Reading: Monstrous Regiment
Aug. 26th, 2017 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartI'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* I also note that this novel, published in the same year that Section 28 was repealed in England and Wales, features a canonical lesbian couple, which I find interesting given that I have seen far too much criticism of Pterry's lack of queer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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-27 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-27 08:55 pm (UTC)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.