THIS IS ONLY BY AN EXTREME STRETCH of the definition a part of the Vimes sub-series; our protagonist is a Borogravian girl named Polly Perks, an innkeeper’s daughter who disguises herself as a boy and joins the army. Sam Vimes does appear, though, as the representative of Ankh-Morpork and the voice of reason, and since I prefer not to acknowledge the existence of singleton novels that don’t fit into the eight categories I listed initially, I’m declaring this an honorary Vimes novel.
He is in it, after all.
One might argue that it fits in the “Beyond the Century of the Fruitbat” series because it’s partly about social change, but I think that’s stretching it even more than calling it a Vimes novel, so I won’t say that.
We’ve seen Vimes as an envoy before, in The Fifth Elephant, and in the early chapters of Night Watch he was being kept informed on the conflict between Borogravia and Mouldavia, so it’s not a surprise to see him sent out there to represent Ankh-Morpork’s interests. It’s mildly amusing, though, to see what the Borogravians think of him—they call him “Vimes the Butcher,” correctly acknowledging him as the second most powerful man in Ankh-Morpork.
William de Worde and Otto Chriek also put in appearances, as does Sergeant Angua, but none of the other established characters show up—unless you count Death, but his only visible or audible manifestation here is apparently a hallucination.
One rather interesting detail is that there’s no overt magic in this story at all—well, unless you count vampires, werewolves, Igor’s surgery, divine intervention, or other normal Discworld phenomena. There’s no wizardry or witchcraft, as such.
At any rate, most of the story closely follows Polly Perks as she and her fellow recruits are flung into Borogravia’s current war—which is not, despite what I said above and what Vimes was hearing in Night Watch, primarily with Mouldavia. So far as Polly knows, the war is against those vile Zlobenians, who have dared to trespass on the sacred soil of Borogravia.
Borogravia is not a happy place. The state religion is the worship of Nuggan, a god who has taken to pronouncing any number of ordinary objects and activities to be Abominations.137 The ruler is a Duchess no one has seen for years, who is rumored to be dead; her generals actually run things. The war is not going well. Most of the young men have gone to be soldiers, and haven’t come back.
One of those young men is Polly’s brother Paul, and she intends to find him and bring him home. She has it all planned out.
Naturally, events don’t follow her plans. It seems that matters are far worse than she had realized—Borogravia is at war with all its neighbors, and (thanks to Nuggan declaring the clacks towers to be an Abomination) Ankh-Morpork is backing the Alliance.
It also seems that she’s not the only girl who’s signed up to fight, for one reason or another.
Way back in Equal Rites, as I said in Chapter 5, it looked as if Mr. Pratchett intended to mock either feminism or sexism, but he didn’t really do either one. Here, though, sixteen years later, he finally does take up the subject of sexism and really consider it. In the interim, the Discworld series has transformed itself from light parody to serious satire, if one can use such a phrase, so instead of mere mockery he gives us an insightful, funny, and sometimes bitter look at the relationships between the sexes, the perception of women, and the roles forced upon them. And perhaps some commentary on the effects of testosterone, though it’s never described in those terms. 138
He also gives us a look at soldiering, and the proper roles of officers and NCOs. This is a subject he’s touched on before, notably in Jingo, but he tackles it in more depth here.
He also takes a look at war in general, and plainly does not like what he sees.139 There’s not much light-hearted humor here; the subject isn’t one where that would be appropriate. He presents us with a character who seems to pretty much sum everything up: Sergeant Jackrum, a red-coated blend of mother hen and murderous fiend. Jackrum has been at war for decades, and has absorbed all the lessons war can teach: Rules don’t matter. Laws don’t matter. Chains of command, nationality, age, sex—none of that matters. What matters is staying alive, protecting your own, and killing anything that threatens you. Jackrum has gotten very good at what matters. Compared to Jackrum, the vampire Maledict is a harmless nothing.
But Sergeant Jackrum isn’t cruel or sadistic or evil, just horribly, monstrously pragmatic—which is what’s needed in war.
