Thud!

Published on Sunday 9 October 2005 01:08

Terry Pratchett

Doubleday, 17.99

THE Pratchett universe is expanding exponentially. The Discworld series now tops 30 volumes, and there is a brisk trade in collectibles based on its characters. He has sidestepped into the teen market and has produced a children's picture book, Where's My Cow?.

That book exists, like many of Pratchett's themes, both in this world and in his. Which means one of his recurrent characters - the incorruptible, staunchly plebeian Commander of the Watch, Sam Vimes - can read Where's My Cow? to his infant son, every night at six o'clock, regardless of what is going on in the novel Thud!, where Vimes is the central character.

Where's My Cow? itself features Vimes reading, and is wonderfully illustrated, with Vimes soon getting tired of its cute creatures, embarking instead on a tour of Ankh-Morpork's less savoury characters. But how the average infant will feel about the paradigm shift is beyond me. And do we want our kids yelling "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!"?

Thud! is a far more interesting endeavour. Like Monstrous Regiment, which examined the causes of war against a brilliant comic canvas, Thud! has a serious theme: racial intolerance. That Pratchett can explore this while still making us laugh is a tribute to the integrity of his created world. Not that this is without problems.

In Thud!, Vimes is trying to prevent the ancient enmity between trolls and dwarfs spilling over into urban warfare. Some of you may be groaning at the thought of trolls and dwarfs, but here is where the problems - and the interest - lie.

A constant mapping has gone on over many books between the Discworld and our less amusing universe, and dwarfs have taken on the characteristics of religious fundamentalists, while trolls correspond with disaffected urban youth. Street fighting between these groups is not just a fiction. Pratchett's dwarfs could be seen as certain Muslim clerics; his trolls on nasty drugs could be seen as black youths - and that is quite another matter.

He could be accused of racial stereotyping, or of trivialising highly complex and incendiary issues. Vimes (increasingly, you feel, an alter ego for the author) comes up with some robust solutions to these intractable matters, helped by the rosy hue of a comic conclusion. But the issue remains: does the fact that this is a fantasy novel mitigate the way it unquestionably refers to the real world? I would suggest that no final identification is possible, but it's a near thing.

Next time you dismiss Pratchett as light reading, consider Thud! It's extremely funny, but it's also very near the knuckleduster.