The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

I was just saying that I hoped there would be more novels set in Uberwald and here it is. How pleasing.

Commander Vimes of the city watch is being sent to Uberwald in his capacity as a Duke and being asked to be an ambassador to the coronation of the low king. Vimes is not what one would call a natural diplomat and he is like a bull at high society functions, so his appointment as an ambassador seems eccentric.  Of course the enigmatic Patrician, Vetinari, has his reasons. He always does.

In the meantime, Angua has gone missing. She's a werewolf and this Uberwald business is in her home territory. She's called away by an old friend to deal with some family trouble leaving Carrot without a word. Carrot, being Carrot, isn't angry but when he finds out where she's headed, he heads out after her leaving the City Watch in the hands of Sergent Colon.

Colon does his best to rise to the occasion, which ends up about as well as can be expected. In total chaos.

The Fifth Elephant is a mix of political intrigue, detective who done it, and an adventure story. Faster paced than usual for a Pratchett novel, I blasted through it in about two and a half days on intermittent reading.

This Discworld novel makes me feel like an idiot. As a general rule, a large piece of the joy in Discworld novels is noticing the interplay between the text and things that Pratchett is referencing in that text. Up to this point he's played with Shakespeare, world politics, B horror flicks and everything in between. I heartily enjoyed The Fifth Elephant but I could not spot a single allusion or literary reference. I'm convinced they have to be there....I just can find them. It's frustrating.

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Upon further thought, Terry Prachett must have been a delightful irritating person to know. It must have been jokes and puns non-stop. I know people like that. They can be exhausting.

"Jingo" is one of those words that I think most people in my generation and after have lost track of. It means "a vociferous supporter of policy favoring war, especially in the name of patriotism." It is derogatory and has a weird etymological derivation. Originally it appeared in that sort of street magician patois. As in, "By jingo, I conjure thee. Abracadabra! Bwahahaha." (I added the "bwahahaha" but I really feel it belongs there) So, all together there is a sense of the ridiculous contained in the word. It makes me picture puffed up men in uniforms with ridiculous sideburns and stinky cigars who bellow about the sorry state of foreign national interests, there ought to be a war to straighten it all out. It is also a kind of chilling word since most people don't seem to see this as ridiculous.

Accordingly, Jingo is about a war in Discworld that began for no particular reason other than a bunch of puffed up idiots getting the idea in their heads. An island appears in the sea between Ankh-Morpork and the desert nation of Klatch. Conflict over whose island it is sparks political maneuvering and an assassination attempt. Of course, it really appears that the politicians involved were already looking for an excuse because that's just how these things work.

Commander Vimes, as commander of the watch, is immediately involved to investigate the assassination attempt which predictably and far too obviously leads back to the Klatchians. In the meantime, the city prepares for war.

I think I was just in the mood, but once I started Jingo I couldn't put it down. It's part of the Watchmen sub series and so it follows some of my favorite characters including Carrot and Angua. Also, and unusually, Lord Vetinari featured more prominently as a character which doesn't happen often. While, I figured out the sense of how things would have to wrap up, the specifics eluded me until the very end and there were some excellently twisty bits of intrigue involved.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

The BBC has an excellent sense of how to turn a book into a movie, but even so, I wouldn't expect that a movie version of a Pratchett novel would go well.  There is just too much going on. Nevertheless, I love the movies. I have all three of them. So far they've done "The Color of Magic," "Hogfather" and "Going Postal."

I mention this because in "Going Postal," which I have not read yet, Corporal Angua shows up to arrest the protagonist Moist von Lipwig, and it is offhandedly mentioned that she's a werewolf which is an intriguing idea. Angua first shows up in Men at Arms but I got the sense that there had to be more about her somewhere. So I've been rather impatient in a vague way to read down the "City Watch" story line.

I finally found her again in Feet of Clay. In fact, she's one of the major characters and develops greatly over the course of the story. The story starts with the bludgeoning deaths of two old men and the poisoning of Lord Vetinari. Angua's lupine nature means that she's got a few very useful skills and an excellent sense of smell, but even she can't track this killer.

In the meantime Captain Vimes, otherwise known as Sir James, is adjusting to his new life as landed nobility. Part of that is getting his very own coat of arms. Except the college of Heralds won't give him one because his several times removed Great Grandfather killed the last king of Ankh-Morpork. It shouldn't matter to him, but somehow it gets right in under the skin.

This is a kind of anti-Sherlock Holmes mystery. Vimes hates cleverness and favors dogged persistence, but the mystery of how Vetinari is being continually poisoned under the noses of the watch just bothers him no end while the city's golems running amok just adds insult to injury. Of course, it all falls together in the end.

I loved this book. I usually enjoy Pratchett's novels, but I rarely get truly enthusiastic about them. This one really resonated. Possibly because it was new ground, but I think it's more that I really like the golems and I like Angua.

Series: The Wolves of Mercy Falls by Maggie Stiefvater

People a really quite generous. Schools, even private ones, don't have expansive budgets. So, when they are getting rid of things, they often think of us. That includes books. The problem is, people don't always think through what a school can actually use. When it comes to the random stuff, it's just a bit of a chore. Someone sorts through the items, evaluates them, and either finds them a home at the school or donates them on to a place that can use them.

Books are different. To start with, when people donate books it's not usually just one or two. Usually, it's at least a full box and often more than one. Additionally, there are so many books out there and most of them are good, in their way. Its not just an issue of quality, it's an issue of interest, content, lexile range, topic appropriateness, teen interest, and etc.  So the librarian, Susan, and I usually end up sitting at a table going through them. Usually we sort into three piles: 1. donate on because inappropriate or out of date in some way, 2. books destined for the media center or a classroom library because we know them and they are good, and 3. Lydia's pile. Lydia's pile is the books we've never heard of or we are unsure of in some way so someone has to read them. No one else on the campus reads the way I do, so I'm the someone.

I find a lot of new books this way. The first book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls series, Shiver, came to me that way.

I read Shiver in a little under a day. It's a YA novel aimed at a high school or early 20s female reader. At it's core, the series is a supernatural romance with a sort of Beauty and the Beast feel to it. Parents might object to to a couple of the choices of the protagonists, but I think it's worth it for the way it really addresses those same issues in a head on manner.

Sam is a werewolf. Grace is not, but she should be. Sam has loved Grace from afar for years, ever since a wolf dragged her as a little girl off a tire swing. He was a wolf at the time and saved her from the pack, then he wait for her to change into a wolf too but she never did. And so, he never approached her because who needs a werewolf in their life?

Grace loves the wolves and particularly the one that watches her from the line of trees behind her Minnesota house. However, when Jack, a teenager at Grace's highschool gets mauled by a wolf, the wolves are suddenly in danger. Circumstances through Sam and Grace together for the first time.

Stiefvater takes a variation on the whole werewolf thing. Her wolves change because it's cold. So when they shift, it is for the whole winter, and they become human for the summer. However, the werewolf bug is like a disease and they stay wolves longer and longer each year until one year they just never become human again. It's a fun twist.

I enjoyed the series.

1. Shiver
2. Linger
3. Forever