This book is sort of like Mulan except everyone is Mulan. Possibly my favourite Pratchett book (as sole author) and that is actually really saying something with his body of work ( )

Polly's brother went off to war, as did all of the other men. Polly's determined to go find him and bring him home. But the only way to do this is to enlist. So she cuts off her hair, puts on some trousers, and becomes Oliver "Ozzer" Perks. And joins up in this man's army...And she's not the only one.

I went to a book signing and met Terry Pratchett when this book came out. I don't remember much of the speaking portion of the evening as I was wrangling a 4 year old at the time, but my memories of our interaction during the book signing are overwhelmingly positive. I didn't like the book very much at first but on my third read through it I caught some references I had missed before and liked it much better. I think the reference to a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man is my favorite quote of the book. ( )

This tale of how Polly runs away to war to find her brother, becomes Oliver, learns a lot about life, and saves the world is a lovely one. It does occasionally suffer from 'that's not how you do feminism, Mr Pratchett', both with characters coming out with clangers [forgiveable] and the authorial voice making sweepingly *wrong* statements [no, I can't think of what it was, but I was cranky for a couple of days]. I read it out slowly to the kids (ages 11, 14, and 17), over several months (not always the same set of kids - it started as "the book we read while middlest is at dancing"), and there was often discussion about it at other times.

Like many of Pratchett's later books, it did feel like he had picked a set of topics to investigate in detail, and that here we had War! what is it good for!, women in the military, and a side order of how the laity handle religion when the pronouncements become incomprehensible. ( )

A departure from my usual fare, and one well worth taking. I asked a friend heading off to college to recommend her favorite writer. She handed me this book. BOOM!

I now understand the draw of Discworld, and I appreciate the social comment and satire that Pratchett fans enjoy and expect. And I'm trilled to have recommendations from younger readers when it leads to this much fun! A vampire. A werewolf. A troll. A few zombies. All called into service—to save the kingdom, or entertain, educate, and enlighten readers.

A rollicking end-of-summer read that kept me turning the pages. (If you're over 40, make friends with a few feminist teenagers.) ( )

I really enjoyed this entry in the Discworld series though I found the humor to be less of the "laugh out loud" variety than some of the books. ( )

STP has done it again. One of his delightful little forays into the Discworld, this time a satire of a world at war. He manages to find all the seams for comedy in this rich topical soil and then rip them all out with great ability.

Having listened to the audio book (narrated by the amazingly good Stephen Briggs) I realize I am missing out on some degree of Pratchett's talent for humor: he goes in for the visual pun now and again, and in particular Briggs plows right through footnotes as though they were in-line with the rest of the narrative. He doesn't call them out as footnotes, which I think would enrich the experience of hearing them. But that's a stylistic choice. I read along for a bit in my hard copy (a Doubleday first edition library cast-off) and found that the text varied. Briggs' 'pants' appeared as 'trousers' in my book. There were other, subtle edits as well, and I came to decide that Briggs was reading the American edition.

As always, his characters are at the forefront, and the best of these in this book is Sergeant Jack Jackrum. The physical description of him is hilarious, and it's made the better by the reader, Stephen Briggs, and his depth of accents and characters. Jackrum's loving appreciation of his troops is wonderful, and in particular, how he takes care of them while himself being so tough and made of iron. He makes such a great veteran in voice and action.

The main conceit of the book is that all the main characters are, eventually, discovered to be female, which makes the ending, where many a reveal is made, more delightful. It's hard not to love a book that ends so well. Pratchett has a way of dropping lines throughout his work that he will later tie together in a neat bow in the last several pages, and he's especially good at it here. He also understands the utility of an unexplained element - like the little fires that spring up in places that the soldiers sleep about an hour after they depart. There's a payoff to that, and a good one, if you're patient and are willing to submit to ignorance for a while. ( )

If there were no other Discworld books I would think this was absolutely amazing. What I'm saying is I'm spoiled. The themes and ideas in this book were fantastic. However, as plots in Pratchett's books go, this one wore on me a bit, especially near the end. A little bit messy and a few too many "AH-HA" moments, all of the exact same type. In general though it is hard to go wrong with Terry Pratchett and I am sad I have almost reached the end of the series. ( )

Not what I was expecting. Right up there with Small Gods and Hogfather. ( )

A girl dresses as a boy to join a fascist army.

1.5/4 (Meh).

Knowing who Terry Pratchett was is enough to give this book the benefit of the doubt as far as whether the points it's trying to make are well-intentioned. Whatever those points were meant to be, the failed attempts to make them take precedent over any storytelling concerns, which makes for a rambling mess. There were *multiple* points during the last hundred pages where I literally forgot for a minute whether or not I'd finished the book.

