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It would be a lot simpler [...] if this was a story. A sword is pulled out of a stone or a magic ring is flung into the depths of the sea, and with general rejoicing the world turns.

But this was real life. The world didn't turn, it just went into a spin.

Thud! by Terry Pratchett tells the story of Sam Vimes, head of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and his fellow coppers trying to solve a dwarf's murder. The upcoming anniversary of the thousands years old Battle of Koom Valley is keeping tension high between the dwarves and the trolls; making it harder for the constables of the Watch to keep the peace and solve the crime.

Thud! is a Terry Pratchett novel through and through. There's ample comedy interlaced with impactful action scenes with just a little bit of drama sprinkled in. This time around, it's a little grittier and darker than usual.

Thud! is about prejudice. The main plot as well as every sub plot has something to say about prejudice, how it can cloud our judgement and prevent us from doing the right thing and treating everyone with the respect they deserve.

The choice to have the protagonist be a prototypical white man in a position of power is great because I would have had a hard time taking the novel seriously if Terry Pratchett, a very white man, had chosen to tell this story from the perspective of a minority.

Sam Vimes is an honest man doing the best he can but sometimes that's just not good enough. So, for me, throughout the novel, he flip-flopped between being the hero I was rooting for and the antihero I loved to hate.

Minor story spoilers

An example of this is when Sam Vimes suffers a particularly heinous attack from a few deep dwarves. He feels extremely angry and frustrated about this (rightfully so) but unfortunately he expresses that anger by mistreating other dwarves who had nothing to do with the attack.

This hits home for me because it's something we see time and time again in our own world.

For example, post-911, Muslims around the world suffered from an increase in hate crimes against them. This is a tragedy because the actions of a few extremists (completely divorced from Islam) led to all this hate being directed towards the wrong people. Another more recent example of this was post-COVID, there was a similar increase in hate crimes towards Asian people who, obviously, had nothing to do with COVID, other than suffering because of it like everyone else.

So when Vimes starts getting pissed at dwarves in the same way, it felt real.

Thud! is filled with situations like this; touching on issues like discrimination in the workplace, police brutality, racism, etc. that lend a weight to the story that isn't usually present in other Discworld novels. I'm really into it!

Thud! was published right after Going Postal (which is my favorite Discworld novel I've read so far) and they seem to share quite a bit of DNA. With Going Postal dealing with capitalism, toxic corporate culture, bureaucracy (and more!) instead of the topics covered in Thud!.

If you like Going Postal, you might like Thud! (and vice-versa). I love both tremendously.

As of right now, Thud! has taken my second favorite Terry Pratchett novel slot; bumping Thief of Time down to a respectable third place.

You can't go wrong with Terry Pratchett. He's just so consistently good at what he does, and I love his work because of it.

SPOILER ALERT

It's got a twist.

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy

I loooooOooOoove twists.

Especially when the foreshadowing of the twist is indistinguishable from terrible writing (absurd internal monologues, nonsensical dialogue between characters) on your first, and probably last, reading of the text.

SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT

Canonically, the book you're reading, except for the flashforward interstitials between most chapters, was written by an autistic man who kills himself by the end of the book (a truly inspirational tale, thank you so much for your service Iain).

Iain could have made an attempt at portraying this autistic character with dignity throughout pivotal moments of his life (the ups and downs). Instead he chose to write a book about a delusional and clinically depressed autistic man who kills himself because he is crippled by regret (relatable) and has nothing to live for.

I hesitate to say that this book is bad. For me, the way the story is told combined with how depressing it is made it hard for me to appreciate the text for what it is. If I squint real hard, I can see another version of myself enjoying this book.

I think that "I'm thinking of ending things" is a good piece of art because of how confused and angry it makes me.

Overall though, it's not for me.

All Systems Red is a novella written by Martha Wells, the first in her Murderbot Diaries series.

