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Feet of Clay[FEET OF CLAY][Mass Market Paperback]
Feet of Clay <> Mass Market Paperback <> TerryPratchett <> HarperTorch
Mass Market Paperback
Published January 31, 2014
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About the author
Terry Pratchett
685 books46.3k followersSir Terence David John Pratchett was an English author, humorist, and satirist, best known for the Discworld series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983–2015, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman.
Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983, after which Pratchett wrote an average of two books a year. The final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, was published in August 2015, five months after his death.
With more than 100 million books sold worldwide in 43 languages, Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, the first Discworld book marketed for children. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010.
In December 2007 Pratchett announced that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He later made a substantial public donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust (now Alzheimer's Research UK, ARUK), filmed three television programmes chronicling his experiences with the condition for the BBC, and became a patron of ARUK. Pratchett died on 12 March 2015, at the age of 66.
Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983, after which Pratchett wrote an average of two books a year. The final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, was published in August 2015, five months after his death.
With more than 100 million books sold worldwide in 43 languages, Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, the first Discworld book marketed for children. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010.
In December 2007 Pratchett announced that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He later made a substantial public donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust (now Alzheimer's Research UK, ARUK), filmed three television programmes chronicling his experiences with the condition for the BBC, and became a patron of ARUK. Pratchett died on 12 March 2015, at the age of 66.
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February 13, 2025
Things are looking up for the Ankh Morepork City Watch. It has grown to thirty officers, headed by Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, who between his new rank and his wife Sybil's is in a better position than ever to afflict the comfortable. (As the Patrician later remarks: “Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you...It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you ARE authority...That's practically Zen”) Of course, that means he has to deal with assassination attempts first thing in the morning, but that's just a sign he's annoying the right people! But then two old men are found dead, and even Angua's keen nose can detect no living murderer. At the same time, someone is slowly poisoning the Patrician, but even their new alchemist can't figure out where it is coming from. And something is up with the city's golems, who despite supposedly being mere automatons are meeting in secret...and then smashing themselves to bits in despair.
"That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride...People said there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but that wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people."
You can ask if the Watch stories in Discworld are “copaganda” and…yes, but I think maybe I don’t mind AS much as I might in other contexts because the Ankh Morepork city Watch has a very different history to most real-world police forces. Because the modern version gets built up from almost nothing it is strongly influenced by two people: By-the-books-boyscout Carrot and very-much-not-that-but-extremely-class-conscious Vimes. Vimes grew up on the Cockbill street mentioned above and he’s a deeply cynical man…but he consistently punches up and continues to overcome prejudices and figure out how to channel his anger as his story progresses. And, between the two of them, you one can believe that THIS Watch is one that actually protects and serves.
“Vimes…picked up a faded copy of Twurp’s Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn’t find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords.”
The mystery elements here are really good. There were at least two points at which, on a first read, I thought I’d figured it out…but that was because those red herrings WERE the solution in other well-known mystery stories. As in the earlier Guards! Guards! the scheme is being run by people who would rather have a “proper” king than the Patrician (who, while also an autocrat, doesn’t trigger people’s “tendency to bend at the knees” – as Vimes puts it – and, more importantly, doesn’t care about promoting the specific interests of the conspirators the way a carefully selected puppet king would). But this time they’re being considerably more subtle about it.
"If a golem is a THING then it can't commit murder, and I'll still try to find out why all this is happening. If a golem CAN commit murder, then you are PEOPLE, and what is being done to you is terrible"
Golems – men made of clay and animated by a holy word - have their origin in Jewish folklore. Their role here (which is very similar to robots operating under Asimov’s Three Laws) seems to be inspired by the tale of the Golem of Prague, which was brought to life by a rabbi to defend the local ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks. There are various versions of how the story ends, which sometimes include the golem going on an uncontrolled rampage. The protector aspect is interesting here because we see both the golems themselves seeking a protector and . Also, fun fact I learned researching this: the word “golem” as used in the bible actually refers to humans, also made from earth and animated with a holy command…a similarity directly referred to in this book!
“‘Female? He TOLD you he was female?’ ‘She,’ Angua corrected. ‘This is Ankh Morepork, you know. We’ve got extra pronouns here’…. ‘Well, I would have thought she’d have the decency to keep it to herself…I’ve nothing against females. I’m pretty certain my stepmother is one. But I don’t think it’s very clever, you know, to go around drawing attention to the fact.’ ‘Carrot, I think you’ve got something wrong with your head,’ said Angua. ‘What?’ ‘I think you may have got it stuck up your bum.’”
