Thud!

The Battle of Koom Valley (and its numerous repetitions) is the wheel around which Terry Pratchett’s Thud! turns. In this, the 34th Discworld novel, Commander Samuel Vimes and the various members of the City Watch are the main characters. The story is essentially a study on racism and the ludicrous notions that often beget long term race related hatred.

Thud! is a reference both to a board game in which the players reenact the Battle of Koom Valley, and the alleged murder of a dwarf leader by a troll. This murder happens deep underneath Ankh Morpork in a new dwarf “mine” (which is really just the dwarves excavating the many previous floors upon which the current city is built) and is thus the province of the City Watch.

To complicate matters even further Vimes is saddled with a new vampire recruit, an auditor from the Patrician, and the need to keep tempers cool as the anniversary of Koom Valley approaches. There is much tension involved in investigating the crime as the dwarves don’t trust the troll officers to not skew the facts, and the trolls just don’t trust the dwarves.

When you get to the nuts and bolts of the story this is a fairly average entry in the series. The Watch and Vimes are characters that Pratchett often uses both as main characters and as important parts of other stories. Due to this fact a lot of the really inventive things Pratchett does are often not found in Watch-centric novels. There is just too much history built around them already to get too far off the beaten path. Not to mention the fact that they are bound tightly by the laws of the city.

I don’t intend to give the impression that Thud! is not a good read. I would say that even the weakest Discworld novel is still entertaining and frequently makes one think about things in a new light. It just seems that Pratchett really shines when using characters that have been used more lightly. This is probably why the stand alone stories are peppered throughout the series and also why characters like the Witches and Wizards have become background characters in the later volumes.

Stephen Briggs was the voice of this audiobook. As usual he did a very impressive job bringing the voices of the characters to life. While not one of Pratchett’s most inventive or freewheeling novels, Thud! is an entertaining read and does comment quite successfully on the idiocy of racism, and also how people should really study things, rather than just blindly believing. I give this novel a 3.5/5.