(Jun. 2022) ( )

Pratchett, Terry. The Monstrous Regiment. Discworld No. 31. HarperCollins, 2003.
When Terry Pratchett sat down to write The Monstrous Regiment, he could count on most of his readers already being familiar with its fantasy setting, so that no one would be surprised when vampires, trolls, and werewolves appeared as not-very-threatening characters in the s story. In fact, some readers who did not recognize the title phrase from John Knox’s 16th-century rant against rule by women might have expected an army of such creatures to figure in the plot. They might still have been amused that it was not remarkable that a vampire and a troll were members of the protagonist’s squad but that it was remarkable that they were female. The story, though, is not just a feminist parable but an effective illustration of the futility and stupidity of war. In the news tonight, Russian troops are moving into Ukraine. We could wish that the Ukrainians had such a squad to bring peace to the region. 5 stars. ( )

Monstrous Regiment has the distinction of being the first Pratchett book I just fell into. No fighting with the narrative, no initial struggle to follow what was going on. It all just worked from the start.

In spite of this, something … wasn’t missing so much as, I suppose, this was a different kind of story than I was expecting, based on my one Sam Vimes book so far. This was much more satiric than my first City Watch, and really, much more blatant a satire than any of the Discworld books I’ve read so far.

Between this book and Carpe Jugulum I learned something about myself: I love good satire about the ‘smaller’ things in life, like politics, academia, and social mores, but I struggle to embrace satire about the ‘big’ things like religion and world politics. I think there are some things that are too big or too complex, to be effectively satirised, no matter that they make themselves such easy targets with their outsized human fallacies. Of course I’m not an advocate for war, nor am I an advocate for religion-for-profit, or religion-for-power, but I don’t believe that all, or even most, governments eagerly search out reasons to go to war, nor most followers or seekers of faith and guidance are less than sincere – though I’ve met more than a few of the latter in my life.

Now that I’ve said that, though, I want to give all the credit to Pratchett for what I felt was his attempt to be brutally, objectively, honest about his satire in Monstrous Regiment. A cynical reader might start reading this book and think ah, here’s the sop to feminism just about every bestselling male author writes anymore. A cynical reader would be wrong — which delights this cynical reader to no end. Truely, this is a book about how women can do anything men can do – and do it better. Pratchett’s just honest enough to point out that isn’t always something to be proud of, and he does it in the most extraordinary way.

His bitterness towards organised religion is as apparent, and almost as scathing, here as it was in Carpe Jugulum, but there’s also what feels like a newfound acknowledgment of the power of faith. Towards the end, it feels as though the author is wrestling with himself through his characters about the importance of belief in something greater than oneself.

This internal debate felt apparent to me not just in matters of faith, but in matters of politics and government. Polly’s realisation that she must play an ongoing, active part in her country’s fate, that lasting change doesn’t just happen because people want it to, that it’s a process that is forever going forward and backwards, feels like it’s a truth that’s only starting to be considered, rather than a wisdom being imparted to readers.

Then again, what do I know? Maybe I was just seeing zebras instead of horses, and disappointed by the lack of ginger root and oxen. What matters is that it’s a damn good story, and a more obviously philosophical one than any other discworld book I’ve read so far. ( )

Ive read this book before and quite enjoyed it. Not my fave Discworld story, but still worth reading. ( )

Glad to see Sir Terry got on board with lesbianism. Disappointed but not surprised that the undeniable trans vibes in the book remain subtext however-- even Jackrum is she/her'd in the end. It's tough, because the book does an admirable job of tackling gender equality, institutional sexism, the complicity of ruling class women in the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, etc. But in the end, you're left with the feeling that Pratchett probably saw all the varied gender performances he'd written into the book as just... performances. Everyone is actually their original name and identity. The off-hand references to the unseen Captain Wrigglesworth also feel like cheap jibes.

I think I'm still going to rate this book highly, because I enjoyed it and it makes me happy to read my own ideas into the characters. Also... man, idk, maybe this is optimism, but I feel like Pratchett was very close to getting it. The book was written more than 20 years ago after all! There is something going on with how he wrote the delay and privacy of Maladict's "gender reveal" moment, and Jackrum's unwillingness to dress as a washerwoman and ultimate happy ending as a man, and even General Froc's dance with the Duchess. And there is a lot of overlap and ambiguity with wartime cross-dressing (the obvious inspiration of the plot), gnc lesbianism (which seems to have been an influence on Pratchett, based on that one Gaiman interview), and transness. The issue is unclear. And I'm not an expert. Ultimately, all I can say is that Pratchett was a man born in the 40s after all, but I believe he was a kind person. And also that Maladict absolutely rules. Everything else is interpretation.

I haven't even touched on the other main themes of the book, which deal with jingoistic nationalism, organized religion, globalization, and advancing technology, among other things. These topics are obviously more familiar territory for Pratchett, and I think he writes them well. Despite the everpresent Discworld humor, I would call this one of Pratchett's "angry" books, which are my favorites of his (see most of the Tiffany Achings and Vimeses).

