From Library Journal
Replete with parodies and puns, this second Discworld novel to appear this year finds previous city guardsman Commander Vimes, assisted by dwarfs, trolls, and a female werewolf, determined to solve a murder with a golem as the prime suspect. Wonderfully hilarious; recommended for fantasy collections.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Pratchett brings Discworld, the city of Ankh-Morpork, and Commander Vimes of the city guard back once more, and it comes as no surprise that Ankh-Morpork's assassins and thieves have guilds and that killing or stealing outside guild limits is severely frowned on. So when a nonunion assassin goes to work in the city, Vimes has to resort to various expedients, including hiring a dwarf, one Cheery Littlebottom, to deal with the culprit. Pratchett's humor is as off-the-wall as ever, so the pursuit of the assassin is as witty and nonsensical as ever, and raising the question of a king for the city hints of possible future changes. Pratchett hardly needs to alter his combination of whimsy, satire, and subtly intelligent world building in order to hold on to his many readers and win new ones. Roland Green
Review
"Full of sly puns and the lively, outrageous characters his readers expect. . . . This is fantasy served with a twist of Monty Python, parody that works by never taking itself too seriously." — Publishers Weekly
From the Publisher
Royalty is like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chop off, the roots are still there underground, waiting to spring up again. A murderer is stalking Discworld: A prowling perp who leaves behind jaunty corpses and strange-smelling tracks of curious white clay -- a grim reaper who belongs to neither the Assassins' Guild nor the Thieves' Guild.
Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard is determined to stop this unauthorized assassin -- and to prove it, he has hired a Dwarf to help him. With the assistance of, Corporal Cheery Littlebottom, Vimes and his men (and trolls, and such) can get to the, well, bottom of anything. Even when one of the victims is murdered with a loaf of her own Battle Bread (available in convenient throwing slices, guerrilla crumpets, and defensive bagels). And even when the investigation leads to an out-of-work golem, a vampire dragon, and a vegetarian werewolf.
Such strangeness is perfectly normal in normally perfect Ankh-Morpork, the greatest of Discworld's cities, where anything can happen and therefore, naturally, always does. But when Vimes unravels a living (and, in fact, complaining) Coat-of-Arms and finds an unexpected royal clue, he is faced with a new dilemma.
Fighting crime is one thing. But what if winning means inflicting a new King on a city that does very well, thank you, with no King at all?
Whoever created humanity left in a major design flaw. The tendency to bend at the knee...
From the Back Cover
It's murder in Discworld!—which ordinarily is no big deal. But what bothers Watch Commander Sir Sam Vimes is that the unusual deaths of three elderly Ankh-Morporkians do not bear the clean, efficient marks of the Assassins' Guild. An apparent lack of any motive is also quite troubling. All Vimes has are some tracks of white clay and more of those bothersome "clue" things that only serve to muck up an investigation. The anger of a fearful populace is already being dangerously channeled toward the city's small community of golems—the mindless, absurdly industrious creatures of baked clay, who can occasionally be found toiling in the city's factories. And certain highly placed personages are using the unrest as an excuse to resurrect a monarchy—which would be bad enough even if the "king" they were grooming wasn't as empty-headed as your typical animated pottery.
About the Author
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.
