Book twenty-four of Discworld is another book about the watch, so expect some significant crime(s). It also places Sam Vimes, the watch's commander and reluctant duke of Ankh-Morpork, in a position he never expected, as the Patrician assigns him as the city's ambassador to Uberwald, a position he's none too happy about, although the reader has a lot to be happy about as usual when reading a Discworld book.
The title of this book is both a pun of The Fifth Element, a 90s sci-fi movie, and a reference to the belief that instead of four gigantic elephants holding up the Disc, there were originally five. The fifth colossal pachyderm had long ago fallen to the surface with a significant impact, and this explains the immense fat deposits near Uberwald that are still mined by some of the dwarves there to this very day.
With a new Low King of the dwarves about to be elected, plots are afoot in Uberwald to the point that they bleed over into Ankh-Morpork. Before the delegation even leaves the city, the replica of the sacred Stone of Scone, the piece of dwarf bread that legitimizes the Low King, is stolen from the dwarf bread museum in the city. While the watch is pondering that bizarre theft, Wallace Sonky, the man responsible for making the Discworld equivalent of condoms, is found dead in one of his rubber vats, and Vimes ponders if they're connected before he has to leave.
The various members of the watch are among the most beloved Discworld characters for very good reason, and they're great here, although they do have some issues when both Vimes and Carrot leave for Uberwald, Vimes as the ambassador and Carrot after he leaves to find Angua, since she's gone back to Uberwald to deal with her family, and sergeant Colon is put in charge. Fred Colon is a natural sergeant but does not handle being made acting captain well at all. It gets so bad that the watch shrinks down to just a few members and Nobby heads up a union for those that remain, with both him and Colon despairing at what Carrot and Sir Sam will think about how bad things are at the watch when they get back!
Vimes and Sybil bring Detritus and Cheery along with them as they're both from Uberwald originally so were naturals for the position. And while trolls and dwarves don't get along that well in the older countries like Uberwald, Detritus is a convincing argument even without his bow that doubles as a siege weapon, and Cheery understands her culture well, although the fact that she presents herself as a she in the first place creates some concern among dwarves more set in their old ways. The Patrician also assigns Inigo Skimmer to the mission. Skimmer is a very odd character, which makes both Vimes and the reader curious to learn more about the strange man.
Uberwald very much reflects a large and untamed region more than a single nation. It's kind of a haunted version of the Holy Roman Empire and makes dealing with it difficult at best so Vimes and company find themselves in a real mess. While all this began with the previously mentioned events back at the beginning of the story, the real scone is also missing, which could start a war if the coronation of the Low King can't happen or goes poorly.
Angua's family, all werewolves like she is, are also a problem, with her brother Wolfgang being a monster both literally and figuratively while her mother plots and her father tries to recall how to use silverware, since he spends so much time in wolf form that it makes being human very difficult for him. Lady Margolotta, a vampire noblewoman who knows the Patrician on a personal level, is also part of the situation, and Sir Sam distrusts her implicitly due his own dislike of vampires. Add the situation between Carrot and Angua, and her desire to stop her family's plots, and there's a lot of moving parts to keep track of; luckily, it's enjoyable to do so.
We meet some more Igors here too, after first being introduced recently in Carpe Jugulum. They are all kind of your traditional deformed hunchback from classic horror, and they're all sewn together from various bits of each other and corpses of people that owed them a favor or two before they died, since Igors are amazing surgeons. They're also almost universally good-hearted individuals, and not just because of their surgical skills. They also have heavy lisps that can be a bit rough to read at times, but that's part of the fun as well. I imagine that the audio books must be especially enjoyable to listen to if they have good voice actors for them. I quite like the Igors, and glad we got more of them here.
Carrot manages to get Gaspode the talking dog that we first met back in Moving Pictures, to help track Angua, and they catch up to her, where we meet Gavin, a wolf she saved and befriended several years ago. We find that werewolves and wolves don't actually like each other, but Gavin is an exception due to their prior experience. Angua was heading back with him to thwart her own family's plots, so while their storyline is often separate from that of the Ankh-Morpork mission, it is inextricably linked as well.
Vimes finds that thinking like a cop does help him deal with the issues of the scone, and to deal with the local version of the watch, led by one captain Tantony who parallels Sam in many ways, but he is not as comfortable with being a diplomat, made even more difficult by all the plotting going on around him. This puts him and his crew in some sticky situations, and how this all plays out and resolves is so very interesting while being funny as a Pratchett book always is.
We also learn a lot about dwarven culture here, and I really like how he takes a funny, but thoughtful look at them, with a culture that mirrors many roundworld religions when taken to extremes. With Cheery openly being a woman causing a lot of culture shock and strife among the more conservative dwarves, it also makes many of the others ponder their own thoughts on such things, which is an allegory that many trans people still appreciate to this day, and this book originally came out in 1999, so he was an ally to the trans community before a lot of folks seemed to even be aware of the idea. We also see that both Sam and Sybil see dwarves and trolls as people, while others are not always so kind. This makes them even easier to relate to than they already were.
This is another banger from Sir Terry. The story is engaging, the characters range from wonderful to wicked, the intrigue makes one wish to keep reading more, the representation is welcome, and the conflicts and resolutions are all so good that it's another Discworld novel that earns the maximum rating. One of the best in an already stellar series of books.
4 pieces of sacred dwarf bread out of 4.
Some fun quotes:
Well, he thought, so this is diplomacy. It's lying, only for a better class of people.
He sagged to his knees. He ached all over. It wasn't just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn't cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn't got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions.
Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases, such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply."
Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.
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