The Great Discworld Retrospective No. 34: Thud!

Koom Valley is a fairly unassuming place but it is the site of a series of battles between the Trolls and the Dwarves. The most famous battle was inconclusive and resulted in the disappearance of the kings of both races. Whoever it was that won the battle has been a point of contention ever since and with the anniversary of the battle coming up, things are getting tense in Ankh-Morpork…

Terry Pratchett was on a bit of a roll with the Discworld novels at this point: he had written half-a-dozen or so outright classics in the last few years and the series was about as popular as it had ever been. He was being taken seriously by the literary establishment – although that was never something that really bothered him – and he was becoming a proper part of the background furniture of British popular culture.

All of this is reflected in Thud! (2005), the 34^th Discworld novel. Out of all 41 books in the series, this one possibly reflects the time it was written in most effectively. It’s also a great story, but we’ll get to that soon.

For those who may need a reminder, 2005 in our roundworld was a bit grim: the 9/11 attacks were still fresh in the memory, as was what followed it. The Iraq War had begun only 2 years previously (and would have been on Pratchett’s mind as he wrote this novel) while hawkish media outlets appeared to be fine with calling out differences between cultural groups as a way of drumming up sales. In a lighter pop cultural note, the world was also largely obsessed with The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s conspiracy thriller.

Pratchett manages to marry the conspiracies of Brown’s book with the real-world origins of the story and then bolted it to a conflict that appeared to also be drawn from our own world.

First up, the simmering hostility between the Trolls and the Dwarves had been a long ongoing thing on the Disc – a large part of the story in Men At Arms was the grudge-turned-friendship between Detritus and Cuddy. As the War On Terror began in the early parts of the 21^st Century, though, Pratchett started to mine it for plot details in his own fictional cultural rivalry. After all, mythological races can be handy for exploring conflicts and issues without naming names, and the existence of two disparate cultural groups in a large melting pot of a city like Ankh-Morpork (premier city of the disc where a lot of the novels take place). Much of the conflict arises from younger Trolls and Dwarves being raised in the city and coming into conflict with their parents who still hold many of the values of their homeland. There are any number of stories that can be told from this angle: young Dwarves and Trolls working together and beginning to respect each other is the most hopeful.

We see this idea reflected in the Thud! clubs that Commander Vimes, head of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, visits as part of his investigations into a couple of murders. He sees Trolls and Dwarves playing Thud (a board game that you can now buy in the real world) peacefully and begins to sense a little hope for the future.

(Thud is a game that was seen briefly in Going Postal. It was designed by Trevor Truran in 2002 and named by Terry Pratchett, which then gave him the title of this book)

The beauty of having the Trolls and Dwarves being antagonists in a conflict is that Pratchett can suggest things about cultural clashes in our world without appearing to be preaching to any particular choir. These two races represent the worst side of conservatism where fanatical devotion to the traditions of the past leads to conflict with those who find a way forward that is different to what has gone before. But the fear of what might happen to them if they let go of these old ways leads to the members of the Watch facing a nearly monolithic (actually monolithic in the case of the Trolls) wall of silence as they investigate what has happened.

Meanwhile a stolen painting provides clues as to the location of the missing kings. This is a terrific steal from The Da Vinci Code (2003) (which was itself a ripoff/homage of The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail (1982))in which clues are given to the location of the descendants of Jesus Christ. It mixes myth, history and complete fabrication into a moderately entertaining yarn (80+ million copies sold so far). Pratchett takes the idea of secrets being hidden in plain sight and has Vimes and his crew decoding a secret message to find a location that has been lost to history.

Thud! is a book filled with wonderful ideas and scenes. I haven’t yet mentioned the Summoning Dark, a vengeful Dwarven spirit that tries to possess Vimes in order to wreak vengeance on those who have harmed the Dwarves; nor have I discussed a brilliant set piece in which a team of fanatics try to assassinate Vimes and his wife Sybil and their son Samuel (born at the end of Night Watch) only to be foiled by the efforts of butler Willikins and Sybil’s swamp dragons.

I also haven’t mentioned a wonderful piece of tie-in merchandise which also serves as a plot device; namely the wonderful children’s book Where’s My Cow? I will digress on to that now.

Where’s My Cow? Is young Sam’s favourite book. Vimes reads it to him every night at 6 o’clock. It’s part of their routine. This is set out in a rather amusing piece of police corruption, in which Vimes and his squad manage to manipulate huge chunks of the city to ensure that workaholic Vimes gets home in time to read the story. Throughout the rest of the book, Vimes gets home in time to read it regardless of where he is and what he is doing, culminating in a wonderfully deranged but also very tense scene at the climax.

It’s a bog standard kid’s book, frankly, but it features that lovely combination of repetition, rhythm and silly noises that young kids adore. The version that was released in conjunction with Thud! features a lot of the text of the book, but also has a plot wherein Vimes decides that since Young Sam is a city boy, he’d be much better off learning about things in the city. So he subverts the text to feature the denizens of Ankh-Morpork rather than farm animals.

As a marketing idea, Where’s My Cow? Is brilliant. As a companion to Thud! it is a delightful souvenir and a perfect way to get the sometimes grim taste of that book out of your mouth.

Because the uneasy peace that arises at the end of Thud! is by no means secure: just like in roundworld, there are subterranean forces that seek to undermine (literally in the case of the Dwarves) the goodwill and efforts of those who would like to move forwards.

Coming Up Next: Tiffany tries to give a cold shoulder to the embodiment of Winter itself in Wintersmith.