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I can't imagine this being someone's first Discworld book but if it is, I imagine the reader might be a little surprised when s/he start reading. It begins with an interesting premise; a young girl, whose family owns a tavern, is disguising herself as a boy and going off to join up to fight the war. A good story - one that's been told for years in fact and fiction. And it's not even until you reach page five, with the troll bridge, that you start sensing that, well, maybe this isn't one of THOSE books. Well, no, it's not. It's one of those books. I adore books by Terry Pratchett; even the ones that aren't that great are wonderful. This amazing author has a sense of humor, but also a sense of silliness, of whimsy, of politics, of irony and one of wicked satire. In Monstrous Regiment (and thank you Laurie R. King, because had I not read a specific book of King's, I would not have understood the title) very little is what it appears, but it all ends pretty happily . Polly's brother must come home to run the inn or it will be lost. Paul's not exactly a tavern-running genius - he's actually no kind of genius at all but the rules are that a man must run things and inherit "manly" stuff like taverns. So Polly, as she's always done, goes out to find her brother and bring him home (and probably hand him a hanky and smooth his hair and say "what IS that on your shoes?") This is a story - albeit a Pratchett version - of the dumbness (which is worse than stupidity) of war. The cast includes the "by the rules" moron who gets screechy at any hint of thought on the part of the recruits, a lieutenant who's never been in battle, but has read lots of books on the subject (and insists on eating what the men eat - scubbo - er, well, it's boiling water, and, if you're lucky, it's got stuff in it), and the officer who doesn't have a life outside of the army. But they're funny, they're silly and they're written with total whimsy and dare I say zany Pratchett style. He doesn't describe things like other people do and his way of saying things often make me laugh. Sergeant Jackrum goggled. Polly had never really seen proper goggling before, but the sergeant had the face to do it at a championship level. She could feel him drawing breath while at the same time assembling cusswords for a right royal thundering--and then he remembered he was playing Sergeant Big Jolly Fat Man, and this was not the time to segue into Sergeant Incandescent. This is a story of fundamentalist Borogravia, ruled by who-knows-who, and where new abominations are listed all the time. They're at war because, well, because that's what countries do - they invade and have border disputes and wars, and soldiers fight them and citizens are proud of, well, being proud. There are many surprises and many lessons and many funny comments and references to wars and stories of all kinds (I'm sure I've missed half of them) like a soldier who hears voices and Lieutenant Blouse, determined to make history, which means either food or an item of clothing will be named after him, much like Captain Froc. I look forward to every book that Terry Pratchett writes, even if not all of them are successful for me. Monstrous Regiment, however, definitely is going to wind up among my favorites. There are plot twists that I can't tell you about, because it would just wreck things, but if you like Jasper Fforde, if you like weirdly funny, if you can manage a world with zombies who stroll around, Igors (er, well, Igorth, they tend to lisp, it's a cultural thing) and vampires (they'll always so well-dressed), you really should settle in with Monstrous Regiment for a major giggle.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, November 2003
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