Title: Feet of Clay
Author: Terry Pratchett
Year of Publication: 1996
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 288 pages (hardcover version)
Rating: 4/5 – Worth paying full price
Review:
Feet of Clay takes place on Discworld, a world in which Pratchett has written at least 35 novels. This particular book is part of the City Watch group (there are at least 8 books in this group, to date), which centers around Sam Vimes, a cop, and the policemen that work for him in the bustling city of Anhk-Morpork. The city is a melting pot of different sorts of people; humans, trolls, dwarves, witches, zombies, werewolves, vampires, and others.
Discworld is a flat world that is balanced on the backs of four elephants, which in turn are standing on the back of a giant turtle. Books in this series are usually parodies of various themes pulled from well-known works of fantasy, science fiction, crime novels, horror, and other genres. A lot of the characters and plots are recognizable as parodies of popular stories or characters. While there is an order to the City Watch series, the novels don’t necessarily need to be read in order to be understood. Each book has it’s own self-contained plot, though characters do go through development over the course of the books. Sometimes a book will feature a certain character, like Constable Carrot, and then he’ll barely be mentioned in the next book.
The Feet of Clay in question in this book belong to golems, which are basically machines made by humans (or trolls, or dwarves, etc) who eventually do more than what they’re programmed to do. The golems are made to be used, but the fact that they’re humanoid makes people uneasy, to the point where there is a ban on creating more. The golems get the dirtiest, nastiest, most back-breaking jobs in the city by default, and it’s hard for some of the people in the book to grasp that it’s okay to make a golem work all day, non-stop, since it looks and acts so much like a real, feeling person. Other characters focus on how stupid the golems apparently are, since they aren’t programmed to think logically and carry out tasks literally. A golem programmed to chop wood in the forest will keep at it until stopped, or until there is no longer a forest.
Other citizens of Anhk-Morpork are naturally scared of the golems, because they’re incredibly strong, don’t need food, water or sleep, and will obey commands mindlessly because of the words (a scroll of instructions) in their heads.
Vimes, who is investigating crimes apparently caused by golems, or at least a golem, is helped by Constable Carrot, a naive man who everyone loves, and Angua, a werewolf who works for the Watch while trying to keep her identity a secret to the general public. Feet of Clay also introduces a dwarf character named Cheery Littlebottom, and leads into one of the satirical themes of the novel; height discrimination, and discrimination against dwarves, as well as the tendency for everyone to assume that all dwarves are male since they all dress, act and look like males regardless of sexe.
Pratchett’s writing style is funny, occasionally showing signs of going to a deeper place while avoiding becoming overly depressing and philosophical. The characters are well thought-out and interesting, and the story makes for a light, entertaining read. Recommended to anyone who likes fantasy and parodies.
* Edit: Changed rating.
I’m a huge Terry Pratchett fan, and I reread this one recently as it leads into “Going Postal”, one of the newer novels. Not only does “Feet of Clay” age well as far as being up to the consistently high quality of the series, it lays the groundwork for changes in the culture of Ankh-Morpork, and every new book manages to use Fantasy as a mirror to current issues. Also, it’s easy to pick up nearly any book in the series without having to read any previous book.
I accidentally put the rating as 3.5, now it’s 4.
It’s good to hear that most of the series is like this. I’m reading Night Watch now, and I’m on the look out for more. There seems to be a lot of them at the library.
Good choice, as I may have mentioned before, Night Watch is my absolute favorite among all of Prachett’s books. Without giving anything away, it features some of my favorite storytelling devices, and reveals Ankh-Morpork’s history as never before.
Good Omens is an excellent collaborative effort between Neil Gaman and Terry Pratchett. My favorite discworld novel is Small Gods. The only one that has dissapointed me is Monstrous Regiment, all the rest have been a good read.
Small Gods is excellent (there’s those cultural parallels for ya) and I agree totally, Monstrous Regiment is quite weak compared to the others. It took me a long time to finally finish that one, though the conclusion saved it a little bit.