There’s a lot of red in Monstrous Regiment, reflecting the bloody nature of the enterprise—red faces, red skies, and the Borogravian uniforms include red coats, just as the old English ones did for centuries. It’s probably for much the same reasons: a red coat looks grand on parade, it stands out on the street, and it doesn’t show the blood when someone gets shot.
Pragmatic, that. Very English. Like Mr. Pratchett.
While everyone knows that historically, there have been women who disguised themselves as men in order to serve in the military, there may be some who find it unlikely that any could do as well as some of the women in this story. I would suggest that these doubters look into the life of, say, Nadezhda Durova. I suspect Mr. Pratchett was familiar with her history.
In a Usenet post on the subject, he said, “. . . I do know a little about Colonel Gauntlett Bligh Barker who was, believe me, only one of thousands if not tens of thousands of women who fought as men during the past few centuries—I’ve seen estimates of as many as 1,100 in the American Civil War alone. She was probably one of the last to be able to get away with it.” So he had certainly read up on the subject.
Stories and belief are behind much of the trouble in this book, just as they are in so many Discworld novels. The Borogravian rulers have been relying on propaganda to keep the fight going long past the point where a sane government would have quit, and the people’s belief in Nuggan and the Duchess has let them get away with it. It’s only when Polly and company can bring the truth to light that the war can be brought to an end.
Sergeant Jackrum uses stories as weapons; the mere mention of Jackrum’s name is enough to cow most foes because of the stories everyone’s heard about the fearsome Jackrum.
And of course, the enlisted women all have their own stories driving them. No one here is fighting for truth, or ideals, or wealth, or power; they’re all playing out their individual stories.
This novel is noteworthy for its lack of outright magicians, as I mentioned, and also for its intermittent failure to pretend that Discworld is distinct from our own world. Over the course of the series, there has been a gradual shift from the use of fantasy-novel details to real-world details—names such as Bravd have given way to the likes of Susan, for example—and in Monstrous Regiment this progresses to citing actual songs from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, such as “The World Turned Upside Down” and “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier,” rather than inventing their Discworld equivalents.140
I mentioned in the last chapter that The Wee Free Men could almost have been set in Sussex; well, Monstrous Regiment could have been set in seventeenth-century Germany or Napoleonic Europe with only slight modification. Mr. Pratchett long ago stopped writing about fantasy in favor of writing about humanity; now even the fantasy trappings are wearing thin in spots, letting some very dark things show through.
Monstrous Regiment is a low point in that regard. Not in quality, as it’s a good (if sometimes depressing in its view of our species) story, but in its fantasyness. The fantastic elements are back in subsequent volumes.
Sam Vimes will return in Thud!, as seen in Chapter 44.
Next, though, Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegle are back.
40
A Hat Full of Sky (2004)
THE EDUCATION OF TIFFANY ACHING, hereditary witch of the Chalk, continues into a second volume. This time she’s leaving home at age eleven to learn witchcraft properly, apprenticed to a Miss Level, whom we have not encountered previously and who happens to be a rather remarkable person in ways beyond merely being a witch.
In A Hat Full of Sky, she sets out to learn some of it.
Alas, she’s attracted the attention of a creature called a hiver, an intangible thing that takes over the mind and body of its victim. Rob Anybody, Big Man of the Chalk clan of the Nac Mac Feegle, follows her, along with several of his men, hoping to protect her from this monster. He isn’t terribly successful at this, though he does help.
This novel is obviously a direct sequel to The Wee Free Men, but rather oddly, it’s also a direct sequel to “The Sea and Little Fishes” in some ways. Letice Earwig and her apprentice Annagramma are among the new acquaintances Tiffany encounters during her stay with Miss Level, and there are important scenes at the Witch Trials.
And of course, Granny Weatherwax is back. Her appearance at the end of The Wee Free Men was brief, and she didn’t really do much beyond acknowledging Tiffany’s successes, but in A Hat Full of Sky she plays a major role throughout the second half of the book, and teaches Tiffany a good bit about being a witch—and about being human.