One thing to know about Pratchett and the Discworld series is that he didn’t let fear of minor narrative discontinuities stop him from taking the story in a direction that he thought was more interesting, funny, or socially relevant. In this book (published in 1996), we get the introduction of our trans metaphor dwarf, Cheery Littlebottom. I love Cheery and her friendship with werewolf-and-bisexual-metaphor Angua, a relationship that gets off to a rocky but ultimately wholesome start here. Those metaphors don’t become SUPER obvious until The Fifth Elephant, but you can see it in lines like the above, in the way Angua describes the undead bar she takes Cheery to as being for: “people who have to spend most of their time being very careful, not frightening people, FITTING IN”. And, oof does it sting when Cheery unthinkingly says something about werewolves that means Angua clams up and doesn’t come out to HER! The trans metaphor is possible because traditionally in dwarf culture everyone is “he”, everyone quaffs beer and wears chainmail, and discussing sex (the biological identity or the act) is highly taboo. So, Cheery wanting to be acknowledged as a lady dwarf who likes fruity drinks and makeup is shocking! This doesn’t quite jive with the bit in ‘Guards, Guards!’ (1989) where Carrot (a human raised by dwarfs) describes the dwarf he had a crush on by saying HER beard is really soft. But it IS more in line with Tolkien’s notes in the appendices to Lord of the Rings that say dwarf women look and sound almost identical to dwarf men, and the idea allows Pratchett to take the story in interesting directions…so that’s reality from this book on!
Finally, having recently read Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, an exploration of the psychological factors that lead people to turn to authoritarian leaders, I especially appreciated this exchange near the end:
"That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride...People said there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but that wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people."
You can ask if the Watch stories in Discworld are “copaganda” and…yes, but I think maybe I don’t mind AS much as I might in other contexts because the Ankh Morepork city Watch has a very different history to most real-world police forces. Because the modern version gets built up from almost nothing it is strongly influenced by two people: By-the-books-boyscout Carrot and very-much-not-that-but-extremely-class-conscious Vimes. Vimes grew up on the Cockbill street mentioned above and he’s a deeply cynical man…but he consistently punches up and continues to overcome prejudices and figure out how to channel his anger as his story progresses. And, between the two of them, you one can believe that THIS Watch is one that actually protects and serves.
“Vimes…picked up a faded copy of Twurp’s Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn’t find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords.”
The mystery elements here are really good. There were at least two points at which, on a first read, I thought I’d figured it out…but that was because those red herrings WERE the solution in other well-known mystery stories. As in the earlier Guards! Guards! the scheme is being run by people who would rather have a “proper” king than the Patrician (who, while also an autocrat, doesn’t trigger people’s “tendency to bend at the knees” – as Vimes puts it – and, more importantly, doesn’t care about promoting the specific interests of the conspirators the way a carefully selected puppet king would). But this time they’re being considerably more subtle about it.
"If a golem is a THING then it can't commit murder, and I'll still try to find out why all this is happening. If a golem CAN commit murder, then you are PEOPLE, and what is being done to you is terrible"
Golems – men made of clay and animated by a holy word - have their origin in Jewish folklore. Their role here (which is very similar to robots operating under Asimov’s Three Laws) seems to be inspired by the tale of the Golem of Prague, which was brought to life by a rabbi to defend the local ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks. There are various versions of how the story ends, which sometimes include the golem going on an uncontrolled rampage. The protector aspect is interesting here because we see both the golems themselves seeking a protector and . Also, fun fact I learned researching this: the word “golem” as used in the bible actually refers to humans, also made from earth and animated with a holy command…a similarity directly referred to in this book!
“‘Female? He TOLD you he was female?’ ‘She,’ Angua corrected. ‘This is Ankh Morepork, you know. We’ve got extra pronouns here’…. ‘Well, I would have thought she’d have the decency to keep it to herself…I’ve nothing against females. I’m pretty certain my stepmother is one. But I don’t think it’s very clever, you know, to go around drawing attention to the fact.’ ‘Carrot, I think you’ve got something wrong with your head,’ said Angua. ‘What?’ ‘I think you may have got it stuck up your bum.’”
One thing to know about Pratchett and the Discworld series is that he didn’t let fear of minor narrative discontinuities stop him from taking the story in a direction that he thought was more interesting, funny, or socially relevant. In this book (published in 1996), we get the introduction of our trans metaphor dwarf, Cheery Littlebottom. I love Cheery and her friendship with werewolf-and-bisexual-metaphor Angua, a relationship that gets off to a rocky but ultimately wholesome start here. Those metaphors don’t become SUPER obvious until The Fifth Elephant, but you can see it in lines like the above, in the way Angua describes the undead bar she takes Cheery to as being for: “people who have to spend most of their time being very careful, not frightening people, FITTING IN”. And, oof does it sting when Cheery unthinkingly says something about werewolves that means Angua clams up and doesn’t come out to HER! The trans metaphor is possible because traditionally in dwarf culture everyone is “he”, everyone quaffs beer and wears chainmail, and discussing sex (the biological identity or the act) is highly taboo. So, Cheery wanting to be acknowledged as a lady dwarf who likes fruity drinks and makeup is shocking! This doesn’t quite jive with the bit in ‘Guards, Guards!’ (1989) where Carrot (a human raised by dwarfs) describes the dwarf he had a crush on by saying HER beard is really soft. But it IS more in line with Tolkien’s notes in the appendices to Lord of the Rings that say dwarf women look and sound almost identical to dwarf men, and the idea allows Pratchett to take the story in interesting directions…so that’s reality from this book on!
Finally, having recently read Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, an exploration of the psychological factors that lead people to turn to authoritarian leaders, I especially appreciated this exchange near the end:
Displaying 1 of 1 review