy it.

3. "The Ghost of Workshops Past: How Communism, Conservatism, and the Cold War Still Mold Our Paths Into SFF Writing" by S. L. Huang

This is an essay published on Tor.com, about the history of the so-called "Milford model" of creative writing workshop—people from outside the sf&f field would know it as the Iowa model. It alternates between exploring the history of that model and exploring its repercussions, especially for attendees of the prestigious Clarion workshop from marginalized groups. It's a good piece of writing, but I always find it tricky to rate essays against books in this category. It's probably as long as it needs to be, to be honest, but I think it is beat out by Blood, Sweat & Chrome because that has the depth of being a book. Still, certainly more of interest to say about sf&f than in Wheaton's memoir.

2. Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan

This is an oral history of the long production of Mad Max: Fury Road, mostly from interviews by the author, with some archival material mixed in. I have actually never seen Fury Road, but found this pretty interesting nonetheless. The long genesis of the film was interesting in particular; I felt that the filming process needed more details on what exactly Tom Hardy's issue was (the book seemed to dance around this), but was still neat, as was the postproduction stuff. Probably I would get more out of the book if I—like the writer and many participants—was convinced of George Miller's genius, but I do like a good making-of book, and this is a decent one.

1. Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes by Rob Wilkins

This is a biography of the Discworld author by his longtime assistant, based on notes Pratchett made toward an autobiography that he never got around to writing. Lots of good details on Pratchett's youth and early career especially; I liked hearing about his working as a journalist and as a press officer for a nuclear power plant in particular. There's also great but devastating insight into his later years, as the cognitive decline of Alzheimer's began to take hold. I did think that at times Wilkins is (for perhaps natural reasons) a bit too into Pratchett's finances and contracts, and I felt like Pratchett's wife totally disappeared from the book, but if you're even a mild Pratchett fan (which is where I would categorize myself) there's a lot to get out of this book. This is a strong work about a key figure in the sf&f field, exactly the kind of thing the Hugo Award for Best Related Work ought to be rewarding.

(Abigail Nussbaum has a very good negative review of the book that I largely agree with... but I still think it's the best thing in the category!)

---

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book

[UNRANKED] Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn / Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak by Charlie Jane Anders

Both of these are sequels to previous Lodestar Award finalists. Bloodmarked is a follow-up to 2021's Legendborn, where students at a North Carolina college turn out to be Arthurian knights reborn to fight monsters from another dimension... or something. It did not work for me, and I ranked it fifth. Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak is a sequel to 2022's Victories Greater than Death, a book I almost abandoned halfway through and ended up ranking sixth and one of the very reasons I instituted my "you are allowed to skip a book" rule this year. It seemed very unlikely that the sequels were likely to be serious contenders for me, and so in the interests of time, I skipped them.

5. Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods by Catherynne M. Valente

This is a fantasy novel about a kid who goes into a magical forest in order to fulfill his role in an ancient treaty between humans and the creatures of the forest. Though I have enjoyed some of Valente's work (she had three works on the Hugo short fiction ballots last year, and they were all strong), too often I am left feeling that if it had been half as long, it would have been twice as good. Most of her books are overnarrated; perhaps in deference to the younger audience, this mostly manages to avoid that (though the narrator is still twee and condescending), but instead fills up the pages with voluminous "funny" dialogue that goes nowhere. At one point the main character gets horns on his head but doesn't know it, and somehow there is a full ten pages of back-and-forth between Osmo being confused at another character saying "what's up with your head?" and someone finally saying "you've got horns!" By about page one hundred, this book had squandered all of its goodwill and I did not care about what anyone was trying to do, but there were another three hundred pages I had to read.

I did like the pangolin character a bit.

4. No Award

Look, other people must like it, but I feel like Osmo Unknown is bad. And it's a kind of bad that annoys me: like Seanan McGuire's, Valente's YA is self-consciously nostalgic in a way I find forced and annoying. Rather than capture what the fantasy of our childhood was actually like, it very archly tries to capture our nostalgia for reading fantasy in childhood—which isn't the same thing at all. Oz may be a fairly whimsical place, but the book doesn't smash your face into this fact, it just gets on with taking the world seriously. I don't believe actual young adults (or middle-graders, which is what Osmo Unknown skews toward in my opinion) would actually like this book. It's for adults nostalgic for when they were supposed to be reading young adult fiction. And this is, you know, a YA award.

3. Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor

As noted in my review, I did not find this as successful as the second book in this series. But, you know, it is fundamentally an actual young adult book in my opinion, so it's better than Osmo Unknown and better than No Award.

2. The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

I had actually read this before voting because I enjoyed the previous book in the series so much. Like Akata Woman, it's the third book in a series where it turns out I liked the second book best. But though it was a bit of a letdown, I still enjoyed it well enough. In another year, though, it's hard for me to imagine this taking second on my ballot.

1. In the Serpent's Wake by Rachel Hartman

Like every other book on the ballot this year bar Osmo Unknown, this is a sequel to a previous finalist, and like every one of those sequels (that I read, anyway), this is not as strong as the book that preceded it. But I think I liked this best of all; honestly, I could go either way between it and The Golden Enclaves, both of which didn't totally deliver on the potential of where the previous installment had left off. I'll give the edge to this because I suspect Novik has the edge with the majority of the electorate, but again, it's hard for me to imagine this being my top choice in any previous year.

---

Final Thoughts

Last year, I said that Best Novel was the weakest set I'd seen since I began voting in 2017. Well, it got worse! Very frustrating. I don't keep up with current sf&f much beyond reading for the Hugos, so I don't know what those books might be, but Nettle and Bone aside I believe there has to have been five books better than this. I don't have a strong sense of what will win this category; perhaps Nettle and Bone? Kingfisher has done pretty well on the ballot the past few years. Kowal is always popular, but I don't feel like Spare Man is going to be it. It was a bit surprising to see the Scalzi, and I think he has enough detractors I don't think it will be him. Oh god, it's going to be Legends & Lattes, isn't it?

On the other hand, this was a great set of Related Works finalists. I always grumble a bit when they skew away from nonfiction, but here we have five works of nonfiction; I also grumble when they're not books, but here we have five actual books. I think the Pratchett biography will win.

As I indicated above, this was also a weak set of YA finalists. Five of the six were sequels to previous nominees! C'mon, give me something new. I don't have a good sense at all of what might win here. Novik won last year, though some people grumbled about that. (I am not sure why; I think her books are much more clearly YA than whatever Osmo Unknown was supposed to be.)

Discworld: I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett

This book is the third of a trilogy about Tiffany Aching growing into the responsibilities of being a witch, and this book engages with the downsides of it: when you're willing to do the things no one else is willing to do, but society needs done to keep going, then you might find yourself under a bit of suspicious from the rest of the community.

Originally published: 2010
Read: May 2023

I really liked this. I enjoyed the second through fourth Tiffany books a lot, but this one was my favorite of all of them. It's the darkest, opening with a posse coming for a man, and Tiffany being the one who protects him even though he kind of deserves what he gets; when there are neglected children, only Tiffany stands up to protect them. As the old lord dies, Tiffany comes under suspicion, and suddenly finds herself at odds with her old boyfriend, the old lord's son.

Pratchett is at his best when he uses the Discworld to shine a light on the issues of our world, the dimensions of power and prejudice, and this book is as strong an example of it as I've seen. While the City Watch novels let him explore state power, this explores the issues of social prejudice on a personal level; the Watch novels looked at those who directed the power, but Tiffany—for all her magical powers—is the person that power is directed against.

And yet, Tiffany keeps on going, because there are jobs to do, and is she doesn't do them, who will?

Marvelous stuff, if not perfect; the big bad, in particular, seems taken care of a bit too easily. But this book is the kind of magic ones goes to the Discworld for. Probably my favorite of the thirteen I've read, other than Jingo.

Discworld: A Hat Full of Sky / Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith
by Terry Pratchett

Originally published: 2004
Read: December 2022

I sort of struggled with the first Tiffany Aching book, but I blame that on the fairies. I don't know what it is about fairies, but they kill my interest in anything stone dead. Therefore, I was open to enjoying the later ones more—and thankfully I did. I'm going to take two of them into one post here 1) in the interests of catching up, and 2) because I read them a bit ago and they've blurred together.

A Hat Full of Sky sees Tiffany begin her education as a witch, taken on as an apprentice and leaving home for the first time. It begins to delve into what it actually means to do witchcraft, as Tiffany comes into conflict with other apprentice witches who are more into it for the glamour than for helping other people. There's a lot of good comedy with the Feegles, the little blue men who in this one travel across country to warn Tiffany about impending danger by working as a group to operate a suit of clothes. Good jokes, good themes; I did feel (as I often do with Pratchett) that the end was a bit of a fizzle, in this case a bit drawn out, but otherwise this has a lot to recommend it.