The titular Murderbot is a sentient robot-human hybrid, a slave to a mega corporation, tasked with protecting the humans it's told to protect.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Murderbot has hacked its governor module, granting it the ability to refuse any orders given by its corporate overlords.

Once again, Murderbot finds itself protecting humans, prospectors surveying a planet, when things start going wrong.

Hijinks ensue.

What impressed me most with All Systems Red was how Martha Wells was able to make Murderbot so believable and so easy to emphasize with.

Firstly, here's a quote:

"""So, I'm awkward with actual humans. It's not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it's not them; it's me. I know I'm a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes us both nervous, which makes me even more nervous."""

I don't know about you but I'm not a horrifying murderbot. I am autistic though and if you replace "horrifying murderbot" with "autist" in the quote above, that's a pretty accurate description of what it feels like at times.

Murderbot's struggle with social anxiety throughout the novella was depicted very well and it really resonated with me.

Secondly, in a sense, we're all Murderbot.

Terry is dedicated to the bit. More than anything he is committed to creating absurd worlds that feel real. His work has aged beautifully because the world we live in is as absurd as it's ever been and it's only getting more absurd from here on out.

Small Gods is about an autistic savant (pour a drink every time Terry Pratchett includes an autistic character in one of his Discworld books) named Brutha who is a lowly priest/monk in the church of Om.

It turns out that Brutha is the only true believer of Om (everyone else only believes in the rules, the hierarchy, the organisation of the church, everything except the actual deity). And so, when Om finds himself reincarnated as a turtle (because only one person believes in him), he can only communicate with Brutha and no one else.

The unlikely pair form a bond and travel together as Brutha, using his eidetic memory, helps Vorbis, the head of the Quisition, with his plan to conquer the blasphemous Ephebians (Greek-esque philosophers).

Along the way, Brutha and Om meet a bunch of wacky characters with whom they discuss religion and philosophy giving Terry Pratchett ample opportunity to poke fun at both.

I enjoyed Small Gods quite a bit. After reading about half a dozen of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, I can say that they feel consistently well written and familiar to me but manage to avoid being formulaic.

There's something about the way he writes that leaves me with a constant smile on my face. Small Gods is not my favorite of his books (Going Postal is really really good y'all) but it comes pretty close.

"They think."
"Not thinking like us, though."
"Well that's to be expected."

Minor spoilers below about the basic conceit of the series/novel

Children of Memory is the third novel in the Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It follows in the footsteps of the first two books by giving us another story about characters (various uplifted species, human/AI constructs and one fungi species) being thrust together onto another planet.

As per usual, hijinks ensue.

Spoilers how the story is told

I think that the two previous books had better pacing and were more interesting rollercoaster rides. This one isn't bad per say but I didn't like it as much. The story is told out of order and that's usually a hard sell for me (although I did appreciate being told when/where the chapters were taking place in the timeline).

Children of Memory fell a little flat for me because I prefer novels that don't withhold information from the reader to inject mystery and intrigue into a story instead of just telling an interesting story in the first place. Children of Memory feels more like an M. Night. Shyamalan movie this time around.

More spoilers ahead

Withholding a bit of information is fine as long as the story being told holds up on its own without the reader knowing about the "twist". There's a few chapters that feel pretty miserable to read because they're sort of remixes of previous chapters (the child POV also didn't really help with this). At times it felt like Adrian was padding out the page count instead of trying to tell an interesting story.

Overall, I enjoyed reading through Children of Memory. I applaud it for being a little avant garde in terms of how the story is told but I'm not sure that it completely sticks the landing.

If you're a fan of the series or you're interested in unpacking some of the philosophical questions raised by the book, I can recommend it.

"You don't think what they have here, their culture, their traditions, is worth preserving?" Miranda asks, because to her it absolutely is. It's different, and difference is the only resource the universe is short of. So much of it is just empty sameness. Life is rare, and needs to be studied and admired and encouraged to be itself."