Product Description

A Discworld novel of dwarfs, diplomacy, intrigue and big lumps of fat.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3091 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 459 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Terry Pratchett has a seemingly endless capacity for generating inventively comic novels about the Discworld and its inhabitants but there is in the hearts of most of his admirers a particular place for those novels which feature the hard-bitten captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch Samuel Vimes. Sent as ambassador to the Northern principality of Uberwald where they mine gold, and iron and fat, but never silver, he is caught up in an uneasy truce between dwarfs, werewolves and vampires, in the theft of the Scone of Stone (a particularly important piece of dwarf bread) and in the old werewolf custom of giving humans a short start in the hunt and then cheating...

Pratchett is always at his best when the comedy is mixed with a real sense of jeopardy that even favourite characters might be hurt if there was a good joke in it. As always the most unlikely things crop up as the subjects of gags--Chekhov, grand opera, the Caine Mutiny--and as always there are remorselessly funny gags about the inevitability of story:

"They say that the fifth elephant came screaming and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise mountains.

No one actually saw it land, which raised the interesting philosophical question: when millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, and there is no one to hear it, does it--philosophically speaking--make a noise?

As for the dwarfs, whose legend it is, and who mine a lot deeper than other people, they say that there is a grain of truth in it".

All this, the usual guest appearances and Gaspode the Wonder Dog... -- Roz Kaveney

Book Information
Terry Pratchett has sold over 17 million books, and his work has been translated into 27 languages. The Fifth Elephant is the 24th book in the bestselling Discworld series.

Sam Vimes is a man on the run. Yesterday he was a duke, a chief of police and the ambassador to the mysterious fat-rich country of Uberwald. Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don't ask). It's snowing. It's freezing. And if he can't make it through the forest to civilisation there's going to be a terrible war. But there are monsters on his trail. They're bright. They're fast. They're werewolves--and they're catching up. Sam Vimes is out of time, out of luck, and already out of breath...

About the Author
Terry Pratchett has been writing the Discworld novels since 1983. His first novel was published when he was 20, and he continued to write in his spare time whilst working as a journalist for a local newspaper. In his thirties he left journalism to become a press officer for Central Electricity Generating Board. He now writes full-time and is Britain's best-selling novelist, with a fanatical following.

Praise for Terry Pratchett
"Like reading Tolkien but with gags" --Guardian

"Has the energy of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the inventiveness of Alice in Wonderland ... an intelligent wit and a truly grim and comic grasp of the nature of things" --AS Byatt, Sunday Times

"It's hard to think of any humorist writing in Britain today who can match him" --Time Out

"The most breathtaking display of comic invention since PG Wodehouse" --The Times

"If Terry Pratchett were a character from one of his novels, he would be a wizard with a special qualification in alchemy, for everything he touches turns to gold" --The Guardian

"With their humour, terrors and strange and unnerving philosophical reflections on space and time, Pratchett's novels are that paradoxical phenomenon--cult writings that are relished by millions" --Gerald Kaufman, The Express

From the Back Cover
SAM VIMES IS A MAN ON THE RUN. YESTERDAY HE WAS A DUKE, A CHIEF OF POLICE AND THE AMBASSADOR TO THE MYSTERIOUS FAT-RICH COUNTRY OF UBERWALD.

Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don't ask). It's snowing. It's freezing. And if he can't make it through the forest to civilization there's going to be a terrible war.

But there are monsters on his trail. They're bright. They're fast. They're werewolves - and they're catching up.

The Fifth Elephant is Terry Pratchett's latest installment in the Discworld cycle, this time starring dwarfs, diplomacy, intrigue and big lumps of fat.

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Customer Reviews

One of the best
Once an author is turning out a novel a year in a growing series he can be forgiven for getting rather stale. That isn't really a problem with Terry Pratchett: his output can be a bit uneven but overall the Discworld fantasies just seem to be getting better, and "The Fifth Elephant" is one of the best.
The wonderful Sam Vimes - clever, upwardly mobile but basically honest and down-to-earth chief of police of Ankh-Morpork - is sent with his aristocratic wife on a diplomatic mission to troubled realm of Uberwald. Why did the city's ruler Lord Vetinari, a man who could give Machiavelli lessons in deviousness, chose Vimes of all people for this delicate task? What exactly is going on in Uberwald, where the uneasy balance of power between dwarves, werewolves, and vampires seems to be breaking down? All is revealed in a book that is both dark and humorous, engrossing and highly entertaining.
Many of the usual characters we have come to know from the Discworld novels are here, and trying to make the best of an unfamiliar and threatening place and understand the peoples and their politics.
Once again Pratchett is the master not only of plot and character but also of the little aside, the fascinating but not overdone individual, the sly and amusing reference. We learn, for instance, that it is a social blunder to use the word "bath" to an upper-class werewolf when he is in human form, it makes him uncomfortable. We are introduced to a vampire equivalent of AA where members help each other keep off the human blood and get through "vun night at a time". We discover that the Low King of the Dwarves must be crowned sitting on a large, hard item called the great Scone of Stone - a clever one this, referring not only to the durability and lethal solidity of dwarfish bread as explained in previous novels but also to the Stone of Scone (pronounced "Skoon") on which for centuries the kings of Scotland were crowned. And much more...
If you know the characters you will enjoy the book even more, but Pratchett newbies could find a worse place to start than this one.

Enter the Werewolves....
Number 24 (gulp!) in the Discworld series has Sam Vimes (and assorted Watch colleages) sent on a diplomatic mission to Uberwald, along the way encountering viscious werewolves and a whodunnit mysery as a vital Dwarf artifact goes missing just as a new King is about to be crowned...

The obvious comparison with 'The Fifth Elephant' is the preceeding Discworld novel 'Carpe Jugulum', as where that novel had the witches of Lancre encountering Uberwald's vampires now it's the turn of the Watch to meet another Uberwald 'monster' race in the shape of the werewolves. Concerning the Watch's own shapeshifter Angua it's nice to get some more background on her family, but in a way this novel has a feel of Pratchett going back to the same well of inspiration a bit too often, with this being the second novel in a row to feature lurching self-made Igors and vampires with a modern outlook on life.

This isn't a particularly amusing book by Discworld standards, but Pratchett's writing is of a high enough quality that this is still a well-crafted and readable novel, and the mystery of the missing Dwarfish Stone of Scone is enough to keep the pages turning, but one does get a faint whiff of formula here, and while this is still a good Discworld book Pratchett has written better.

Could be better...
I can't believe so many have voted this with 5... ok it's better than night watch and is is the 3rd worst that features the night watch, the worst being Jingo and 2nd worst being night watch. There are some good gags as usual but over all this didn't really grab me... the first 3 featuring the night watch guard guards! men at arms and feet of clay are great however.