This is Pratchett’s latest Discworld novel; and it is to my lasting
regret that due to soccer practice and an inability to find a babysitter
we missed seeing him when he was at our local bookstore a couple of weeks
ago. (So happens I missed Neil Gaiman last week, which is also
regrettable but not nearly as lasting.)

Thud! is yet another tale of the City, Ankh-Morpork, as seen
through the eyes of its most determined defender: His Grace Samuel Vimes,
the reluctant Duke of Ankh-Morpork and most eager Commander of her City
Watch. The topic this time around, as it so often is in the Sam Vimes
books, is race relations. Koom Valley Day is approaching, and
the dwarfs and the trolls are working themselves up to break a few
heads. The dwarfs and trolls first fought the Battle of Koom Valley
a thousand years earlier; they’ve given repeat performances every few
decades ever since, sometimes even within the confines of Koom Valley.

Koom Valley Day is always rather fraught in Ankh-Morpork, thanks to the
massive influx of dwarfs and trolls over the last twenty years; but this
year it’s shaping up to be a doozy. Indeed it appears that unless our
Sam can do something to ease the tensions, the city will be the site of
the next Battle of Koom Valley, and that eftsoons and right speedily.

Much of the tension may be laid at the feet of one Grag Hamcrusher, a
leader of a new group of “deep down” dwarfs who have recently come to
the city. Grag is not a name, but a title; it is the grags who are
responsible for transmitting the essence of dwarfishness to the next
generation. The closest human approximation is probably “rabbi”; and
if “grag” equals “rabbi” then Hamcrusher and the “deep down” dwarfs
make your average Hasidic Jew look like a secularist. Hamcrusher’s not
to impressed with the dwarfishness of your average city dwarf, and he’s
absolutely appalled by the vast numbers of trolls in the city, about
whom he has not been silent.

As the book begins, Hamcrusher is not only Vimes’ chief problem; he’s
also dead. The “deep down” dwarfs claim that the killer is a troll.
And Koom Valley Day is only a few days away….

Like all of the Sam Vimes books, Thud! is a mystery with
Vimes as the sleuth; and like all of the Sam Vimes books, the mystery
is odd, surprising, and funny. I’ll only say that the book Vimes
reads to his son Young Sam every night at six o’clock
precisely–every night, without fail, at precisely six o’clock, utterly
without fail, because if you’ll skip it for a good
reason you’ll eventually skip it for a bad reason–that is, the estimable
Where’s My Cow?, plays a dramatic (also odd, surprising, and
funny) role at the climax of the tale. Jane and I are going to be
giggling about it to each other for the indefinite future.