Originally published: 2006
Read: February 2023

Wintersmith continues the themes of A Hat Full of Sky, as Tiffany has to teach one of her fellow apprentices about what it means to be a witch. Honestly, the ostensible central conflict of the novel—about the Wintersmith—comes across as almost ancillary, but I didn't mind, because there's a lot of good stuff along the way. The climax to this one, though, is again a bit disappointing. I mean, I love the Feegles journeying into the afterlife, but Tiffany gets sort of left out in favor of them and Roland. (Though I did like Roland too.) But those are quibbles: much as the City Watch books work their way through the details of the intersection of violence and politics and law, the Tiffany books spend their time working out something even more basic, what it means to be a person who helps. It's serious work... but that doesn't mean it can't also be funny.

The three middle Tiffany books (stay tuned for my comments on the fourth one soon) feel like a distinct unit, a little trilogy; I think what distinguishes them from The Wee Free Men is that Pratchett figured out what he wanted to say through Tiffany by the time he wrote Hat Full of Sky, about what it means to be a witch: to do the hard work that needs doing because it helps others, and for no other reason. Wee Free Men is more of a prologue and The Shepherd's Crown more of an epilogue to all this than part of it.

Discworld: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

The Illustrated Wee Free Men: A Story of Discworld by Terry Pratchett
illustrated by Stephen Player

After enjoying my trip through the City Watch, I figured my next Discworld subseries would be the Tiffany Aching ones, as my wife owns all of them (and they are much beloved by her).

Illustrated edition published: 2008
Novel originally published: 2003
Read: November 2021

But actually, we couldn't find her copy of The Wee Free Men anywhere! It seemed that she had likely loaned it out and never gotten it back. Which was a shame, because she owned the deluxe hardback illustrated edition. I had bought this for her as a Christmas present in 2010; new, it cost me $18. A decade on, it's out of print, and when I bought a replacement, it cost me $40 for a used copy with a torn dust jacket! But it was that or downgrade to a mass market edition.

Anyway, I expected to love this... and I didn't. I liked it a lot at first. Very funny, very real, as Tiffany Aching begins to recognize the strangeness going on around her. Very Pratchett, basically. But somewhere in the middle, as the actual plot began to emerge... I kind of lost interest. I wasn't really sure why I cared about what these people were trying to accomplish. It might not be the book's fault; I read it at a stressful time and in sort of fits and starts between Hugo finalists, so I don't know that it ever totally sunk in. But yeah, probably the least grabby Discworld I've read so far except for Snuff.

Still, when I have a chance, I'll dip back in and keep going. I have enjoyed enough Discworld novels to know to give Pratchett the benefit of the doubt!

Revieiw: Discworld: Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Mass market paperback, 470 pages
Published 2013 (originally 2011)
Borrowed from my wife
Read March 2020

Snuff: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

This didn't do much for me; Snuff is the weakest of the eight City Watch novels by a clear margin. Part of my objection is a little unfair: I don't know if Pratchett meant for this to be the last one, but it doesn't feel satisfying for the final one to mostly take place outside of the city and largely not involve the majority of the Watch. Aside from a few scenes, it's all Vimes all the time meaning we don't get closure on long-running subplots, especially Carrot and Angua.

But even on its own terms, this didn't work for me. Both Willikins and Sybil felt out of character, and the book was full of elements that didn't seem to go anywhere. The opening has a big focus on what Lord Vetinari is up to that as far as I could tell turned out to be irrelevant, and a subplot about a Jane Austen spoof just gets forgotten. The big climax is good, but then the book just keeps on going.

But even a weak Pratchett is filled with strong moments. The rehabilitation of the goblins is great, and I love any scene where Vimes punctures others' pretensions and/or argues his way into being in authority. So, a frustrating way to go out: glimpses of greatness, but no one wants a series's last installment to be its weakest.