There’s an interesting semi-inconsistency in that in “The Sea and Little Fishes,” Granny has traditionally always won the Witch Trials, while in A Hat Full of Sky, she doesn’t really compete at all—but then, she doesn’t compete because she’s accepted as being so good that she no longer has anything to prove to anyone, so it could easily be argued that she’ s simply moved up to the next level between stories. Or perhaps in the course of “The Sea and Little Fishes.”
Some of the apprentice witches compete in the Witch Trials; we get a scene relatively early on where Annagramma and company are discussing what they’ll do for their entries.
There are amusing consistencies, if that’s the right term; Zakzak Stronginthearm’s not-really-a-wizard assistant Brian, for example, attended Unseen University, but he didn’t study magic there, he studied fretwork—and one of Rincewind’s titles, as reported in The Science of Discworld II, is “Fretwork Teacher.”
And the theme of story is strong here. Granny explains to Tiffany that people need stories to tell them what to do, stories to believe. “Change the story, change the world,” she says. Tiffany finds an important clue to dealing with the hiver in remembering stories, specifically the story of the three wishes. (Exactly which story of three wishes doesn’t really matter, since on some level they’re all the same. Except maybe Eric.)
There’s also stuff about evolution, which is obviously a topic that interests Mr. Pratchett, and which he’ll tackle head-on in The Science of Discworld III, as seen in Chapter 43.
I consider this book one of Mr. Pratchett’s best works; his knack for the telling phrase is well displayed here, as when he describes Tiffany’s room in Miss Level’s home: “It smelled of spare rooms and other people’s soap.”
I was delighted to hear that two more books about Tiffany Aching were planned—and disappointed that it’s only two. I Shall Wear Midnight, which takes its title from a line in A Hat Full of Sky, isn’t out yet, as of this writing, but the third one, Wintersmith, is covered in Chapter 45.
First, though, it’s back to Ankh-Morpork. . . .
41
Going Postal (2004)
THE MORIBUND ANKH-MORPORK POSTAL SERVICE was first mentioned in Men at Arms, way back in 1993, but it took more than a decade to bring us this tale of the unfortunately named Moist von Lipwig and his efforts to restore the post office to its proper functions.
To do this, of course, he must first survive being hanged. Lipwig is a con man, forger, thief, and swindler who fell afoul of Ankh-Morpork’s unexpectedly effective City Watch.
Fortunately for him, Lord Vetinari sees to it that he does survive being hanged, and offers him a choice: take over as postmaster and restore the post office to functionality, or die. Not much of a choice, but technically, it’s still a choice.
Lipwig’ s a survivor. He takes the job, and after a few attempts at escape, gets caught up in the challenge. Public relations isn’t really that different from fraud, and he’s very good at fraud. . . .
There are several problems facing the post office. Its original collapse, decades earlier, was brought about by the use of a temporally complex mail-sorting machine designed by our old friend Bloody Stupid Johnson. The accumulated undelivered mail is responsible for other difficulties; just as the magical properties of books create L-space, all those words wanting to be read are causing distortions in time and space.
Most of all, though, the major clacks company, the Grand Trunk, sees the postal service as a competitor. The Grand Trunk has fallen into the hands of a group of unscrupulous businessmen led by one Reacher Gilt, whose cost-cutting measures have impaired the effectiveness of the clacks service, leaving an opportunity that Lipwig’s postmen leap at.
The clacks, while really just a semaphore system, serve as a Discworld parallel of the Internet, where tech-obsessed young clacksmen are so happy to be playing with hardware and coded data that they barely notice how they’re being exploited by ruthless businessmen.
Reacher Gilt is the epitome of all that’s bad in venture capitalism; he’s taken over the Grand Trunk through financial maneuvers so complex that no actual money was involved. He’s a pirate—and that’s made explicit in his description. He is, in fact, Long John Silver, right down to his name. He has a bird, a pet cockatoo that says “Twelve and a half percent!” in imitation of Silver’s parrot chanting “Pieces of eight!” (I’d have been happier if Mr. Pratchett hadn’t felt it necessary to actually explain, in the story, that “Twelve and a half percent!” means “Pieces of eight!”141)
Moist von Lipwig recognizes Reacher Gilt as a swindler like himself, and one reason that he sets out to succeed in the job he’s been forced to take on is to demonstrate that he’s not the monster Gilt is. Lipwig employs golems, invents postage stamps,142 and does everything he can to move the mail and give the public a good show. Where Sam Vimes sees the newspaper as a dangerous nuisance, Lipwig sees it as a tool to be used and a battlefield to be won.
