choconougat reviewed Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
In the twenty-eighth Discworld novel the Discworld goes to war.It began as a sudden strange …
Your review of Monstrous Regiment
5 stars
(why does a review have to have a title)
To be honest, I feel he saved the best best of social commentary to the last 20-30% (as usual, really), the previous part is only lighthearted nudge nudge in comparison. And plot. I have hoped it could be more sparsely distributed, but I am very glad that he got to it after all, and correctly. Especially, where the women, who had to dress as and act like men for survival and for career, became really man-like in all these years and acting just as harsh on women as men did ('I promote the women if they are better than men!'); and where the women soldiers got tried, then got dressed up as mascots as the generals had no hope in hushing it up anymore so they patronised them and paraded them, then sent back to old life. I am also very …
(why does a review have to have a title)
To be honest, I feel he saved the best best of social commentary to the last 20-30% (as usual, really), the previous part is only lighthearted nudge nudge in comparison. And plot. I have hoped it could be more sparsely distributed, but I am very glad that he got to it after all, and correctly. Especially, where the women, who had to dress as and act like men for survival and for career, became really man-like in all these years and acting just as harsh on women as men did ('I promote the women if they are better than men!'); and where the women soldiers got tried, then got dressed up as mascots as the generals had no hope in hushing it up anymore so they patronised them and paraded them, then sent back to old life. I am also very glad to see the girls grow more ambitious and courageous and capable than when they started. They got to the bigger picture during the events. So happy. But it is a very hard, bleak, dark war story to read, especially at this time, what with the news. Pterry had really got into writing war situations ever since Jingo, innit. Jingo, fifth elephant, night watch, then this. and maybe interesting times. and if I'm being linient, small gods and last hero.
I should go see that interview of pterry talking about this book that I saw on youtube recommendation, but that interview on Thud! also applies to Monstrous Regiment, and ALL political/social situation he had ever written. He said, what Vimes (and I agree that other main roles of the respective books) did was to buy some time, time people could use to take a breath, to make a different decision (not exact quote). Because it doesn't stop with throwing the ring into the volcano (exact quote), a handshake is only a handshake, but a handshake can be a symbol (this is also what he wrote in Fifth Elephant), it is a chance to change.
I think this must be why in almost every book where people chose the change, they started to work day and night for a hundred years and it was still not enough but they were still working ...
I'm gonna skip doing quotes on this one for now.