Reading: Monstrous Regiment

[white_hart]

I'll always have a soft spot for Monstrous Regiment, because after the period in the late 90s and early 2000s where I didn't quite get what Pterry was trying to do with the series and found myself struggling to read the new books as they came out, this was the first one I really, genuinely loved and which pulled me back on board for the rest of the series and showed me how to approach the ones I'd had trouble with. Also, I think it's one of the best examples of the later, more-satire-than-parody Pratchett there is.

Monstrous Regiment is about as close to a standlone Discworld novel as you get; there are no witches or wizards, no magic at all in fact, and Ankh-Morpork is very far away. Sam Vimes, Angua, William de Worde and Otto Chriek all make brief appearances, but the setting is the remote and rather Mitteleuropean Grand Duchy of Borogravia, and the main characters are Polly Perks, who disguises herself as a boy to join the army, and the other members of her squad of recruits, gradually revealed (in a twist that won't surprise anyone who automatically completes John Knox's quote whenever they read the title) also to be women. Unsurprisingly, the novel makes a lot of points about war and gender roles; it also takes on organised religion (and religion's role in propping up the patriarchy), and while the final scenes are clearly a defence of women's right to serve in the army, or do anything else, rather than being constricted by narrow ideas of gender, they also felt like a fairly obvious swipe at Don't Ask, Don't Tell*.

I'm not sure I could pick a favourite Discworld book, but this is definitely one of my favourites.

* I also note that this novel, published in the same year that Section 28 was repealed in England and Wales, features a canonical lesbian couple, which I find interesting given that I have seen far too much criticism of Pterry's lack of queer characters from people who appear to be unable to comprehend that up until this book was published including such characters would have been quite likely to see them removed from school libraries and taken out of the "teenage" sections of public libraries.

Comments

[cmcmck]

It's one of my favourites, I have to admit although 'Small Gods' also works brilliantly as a stand alone.

[white_hart]

Yes, I think Small Gods is the other one that really doesn't seem to link into any of the sub-series (and is also one of the best).

[tree_and_leaf]

I reread Small Gods for the first time in ages and was blown away by how good its is.

[el_staplador]

*agrees with all of this post, particularly the asterisk*

[tree_and_leaf]

People (particularly if they're straight) forget how fast things have changed. They also tend to forget that there are places where it hasn't, much :(

[caulkhead]

Yes, this. I found myself loking in surprise at the Australian plebiscite and thinking "Good grief, don't they have equal marriage yet?", forgetting how very recent it is in this country.

[cmcmck]

It's easy to forget that in the UK, trans folk like myself got marriage rights before gay folks.

[white_hart]

I realise, thinking about this, that Doctor Who's 'The Parting of the Ways' was less than two years after Section 28 was repealed, and that had Captain Jack kissing the Doctor on a family show at 5 o'clock on a Saturday, something which up until the moment it happened had seemed unthinkable.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, there was a period between 1997 and 2005 where the UK suddenly shot forward a long way.

Shame about the time since then.

[caulkhead]

I thin for me it was The Truth where everthing suddenly started making sense again, and that is probably still my favourite, but Monstrous Regiment runs it close.

[white_hart]

I didn't quite get The Truth or Night Watch first time round, though they are also both stunningly good.

[clanwilliam]

I'm actually sitting around a campfire with a bunch of Pratchett fans of varying levels of queerness and none of us had realised that before!

The two great ones for me are Small Gods and Night Watch, though.

[white_hart]

I suspect I noticed it particularly because I've been following the awfulness that is Mark Reads Discworld on FFA and have seen a lot of people pointing out that his complaints about lack of openly queer representation (as opposed to queer-coded) make no sense given the time and place he was writing in, so I was prompted to check the dates and realised that it couldn't have been closer - in fact, S28 probably hadn't been repealed with it was written, but presumably the writing was in the wall.

[clanwilliam]

I think I'll have to look up his reaction to a certain passage in Maskerade - while there is a very strong implication that she was only wearing earrings when she answered the door, Colette was given the choice of working at Mrs Palm's or the Patrician's palace and I have met the earrings and they are fascinating.

Also, William de Worde is totally Gideon. The whole character is G bingo - and Terry knew us both. More embarassingly, there are bits of me in Sacharissa. They include the pedantry, the spike joke and the embonpoint.

[caulkhead]

Night Watch gets better every time I read it. I haven't read Small Gods in about 20 years (that copy was one of my brother's) and have a sudden urge to rectify this.

[alithea]

I really must read this! And all the others since The Fifth Elephant which is about when I stopped borrowing them from the person who bought them all as brand new hardbacks...