Reviews

Weiberregiment by Terry Pratchett

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

3.75

The Industrial Revolution sub-series is a challenging one for me to review in general, because they don’t have a reoccurring cast of characters, and often have very little to no connection to the other books besides the obvious one of all taking place in the same world. But this book has less connection than most. Commander Sam Vimes makes a small appearance, along with William de Worde and the vampire photographer from The Truth, and Discworld readers will recognize the names of several countries and the general concept of the klax. Beyond that, everything in here is new.

Which is not, necessarily, a bad thing. Polly herself is a solid character. She doesn’t exactly jump off the page, but she’s interesting enough. And the story of dressing up as a boy to go join the army for some reason or another is a fun concept, especially done by Sir Terry – witty, clever, hyperbolized into hilarity despite the fact that there is, actually, a war happening. And Polly is surrounded by an entertaining cast of side characters, including a vampire who’s traded blood for coffee, a troll (always entertaining), a fellow soldier who may or may not be getting messages from a possibly-dead ruler who may or may not also be a deity, an Igor (also always entertaining), and an amusingly inept commander, among others. They make for a collection of delightfully-weird people doing things the wrong way, but in a wrong way that ends up solving the problem. In short, it’s a Discworld book, with all the fun, humor, and whimsy that entails.

However. The Discworld books are also big on themes and messages, and Monstrous Regiment is no exception. I accused The Truth of being less than subtle, but it’s a masterful tale of hidden meaning compared to this one. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely agree that someone’s gender doesn’t make them unfit for any particular role and that wars are often stupid, pointless, and make everything worse, but this book just goes so over-the-top to make those points. Well, mainly the gender equality point. The war one is there, but it feels secondary to the conceptual bludgeon that is gender equality in this book. I get the concept of overdoing something for satirical purposes, but in my opinion this tipped way past satirical and into patently absurd and utterly unbelievable. The Discworld series is full of all sorts of absurd and ridiculous things, but this was the only one to actually shake my suspension of disbelief. I’m avoiding spoilers here, but there’s one particular thing that keeps happening. Once was a twist, twice was a funny coincidence, and several times was amusing. But as the book marched towards the end the sheer quantity of this thing happening rapidly tipped from funny and satirical to outlandish and gauche. It was just too much to be remotely believable.

Which sucks, because the rest of the book is good! It manages to give a whimsical edge to a literal war story, and it has solid characters, an engaging plot, plenty of witty humor, and the first confirmed queer characters I recall reading about in the Discworld series. So much of it was good, and I did really enjoy the read. It just went way too far with that one element, and that tanked the vast majority of the ending for me.

Content Warnings

kittycat2302's review against another edition

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5.0

THIS WAS FANTASTIC. I don't know if it's my new favorite but it is WAAAAAAAAY up there.
I really really hope some of these characters appear again in the final 10 books.