Review: Discworld: Thud! by Terry Pratchett

Hardcover, 373 pages
Published 2005
Borrowed from my wife
Read December 2019

Thud!: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

Thud! is a solid City Watch novel, not up to the lofty heights of Jingo or Night Watch, but a solid adventure with some interesting things to say in the line of, say, Men at Arms. There's ethnic tensions brewing between trolls and dwarves, both in and out of the city, and Vimes has to (as usual) simultaneously investigate a murder and stop mass political violence as well. There's a lot of fun stuff here: the auditor who becomes a Watch member himself, another Nobbs and Colon investigation, the high-speed trip to Koom Valley, Vimes's devotion to his daily ritual with his son. But some of the threads don't feel effectively drawn through, and I got a bit confused at all the stuff with the Summoning Dark, a demonic sigil accidentally absorbed by Vimes.

Review: Discworld: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Mass market paperback, 422 pages
Published 2003 (originally 2002)
Borrowed from my wife
Read October 2019

Night Watch: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

This is the last of the trilogy of City Watch novels that for me was the best of the whole sequence of eight; Night Watch is my favorite of them all except for Jingo. Like in Jingo, this book is an exploration of how the real injustice in society isn't street crime-- but also how the police aren't really equipped to deal with that. Vimes finds himself in the middle of a revolution, trying to figure out how he can stop it all from going horribly wrong. It's partially a prequel (and one I'm not entirely convinced lines up with how Vimes was introduced in Guards! Guards!, but whatever), but that just adds to the sense of crushing inevitability. He can't, of course. My favorite scenes were the ones where Vimes's common sense and common decency helps win out over the self-interested and the craven. This didn't quite read the heights of Jingo-- I found some of the time travel stuff very confusing-- but I enjoyed it a lot, and to be honest, I kind of wish it had been the last City Watch novel.

Review: Discworld: The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

Mass market paperback, 455 pages
Published 2014 (originally 2000)
Borrowed from my wife
Read September 2019

The Fifth Elephant: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

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.

Review: Discworld: Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Mass market paperback, 437 pages
Published 2007 (originally 1997)
Borrowed from my wife
Read September 2019

Jingo: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

People love genre mash-ups. Genre mash-ups are the entire way that Marvel has kept its film line vital. Captain America: The First Avenger is superhero movie plus WWII film; Thor is superhero movie plus epic fantasy; Guardians of the Galaxy is superhero movie plus science fiction; Ant-Man is superhero movie plus heist film; it seems to me that Black Widow will be superhero movie plus espionage thriller.

But why is this? Is it just in that combining the tropes of two different familiar genres, something sufficiently new emerges as to be entertaining? I think that's part of it, but not all of it. Or, at least, not in the best cases. In the best cases, the writer is thinking through not just the features of a genre, but its project, and uses that to make some kind of commentary on one or both of the genres. Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos's Alias (a.k.a. Jessica Jones) is probably the gold standard of this for me: in combining superhero comics with noir, they use the powerlessness inherent in the noir genre to highlight the power fantasy inherent in the superhero genre. The stories of hopelessness told in Alias were heightened by taking place in a world of gods. On the other hand, as much as I enjoyed Alan Moore and Gene Ha's Top 10, I didn't feel like it really had anything to say via its combination of superheroics and police procedurals. It has good jokes, but it's mostly just the familiar beats of police procedurals with a veneer of superheroics on top: it's got all the features of its two genres, but it doesn't really do anything with their projects.

So what is Terry Pratchett doing in the City Watch books by combining heroic fantasy and police procedurals? Is he pulling an Alias or a Top 10? The dedication of the first City Watch novel, Guards! Guards!, might suggest he's doing the latter:

They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.

This book is dedicated to those fine men.

Ohoho, okay, it's funny to give the generic guards of fantasy stories actual lives.

But actually this dedication isn't very accurate: the City Watch of these novels never ends up in a situation remotely like the one the dedication describes! Despite the title of the first book, there's no point an evil tyrant ever does something like shout out "Guards! Guards!" as Boldnose, Son of Whomever saves the day. So why is this dedication actually here?

It points to the fact that heroic fantasy and police procedurals have very different attitudes toward the role of violence. In heroic fantasy, violence is authorized by the individual's own moral certainty, if not his Heroic Destiny, and operates outside the law. The hero does whatever he has to do to change the world because it is Right. In procedurals, on the other hand, the police deploy violence to restore the status quo, which is the rule of law; their violence is only authorized inasmuch as it prevents crimes (i.e., violence not authorized by the state).