Incidentally, although Lord Vetinari is a major character in Going Postal, Sam Vimes doesn’t appear at all. He’s mentioned in passing, nothing more. We do see that Dr. Lawn’s Lady Sybil Free Hospital, established at the end of Night Watch, is functioning nicely, and Lipwig does get interviewed by Captain Carrot at one point, but Vimes himself is kept out, probably to keep him from stealing the spotlight.
We are informed of the existence of Anoia, Goddess of Things That Stick in Drawers; we’ll get to meet her in person in Wintersmith.
Ponder Stibbons appears and makes a punning reference to “phase space,” a concept explained in the previous Science of Discworld volumes. Archchancellor Ridcully has a significant role. And there’s a small Tolkien tribute, of sorts, in a scene with an omniscope—that’s a magical device not totally unlike a crystal ball, or Tolkien’s palantir.
Oh, the title deserves comment. Every American I’ve ever spoken with knows what “going postal” means—going berserk, like the handful of postal workers in the 1980s and ’90s who went on shooting sprees. In online discussions, though, it appeared that many British or Australian readers had never encountered the phrase until the publication of this novel, and really weren’t clear on its derivation. That startled me, since as I’ve mentioned before, Mr. Pratchett is a very English writer, and clearly he knew the phrase, and thought it was familiar enough that his readers would get the joke.
One of the more interesting features of Going Postal is that it has chapters. Up until now, and excluding the four divisions of The Colour of Magic and the four books of Pyramids as really being something different, only the “Science of” books and the “young adult” novels featuring the Amazing Maurice and Tiffany Aching have had chapters. Oh
, there have been prologues (Going Postal has two) and epilogues (there’s one of those here, too), but not chapters. Going Postal has fourteen chapters, each of them headed by a list of the scenes to be found therein, in the manner of a nineteenth-century novel—for example, Chapter 1 opens as follows: In which our hero experiences Hope,
the greatest gift * The bacon sandwich of regret *
Somber reflections on capital punishment
from the hangman * Famous last words * Our hero dies *
Angels, conversations about * Inadvisability of misplaced
offers regarding broomsticks * An unexpected ride * *
A world free of honest men * A man on the hop *
There is always a choice
There’s nothing like that in any of the previous Discworld novels.
Each chapter also features (at least in the editions I’ve seen) an illustration of an Ankh-Morpork postage stamp.143
And unlike the “young adult” novels, Going Postal acknowledges the old Discworld idea, much neglected in the later novels, that the number eight has magical significance and should therefore be avoided; the chapter between Chapter 7 and Chapter 9 is Chapter 7a.144
Also, I believe (though perhaps I just missed it earlier) that Going Postal is the first novel where the men of Ankh-Morpork wear neckties. The faux-medieval trappings of the early novels have given way to something far more modern—though not exactly modern, as women’s fashions, we are informed, currently include bustles.
In an interview publicizing the Sky One adaptation of Hogfather, Mr. Pratchett explained that various aspects of Discworld tend to mirror whatever Roundworld era he thinks most suitable for that particular feature; apparently he sees the Post Office as late Victorian.145 At any rate, it’s plain that we’ve long ago left behind the generic faux-medieval setting of traditional fantasy novels.
All in all, Going Postal is a bit of a change—and the beginning of a new sub-series featuring Mr. Lipwig, as Moist von Lipwig is also the protagonist of the latest novel, Making Money, wherein Lipwig takes over Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mint.146 Moist von Lipwig seems to make a habit of taking things over, and has apparently taken over the “Beyond the Century of the Fruitbat” series, as well.
The Turtle Moves! Page 14
