Thud !

Ah, yet another wonderful adventure in the Discworld. I have been a huge fan of Terry Pratchett ever since I bought my first book back in Glasgow in the very early 1990s. If you haven't heard of this fantasy fiction world - Where have you been ? Living under a rock ?!

In this case it is the seventh escapade for the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and it's Commander, Sam Vimes. It is lovely and topical - there's more than a little of the Da Vinci code in this one - and as always Mr Pratchett manages a good old-fashioned side-swipe at the state that humanity gets itself into. Although in this case it is shown up in the behaviour of the dwarfs and the trolls. If you enjoy a good laugh and sly, subtle humour then this is a book to add to your library.

If you are new to the Discworld, then start at the beginning, you might even recognise where my alter-ego, Twoflour, comes from.
For that you want The Colour of Magic.
It really doesn't pay to jump into the middle of any of the mini-series - either the City Watch or the Witches, or Death for that matter. Each book can *stand alone*, but you won't have the background info on the characters and will miss a lot of jokes because of it.

I can't recommend this highly enough. And no, I'm not a convention-going, signature-hunting, costume-wearing, cult-following groupie. I'm just a very satisfied reader, who appreciates the breadth of knowledge and work that is put into each of these stories. If in any doubt about that - take a short stroll through the book Pyramids. It's such a nice, but fantastical view of ancient Egypt, or I should say Djelibeybi.
For an independent review of Pyramids, take a look here.

Okay, so that makes this book a 4* out of 5.


*it only gets a 4 because I could put it down and do other things.