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Summary
Summary
"Pratchett . . . has a satirist's instinct for the absurd and a cartoonist's eye for the telling detail."
--Daily Telegraph (London)
"The purely funniest English writer since Wodehouse."
--Washington Post Book World
Sam Vimes, watch commander of Ankh-Morpork, is at long last taking a much-needed (and well deserved) vacation. But, of course, this is Discworld®, where nothing goes as planned--and before Vimes can even change his cardboard-soled boots for vacationer's slippers, the gruff watch commander soon finds himself enmeshed in a fresh fiasco fraught with magic, cunning, daring, and (for the reader more than for poor Vimes) endless hilarity. Did he really expect time off? As Vimes himself says in Feet of Clay, "there's some magical creature called 'overtime,' only no one's even seen its footprints." Following the New York Times bestselling Unseen Academichals, Terry Pratchett delivers an enthralling new tale from a place of insuperable adventure: Discworld.
Discworld® is a registered trademark.
Author Notes
Terry Pratchett was on born April 28, 1948 in Beaconsfield, United Kingdom. He left school at the age of 17 to work on his local paper, the Bucks Free Press. While with the Press, he took the National Council for the Training of Journalists proficiency class. He also worked for the Western Daily Press and the Bath Chronicle. He produced a series of cartoons for the monthly journal, Psychic Researcher, describing the goings-on at the government's fictional paranormal research establishment, Warlock Hall. In 1980, he was appointed publicity officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board with responsibility for three nuclear power stations.
His first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. His first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. He became a full-time author in 1987. He wrote more than 70 books during his lifetime including The Dark Side of the Sun, Strata, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, Sourcery, Truckers, Diggers, Wings, Dodger, Raising Steam, Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Tales, and The Shephard's Crown. He was diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer's disease in 2007. He was knighted for services to literature in 2009 and received the World Fantasy award for life achievement in 2010. He died on March 12, 2015 at the age of 66.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Pratchett's 39th Discworld novel (after 2010's I Shall Wear Midnight) brings back fan favorite Sam Vimes, the cynical yet extraordinarily honorable Ankh-Morpork City Watch commander also known (if unenthusiastically) as His Grace Sir Samuel, the Duke of Ankh. Vimes faces an onerous task: two weeks off in the country at his wife's family estate. It's not the thought of spending time with his beloved Sybil or precocious six-year-old Young Sam that bothers him; it's just that a copper can't stop being a copper. Fortunately, even in this conservative hamlet, there's plenty of skullduggery to investigate, beginning with the brutal murder of a goblin girl. With the help of untried local constable Feeney Upshot and gentleman's gentleman Willikens, Vimes takes on a fiendish murderer as well as the case for (in)human rights and social justice in this lively outing, complete with sly shout-outs to Jane Austen and gritty police procedurals. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch and reluctant Duke of Ankh, has faced down trolls, vampires, and the implacable politics of the Patrician, Lord Vetinari. But in Pratchett's newest Discworld (Unseen Academicals) novel, Sam is forced to do something he swore he would never do: take a vacation. At the insistence of his wife, Lady Sibyl, Sam is dragged to her family's country estate, far from the familiar crime and pollution of his beloved Ankh-Morpork. But the country is far from idyllic. Sam's instincts quickly send him on the trail of something rotten among the posh and elite. The Duke of Ankh may have been sent to the county for rest and relaxation, but perhaps the Commander of the City Watch was sent for justice. VERDICT Series followers will delight in this latest entry as it offers them a chance to catch up with Pratchett's recurring protagonist while enjoying a tight, fast-paced take on the traditional police procedural novel. As often happens, Pratchett's fun, irreverent-seeming story line masks a larger discussion of social inequalities and the courage it takes to stand up for the voiceless.-Jennifer Beach, Cumberland Cty. P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.