The Fifth Elephant

The Fifth Elephant (2000) Terry Pratchett

This book barely talked about elephants at ALL.

Instead, it was about the Watch and Commander Vimes, and Captain Carrot and Angua. It also is a good look at how power corrupts, even on a small level. That was probably the most disturbing part of the book–watching Sgt Colon go straight over the edge. How could there not be repercussions from that?

Commander Vimes is being sent to Uberwald to attend the coronation over the Low King, except that as with anything that involves Samuel Vimes, intrigue and chaos ensue.

It seems to me that the character of Commander Samuel Vimes is getting more and more serious. Not that this is a bad thing, but it seems like Terry Pratchett is more and more using Sam Vimes to address the more difficult issues–although he’s still on the wagon, there’s discussion of alcoholism. (I’m not sure how I feel about the discussion–maybe it’s better to have him living be example rather than talking about it. Then again new readers wouldn’t know about Commander Vimes past, so should it be mentioned? I don’t know.)

I also like the fact that Carrot gets taken down. I mean, he’s a great guy, and you really have to like him, but maybe it’s good to see him not able to succeed at everything he does.

Is this a good book? Yes. Is it a great book? I don’t know. I’m not that fond of Uberwald and the vampires, although I found them far less irritating in this book than in Carpe Jugulum. If you like Discworld, and you like the Watch, you’ll like this book, but it seems to be reaching the point that you really would need to go back and read some of the previous books to really understand what’s going on. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just… different.

And I really was upset that there really weren’t any elephants.

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