All of the City Watch novels in fact deal with this tension between political violence and what we might call regulatory violence. In Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, and Feet of Clay, there's criminal conspiracies and murders and such, but the real crime is someone's attempt to place a true king on the throne of Ankh-Morpork. Attempts to remake the political structure of the land are the bread and butter of heroic fantasy-- indeed, the placing of a "true king" on the throne is usually how you know everything in your heroic fantasy adventure has Gone Right-- but are fundamentally illegal and immoral actions in a story about the rule of law. And in these stories, the villains are the people trying to restore the true king. (There are two interesting wrinkles about this, which I don't have time to go into here: Lord Vetinari, the patriarch of Ankh-Morpork, has no democratic legitimacy, he's just better than any alternatives, and there is a real true king in the series who could rule Ankh-Morpork and would do so justly... and he's content to be a cop.)

So I bring all this up now (as opposed to in my reviews of the other City Watch books) because I think the conflict between regulatory violence and political violence reaches its peak in Jingo. When a new piece of land is discovered in the sea between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch, both sides claim it posthaste. Soon, war fervor is beginning to sweep through Ankh-Morpork: Klatchians who have lived in the community for years start to come under suspicion and become the target of racist attacks. As xenophobia sweeps through society and as aristocrats prepare to line their own nests at the expense of the lower classes who will do the actual fighting and dying, Commander Vimes of the City Watch can do nothing but watch in frustration. Because it turns out that you can kill one man, and it's a crime-- but propel your nation into a war that will kill thousands, and it's patriotism. It's weird to think that Pratchett wrote this in 1997, when there are so many obvious echoes of 9/11 in it; it's pretty discomforting to read it in 2019, a time once again of heightened xenophobia. Reading it, I shared in Vimes's sense of powerlessness and despair. People told me the Discworld books were funny. They didn't tell me they would be like this!

The book's climax is amazing, and bears quoting at length. Vimes turns up just before the battle is due to begin, and attempts to arrest the head of the Klatchian army:

"Vimes, you have gone insane," said Rust [head of the Ankh-Morpork army]. "You can't arrest the commander of an army!"
     "Actually, Mr. Vimes, I think we could," said Carrot. "And the army, too. I mean, I don't see why we can't. We could charge them with behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace, sir. I mean, that's what warfare is."
     Vimes's face split in a manic grin. "I like it."
     "But in fairness our—that is, the Ankh-Morpork army—are also—"
     "Then you'd better arrest them, too," said Vimes. "Arrest the lot of 'em. Conspiracy to cause an affray," he started to count on his fingers, "going equipped to cause a crime, obstruction, threatening behavior, loitering with intent, loitering within tent, hah, traveling for the purposes of committing a crime, malicious lingering and carrying concealed weapons."
     "I don't think that one—" Carrot began.
     "I can't see 'em," said Vimes. (386-87)

It doesn't work, of course. The two armies do surrender (and Carrot reads them their rights!), but when one of Vimes's Klatchian allies asks what they're going to do now, Vimes can only say, "I never thought we'd get this far!" (390) Soon Lord Vetinari shows up, ready with political machinations that he deploys to bring the war to an end.

But by God, it ought to work that way, and that's what Pratchett taps into for four glorious pages. The detective story is, Pam Bedore tells us, about contamination and containment: "The police procedural emphasizes the police detective's liminality rather than his conformity, as the police hero tends to function at the limits of the law, struggling to pursue justice within the bounds of his numerous rules and scarce resources" (29). As far as the rules are concerned, leading thousands to death in a war-- as the heroes of heroic fantasy do all the time-- is perfectly legal. Vimes can arrest someone plotting the death of one other, but has no way to impose justice on someone plotting the deaths of thousands.

By bringing the police procedural into the heroic fantasy in Jingo, Pratchett shows how war warps our very notions of justice, and twists good people into bad. You couldn't tell this story in an ordinary heroic fantasy story: you need the police procedural to expose the injustice of it all.

Plus it's very funny. Obviously the side-plot with Lord Vetinari, Sergeant Colon, and Nobby adventuring in Klatch is hilarious, but my favorite joke is probably this one:

"Veni, vidi, vici." I came, I saw, I conquered.
     As a comment it always struck Vimes as a bit too pat. It wasn't the sort of thing you came up with on the spur of the moment, was it? It sounded as if he had worked it out. He'd probably spent long evenings in his tent, looking up in the dictionary short words beginning with V and trying them out... Veni, vermini, vomui, I came, I got ratted, I threw up? Visi, veneri, vamoosi, I visited, I caught an embarrassing disease, I ran away? It must have been a big relief to come up with three short acceptable words. He probably made them up first, and then went off to see somewhere and conquer it. (213)

And it's moving. The sub-plot about Vimes's organizer (bingeley-bingeley beep!) starts off  funny, but thanks to some timeline shenanigans, become quite a clever way to generate tension over a world that never came to be, but could have been quite significant, as you learn what kind of things could have happened there.

