Thud! by Terry Pratchett
book, review, discworld
This review was originally posted at Goodreads and imported here later with next to no spell/grammar checking.
5/5 stars
Koom Valley. The infamous battle between the dwarwes and trolls where each side ambushed the other. Koom Valley. The sticking point of all racial tensions for thousands of years. Koom Valley, the aniversary of which is coming up and soon all of Ankh-Morpork will be swept up in it. And of course, there’s a politically and racially-charged murder in the middle of it.
Sam Vimes is on the case along with the latest addition to the diversity that is the City Watch these days: a vampire.
Thud! starts a bit more slowly and it’s less obvious where it’s going. For me, it’s the hardest one to get into (out of the City Watch subseries), but it’s still fantastic. There’s mystery and intrigue, high stakes, great writing, fantastic characters, humour, proper solid ending and everything else one comes to expect from a City Watch Discworld book.
When the pace picks up, it’s as good as any other book in the series. I think it mostly doesn’t feel that way at first because the previous book (Night Watch) was so strong in every aspect.
Still, Thud! deserves the five stars just like all the other City Watch books do. And just like before, if you’re interested, do yourself a favour and start with the first one: Guards! Guards! And don’t feel bad if you only stick to the Watch ones.
