Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Monstrous Regiment

Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

14 reviews

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

nikkiisreading's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

This book is so, so wonderful! I was baffled every other page by the fantastic play with words, the clever plot turns and the lovely way these characters develop throughout the story.

Cannot recommend more!!

Content Warnings

arcturus_b's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

erikagibson126's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

woweewhoa's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

ampharos906's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

rachaelbunny's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Content Warnings

plume_de_renarde's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny inspiring slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

innastholiel's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Content Warnings

crufts's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Monstrous Regiment is Book #31 of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. It works fine as a standalone, and you don't need read the rest of the series to understand it.

Polly Perks grew up working as a barmaid in the family tavern, where she heard the song Sweet Polly Oliver sung drunkenly many a time. So when her enlisted brother Paul goes missing, Polly disguises herself as a soldier boy, "Oliver", and joins the Borogravian army in order to find him.
But before long, this motivation is swept aside by the challenges of war. The forces of enemy countries Zlobenia and Ankh-Morpork are on the march, and the Borogravian army has already been decimated. Polly's squadron might be one of the few remaining. Can she keep up her disguise long enough to save her brother - and her country?

This summary doesn't do justice to the brilliance of this novel, which is a hilarious satire of sexism. It also pokes fun at intolerant religion via the conservative, sexist, censorship-happy religion of Borogravia, where more and more things are designated as "Abominations" each week. This was contrasted with the more enlightened culture of Ankh-Morpork, where they have such mysterious concepts of "free speech", female officers, and "newspapers" that aren't printed by the government.

There's also character development in spades. When we first meet Lieutenant Blouse, he's a street-dumb dandy who's hardly able to handle his own sword; by the time we bid him farewell, he's

an intelligent and capable leader who backwards-engineers the Clacks from scratch, sneaking the Monstrous Regiment to victory at the final castle

. Meanwhile, Sergeant Jackrum seems like a reliable ol' font of advice who tells the hard truths of war, but before the end of the book we see him to be

an unrelenting liar who doesn't tell the hard truth of anything

.

Something else I loved about the book was how many twists it had. I'd expected it to follow the same basic plot as Mulan: "A woman disguises herself as a male soldier for some purpose. Through her hard work she gains the respect of her male colleagues, and keeps it even after her true gender is revealed."
However, Monstrous Regiment subverted this so thoroughly that it was hilarious. Firstly, there's a particular running joke (a series of reveals) which sent me into a fit of laughter when I realized what was going on, and which completely throws out the whole Mulan plot. Secondly, there's a scene near the end of the book (

disguising as washerwomen

) which is literally the exact opposite of what happens in Mulan, in the funniest way possible.

Another thing I liked about the book was the endlessly intriguing character of Sgt. Jackrum:

He's shown as (a) a massive liar who seems to be faking his military history and age for some reason, and (b) a man who has genuine good advice and seems to mostly act in the squad's interests... although perhaps not Lt. Blouse's. Jackrum gets into various scrapes and is challenged by the higher-ranking military, but he always seems able to talk his way out of every situation in a sly, conniving way.
Such an interesting character to read. He reminds me of Professor Quirrell as depicted in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - extremely intelligent, cynical, seems to be on your side, but it feels like his entire personality is a facade that he switches on or off as necessary (and indeed it is). For more about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, see my review here.

.

You can read this book as a standalone, but there are also treats for serial Discworld readers. Sam Vimes makes a few appearances (having become

the second-most powerful man in Ankh-Morpork

), as does journalist William de Worde. This was done very well and neatly tied the book into the Discworld canon.

Was there anything bad about the book? Well, the plot did seem a little aimless at times, with the squadron just wandering through the wilderness and encountering various "random" challenges, but it didn't bother me too much.

Now, a comment on the book's themes. Wikipedia categorizes this book's topic as "transgender" (as well as the expected topics of "war", "crossdressing", etc).
This is simply not correct. The number of trans characters in the story is zero, so don't get your hopes up. Actually, it is continually assumed that everyone is cis and there is no such thing as being trans, in the sense that whatever is under a person's clothes reveals the truth.
For example, Polly makes a comment that she checks every day to see if she's still a woman under her clothes. And

another female soldier comments that she could just drop her trousers to prove that she's a woman

.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with this - the characters have no reason to think any differently. But ultimately, you shouldn't get your hopes up: there are no trans characters and this is not a trans novel in any sense.

Overall, Monstrous Regiment is a very funny and insightful novel, and definitely worth a read.

Content Warnings

More...