All of the City Watch novels are strong, but for me, Jingo is the master class in plotting, themes, humor, and character. It all comes together perfectly.

Review: Discworld: Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

Mass market paperback, 357 pages
Published 2007 (originally 1996)
Borrowed from my wife
Read September 2019

Feet of Clay: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

Feet of Clay is probably the weakest City Watch novel in one sense: it's the one I remember the least about, and probably has the least to say. At times it's a bit too much like Men at Arms to be satisfying on its own. But it's also the strongest City Watch novel thus far, as Pratchett continues to refine and perfect the format of this subseries, nailing the existing characters and adding new ones. Vimes's single-mindedness in pursuing the poisoner of Lord Vetinari was pretty great, too. Despite the comedy trappings, there's obviously something fundamentally meaningful underneath all this, and at times ominous; I really liked what was done with the golems. On the other hand, I was surprised that there was a whole chunk riffing on Ian Fleming's On Her Majesty's Secret Service! (Or maybe Pratchett and Fleming just have the same thoughts about heraldry and its devotees.)

Review: Discworld: Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Mass market paperback, 420 pages
Published 2013 (originally 1993)
Borrowed from my wife
Read August 2019

Men at Arms: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

The U.S. Harper edition of the first City Watch novel gave away something important on its back cover; this one does in its cover image, I reckon, letting me put some clues together more quickly than I reckon Pratchett intended. But it's hard to not look at the front cover!

Despite that, this was another enjoyable book. The Night Watch is expanding, and for affirmative action reasons, that means nonhumans are being recruited: dwarves, trolls, werewolves. Meanwhile, Captain Vimes is getting married and will have to step down as head of the Watch (it's too plebeian a position for one about to join the patrician classes).

It's funny, but it's also touching. There's a lot of good jokes about trolls, but also an unexpected death. There's also some pointed stuff about the seductive power of violence. I think this was less focused plot-wise than Guards! Guards! but also more honed character- and theme-wise; Pratchett was converging toward what he really wanted to do with this series, step by step.

Review: Discworld: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Mass market paperback, 355 pages
Published 2001 (originally 1989)
Borrowed from my wife
Read August 2019

Guards! Guards!: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

I recently organized my wife's books for her, which made me cognizant of the number of books she owned that I would like to read, but haven't. So I have begun a sporadic project to do so, beginning with the Discworld novels in general, and the City Watch subseries in particular, since multiple people who know my tastes well have told me these would be my favorites.

Well, there are some forty Discworld novels to read after this, so it will be a long time before I know if they actually are my favorites, but I did really enjoy this. It's one of those books were you keep laughing aloud-- and keep pausing your reading to explain the jokes to whoever's around you, who in my case was my wife, which meant she suffered through hearing about jokes she'd already read! Carrot Ironfoundersson is a human biologically, but a dwarf culturally, and is sent to Ankh-Morpork to make something of himself after a lifetime in the dwarf mines. But he's also a bit dim, a bit literal, and bit earnest, meaning the fact that the Night Watch spends its time avoiding work is kind of lost on him. One of my favorite gags was when he's told all he has to do is walk around the streets saying, "It's Twelve O'clock and All's Well." Carrot asks what if it's not all well, and he's told, "You bloody well find another street"! (I was also a big fan of all the jokes about the incompetent secret conspiracy.)

So I laughed a lot as Carrot's new way of doing things gradually infects the other members of the Watch, especially its alcoholic captain, Samuel Vimes, and before they know it, they're actually investigating crimes. It occasionally gets serious, which I appreciate; there's a small subplot about xenophobia, which feels more relevant in 2019 than it did in 1989, I suspect, and is a theme Pratchett will return to in future City Watch novels, especially Jingo. This might be the funniest of the City Watch novels, actually, because as time goes on, Pratchett tones down the comedy and amps up the social commentary. The funniest, perhaps, but not the best.

(If you have the 2000s U.S. Harper edition, don't read the back cover, as it gives away what would have been a clever twist from around the three-quarters mark. Unforgivable!)