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It's a game of Trolls and Dwarfs1 where the player
must take both sides to win ...
It's the noise a troll club makes when crushing
in a dwarf2 skull3, or when a dwarfish4 axe5 cleaves
a trollish cranium ...
It's the unsettling sound of history about
to repeat itself ... THUD!
It's the most extraordinary, outrageous,
provocative, insightful, and keenly cutting flight
of fancy yet from Discworld's incomparable
supreme creator ... Terry Pratchett
Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch admits he may not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer -- he might not even be a spoon. But he's dogged and honest and he'll be damned if he lets anyone disturb his city's always-tentative peace -- and that includes a rabble-rousing dwarf from the sticks (or deep beneath them) who's been stirring up big trouble on the eve of the anniversary of one of Discworld's most infamous6 historical events.
Centuries earlier, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, a horde7 of trolls met a division of dwarfs in bloody8 combat. Though nobody's quite sure why they fought or who actually won, hundreds of years on each species still bears the cultural scars, and one views the other with simmering animosity and distrust. Lately, an influential9 dwarf, Grag Hamcrusher, has been fomenting10 unrest among Ankh-Morpork's more diminutive11 citizens with incendiary speeches. And it doesn't help matters when the pint-size provocateur is discovered beaten to death ... with a troll club lying conveniently nearby.
Vimes knows the well-being12 of his smoldering13 city depends on his ability to solve the Hamcrusher homicide without delay. (Vimes's secondmost-pressing responsibility, in fact, next to being home every evening at six sharp to read Where's My Cow? to Young Sam.) Whatever it takes to unstick this very sticky situation, Vimes will do it -- even tolerate having a vampire14 in the Watch. But there's more than one corpse15 waiting for him in the eerie16, summoning darkness of the vast, labyrinthine17 mine network the dwarfs have been excavating18 in secret beneath Ankh-Morpork's streets. A deadly puzzle is pulling Sam Vimes deep into the muck and mire19 of superstition20, hatred21, and fear -- and perhaps all the way to Koom Valley itself.
Book review
Ankh-Morpork's City Watch Commander, Sam Vimes, stars in the latest entry in Pratchett's popular Discworld series (Going Postal22, etc.). "Thud" is the sound that commences the novel, as a dwarf is bludgeoned to death; it's also the name of a chesslike match that recreates the battle of Koom Valley, a long-ago fight between trolls and dwarfs. As the anniversary of the battle approaches, ancient politics and the present-day murder cause tensions between the trolls and dwarfs to boil.
Though Koom Valley was a disaster for both sides, certain community leaders from each side have been spoiling for a rematch—something Vimes is duty-bound to prevent. In the midst of this, a push toward affirmative action forces Vimes to hire a vampire named Sally to the Watch. She's sworn off human blood, but that's cold comfort to the assortment23 of humans, dwarfs, trolls, werewolves and golems that make up the police force. Vimes and his motley crew of coppers24 are called upon to not only find the murderer and keep the peace but also, in a jab at The Da Vinci Code, solve the riddle25 of a painting that reputedly holds the secret to what really happened at Koom Valley. Pratchett's fantastic imagination and satirical wit are on full display.
Author introduction
Terry Pratchett sold his first story when he was thirteen, which earned him enough money to buy a second-hand26 typewriter. His first novel, a humorous fantasy entitled The Carpet People, appeared in 1971 from the publisher Colin Smythe. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. In 1987 he turned to writing full time, and has not looked back since. To date there are a total of 33 books in the Discworld series, of which three (so far) are written for children. The first of these, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents27, won the Carnegie Medal. A non-Discworld book, Good Omens28, his 1990 collaboration29 with Neil Gaiman, has been a longtime bestseller, and will be reissued in hardcover by William Morrow in early 2006. His new Discworld novel, Thud!, will be published this fall.
Regarded as one of the most significant contemporary English-language satirists, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was named an Officer of the British Empire “for services to literature” in 1998, and has received four honorary doctorates30 from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, Bath, and Bristol. His acclaimed31 novels have sold 40 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 33 languages.
Terry Pratchett lives in England with his family, and spends too much time at his word processor.
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