Rating: 5/5
Review:
Brilliant
Feet Of Clay is a terrific book. It has always been a favourite of mine and
reading it again (for the third or fourth time, I think) it has lost none of
its brilliance. It's worth saying that
if you're new to Pratchett, don't be put off by the trolls, dwarves and so
on. It's just an incredibly effective
device for mirroring human society. (And
Detritus the troll is a wholly wonderful character, too.)
Here, Vimes and the Watch are investigating apparent
attempts to poison the Patrician, while something strange and menacing is going
on with the golems in the city. It's a
superbly constructed story, excellently paced and very exciting a lot of the
time, but what makes it special, as always it Pratchett's incisiveness about
human issues. There is some wonderfully
acute observation about race, gender politics and class, for example, all
lightly and often very funnily done, and underpinned by Vimes's humanly flawed
attitudes and pragmatism. He manages to
say really important things without ever being ponderous or preachy about it.
There are, of course, plenty of great comic moments. For instance, early on, three crooks burst
into the Watch's bar, take Angua hostage and haul her out into the street:
"Hadn't we better help?" said a constable who was
new to the Watch.
"They don't deserve our help," said Vimes.
(I should probably confess at this point that I have been
hopelessly in love with Angua for years.)
Feet Of Clay is written in really good, unobtrusive prose
and it is thoughtful, exciting, gripping, very funny and at times genuinely
moving. What more could you want? Very warmly recommended.
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