We need to know the truth, Vimes. Commander Sam Vimes’ truth. It may count for more than you think.
Book 34 in the Discworld series, Book 7 in the City Watch subseries.
Sam Vimes is no stranger to darkness, be it literal or metaphorical. But in Thud!, he is battling a darkness unlike any he has seen before, and if he loses this fight, it is his soul on the line.
Koom Valley Day, the anniversary of the legendary battle between dwarfs and trolls is coming up, and in Ankh-Morpork that means trouble, as dwarfs and trolls who have never been anywhere near Koom Valley dredge up generations of racial hatred towards each other. A dwarf has been murdered, a famous mural of Koom Valley has been stolen from the art museum, and the streets of Ankh-Morpork are filled with dwarfs and trolls raring to start a new Koom Valley battle right in the middle of the city.
And if that isn’t enough, Sam Vimes has been forced to let a vampire join the City Watch due to politics. He has had all the B taken out of his BLT sandwiches by Lady Sibyl, his family is threatened by fundamentalist dwarfs, and he constantly finds the world conspiring against him when it comes to the most important thing in his life: making sure that he gets home every evening at six o’clock to read to his son, young Sam.
But hatred doesn’t care about story time, and Vimes soon finds himself entangled in a complicated game of power and control, played out in between dwarfs and trolls, with players from both sides stirring up trouble for their own dark purposes, not caring who gets caught in the fray as long as they advance their own goals in the process.
Against the pressure of fundamentalist enmity, racial hatred, generations of history, and convoluted politics and petty powerplays, Vimes has to somehow solve murders and thefts, uncover the secret of Koom Valley, fight the darkness inside himself, stop the dwarfs and trolls from killing each other, and still find the time to read Where’s My Cow? to young Sam every day at 6 pm sharp.
Fantasy – Humour – Satire
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