The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
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Review by Joshua S Hill
When I am asked to pick my favourite Terry Pratchett book, The Fifth Elephant is always on my mind as a contender. Granted, it’s a contender insomuch as the Rock would be versus Ali, but it’s still in there! There are books that follow that outshine this book, but only in the way that one star outshines a slightly smaller star.
The twenty fourth Discworld novel is also the sixth City Watch story, and as such continues the urban development of Ankh-Morpork. There is now a traffic department, homing pigeons for communication between the Watch and international communication through the clacks. These books, beyond being a story of Samuel Vimes and his Watch, are a story of urban growth in a fantasy world without electricity.
The Fifth Elephant continues on the tales of Jingo by hosting another international flavour. This time however, instead of setting off across the sea to Klatch, they’re heading inland towards Überwald, home to a large majority of the ethnic minorities within Ankh-Morpork including three of Vimes’ best, Angua, Detritus and Cheery.
Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and Duke of Ankh, is sent as an envoy and ambassador from Ankh-Morpork to witness the coronation ceremony of the dwarf’s new Low King. Naturally, he’s also following the trail of a theft that started in Ankh-Morpork, making use of the trip like every good policeman should.
But the story really gets going when he arrives in Überwald, and there isn’t much I want to say about it. Encounters with the dwarves, vampires and werewolves make for some of the most thrilling action Pratchett has depicted, and storylines that once again only serve to remind me how much I love Samuel Vimes.
With the single exception of the role of Fred Colon back in Ankh-Morpork, this book is stellar. I’ve reread this book more than any of the other Pratchett books, enjoying it more and more each time. Vimes and Angua are brilliant in this book, and the introduction of Rhys Rhysson as the Low King is brilliantly done. The dwarf lore given to us really extends this book simply beyond a story and into something out of a long lost mythology. It’s the least comedic, I think, of the lot, with the possible exception of Night Watch, but with the loss of the comedy only left more room for one of the most ingenious stories I’ve ever read.
I say it again and again, but if you only pick up one Discworld book, this should definitely be a contender (although I’ll probably still recommend Night Watch or the Wee Free Men).
The Fifth Elephant: A Discworld novel (Amazon.co.uk)
Author: Terry Pratchett
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 459
Publication date: 2000-11-02
Publisher: Corgi Books
RRP: £7.99
Lowest new price: £3.49
Lowest used price: £0.01
Terry Pratchett has a seemingly endless capacity for generating inventively comic novels about the Discworld and its inhabitants but there is in the hearts of most of his admirers a particular place for those novels which feature the hard-bitten captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch Samuel Vimes. Sent as ambassador to the Northern principality of Uberwald where they mine gold, and iron and fat, but never silver, he is caught up in an uneasy truce between dwarfs, werewolves and vampires, in the theft of the Scone of Stone (a particularly important piece of dwarf bread) and in the old werewolf custom of giving humans a short start in the hunt and then cheating...
Pratchett is always at his best when the comedy is mixed with a real sense of jeopardy that even favourite characters might be hurt if there was a good joke in it. As always the most unlikely things crop up as the subjects of gags--Chekhov, grand opera, the Caine Mutiny--and as always there are remorselessly funny gags about the inevitability of story:
"They say that the fifth elephant came screaming and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise mountains.All this, the usual guest appearances and Gaspode the Wonder Dog... -- Roz KaveneyNo one actually saw it land, which raised the interesting philosophical question: when millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, and there is no one to hear it, does it--philosophically speaking--make a noise?
As for the dwarfs, whose legend it is, and who mine a lot deeper than other people, they say that there is a grain of truth in it".
Amazon.co.uk Review
The Fifth Elephant (Discworld Novel) (Amazon.com)
Author: Terry Pratchett
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 459
Publication date: 2000-01-01
Publisher: Corgi Books
RRP:
Lowest new price:
Lowest used price: $0.01
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