Mostly Murders

We’re just one big happy family and, when you’ve been to a few domestic disputes, Littlebottom, I can assure you that you’ll see the resemblance.

In Ankh-Morpork the times are changing faster than people’s preconceptions, leading to an explosive atmosphere in the city as various different interests and beliefs clash.

Lord Vetinari falls mysteriously and suspiciously ill, and the rumours of a true king being employed in the City Watch surge among the rich and influential groups in the city. The latest recruit to the City Watch, a dwarf alchemist, turns out to be a modern-minded female to the great consternation of the many traditionalist dwarves, who believe that gender is a personal matter that should be kept private and never flaunted in public. And the clay golems on the city, employed in various workshops as cheap and efficient labour as they never complain, need a break or feel pain, cold, heat or hunger, draw the ire of the population in general as they are suddenly seemingly involved in a string of strange accidents and deaths.

And somehow all of these events combine into a story that is both hilarious and deeply profound, with acutely complicated topics of equality, freedom, class, religion, discrimination and politics handled with effortless ease.

Sam Vimes ponders the precarious nature of clues while doing his best investigative work so far in the series. Nobby and Colon ponder the incongruity of Nobby as a nob due to his lineage, while the entirety of Ankh-Morpork still isn’t even convinced that Nobby is technically or practically human. Angua and Cheery Littlebottom ponder the fact that gender can be a uniting factor across races, and a source of complete division in the City Watch, an institution that accepts anyone, but prefers to treat everyone as male.

And the reader who makes it through this book, will be left to ponder important concepts of human nature and society, seen through the lens of partially and completely nonhuman characters, which may seem paradoxical at best and nonsensical at worst, but which is, in fact, in the hands of Terry Pratchett, absolutely perfect.

Fantasy – Humour – Satire