Also, I know this may have further annoyed our protagonist's main-character sensibilities, but I wish we'd gotten even more of Wazzer's absolutely off-the-wall Joan of Arc epic supernatural shit. I would kill for a sequel focused on that, maybe with some background antics of Sgt Perks & Mal making trouble in the military hierarchy, Tonker & Lofty's rage against the machine, and maybe a little nontraditional domesticity from Shufti, Paul, and baby Jack.

GNU Terry Pratchett ( )

And we're back. I was beginning to get worried that the last few novels in this series would deliver diminishing returns, but Pratchett comes roaring back with this entry.

Everything I want out of a Discworld book is present and accounted for here. A great story with some fun twists. Terrible puns and biting sarcasm. Humour. And an undercurrent of thoughtful discourse on a couple of topics.

Yup, this one is easily in the top five for the series. ( )

Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?

Well...

Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn't be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.

It's another story about how very stupid war can be from time to time, but this time around, it's flavored with a god with increasingly mad edicts and a surprising number of women dressing as men to go to war. And sometimes you get women dressing up as men dressing up as women...

It's a combination of a look at gender roles, how dark war can be, and how ridiculous religion is at times. It does all three of them impressively well, while at the same time keeping just enough humor running through the book to not drag everything down too much.

Characterwise, all of the little lads are a lot of fun. Polly in particular is a welcome point of view, competent and just disbelieving that no one can figure out what's really going on and how people can really follow the religion they're all (in theory) fighting for. Jade the troll continues the tradition of surprisingly interesting troll characters (I really shouldn't be surprised any more). Maladict the Vampire gives another Vampiric look into addiction. We also get a few glances of others as well, including Vimes and Angua of the City Watch and William de Worde and Otto of the Ankh-Morpork Times. Welcoming glimpses all.

Overall, read this book. It's stand alone enough that it could easily be an introduction to the Discworld universe, so long as the topics themselves aren't going to turn you off while at the same time having enough references to keep those who've read many more interested. Another 5 stars from Pratchett. ( )

It is an amazing coincidence that my 31st Discworld novel is #31 since I have focused on the City Watch series, the Tiffany Aching series, and the recent, more humorous books.

In this one, Sir Terry's prime focus on the follies of war. The aging but much experienced Sergeant Jackrum is recruiting soldiers because most have been captured or killed, even though his side is supposedly winning. Only misfits are left -- those wanting to escape their dreary or worse lives. So, he ends up with a vampire, a troll, an Igor, and a young woman, named Polly, who pretends to be a boy (Private Oliver Perks) so she can find her brother, who is MIA. Leading the group is Lieutenant Blouse, a thinking officer, who is derisively referred to as a Rupert. Against all odds, this group of all women, except Blouse manages to change the course of the war with their bravery, determination and common sense.

Favorite quote: The enemy wasn't men, or women, or the old, or even the dead. It was just bleedin' stupid people, who came in all varieties. And no one had the right to be stupid. ( )

By my oath, I am not a lying man. This is, without doubt, my favorite Pratchett novel.

bloody love it. ( )

All of Terry Pratchett's stuff is great, but this one had me howling (at least inside). Monstrous regiment indeed. I won't spoil it for you, but...read this! A lighthearted, excellent read, with one heck of an ending. Love it! ( )

Standard late-period Discworld. ( )

Re-Read 12/10/19:

A delightful Discworld read that dives head first into a little country's war problem. Well, it's not really a problem, per se... in fact, it's almost done. As in fini. Kaput. With them the ultimate losers.

So you'd think, with all the men being dead and all, they'd be more welcoming of a bit of some added support. And I'm not talking bras... or AM I?

A very funny book. There are a few coffee drinking beasties here, a troll, and even an Igor(ina). It turns into a kinda Hogan's Heroes. Or rather, Heroines. And ooooh the abominations! Cross-Dressing Everywhere!

( )

I read the print edition of this some years ago. Stephen Briggs really makes it a whole lot better experience. I loved the audiobook much more than the print. Terry Pratchett as always is amazing! Wonderful characters, astounding use of the language. A real barrel of laughs. ( )

Polly Perks disguises herself as a boy and joins the army to find her brother Paul.

Not as good as some of Pratchett's but it had its moments. ( )

I really enjoyed this entry in the Discworld series though I found the humor to be less of the "laugh out loud" variety than some of the books. ( )

It's an abomination unto Nuggin! In secret Polly joins the Borogravian military to search for her missing brother. Turns out she's not the only one. Cameo of Vimes too. Delightful. I'll never look at a rolled up pair of socks the same way ever again. I love Stephen Briggs as a reader and I love [[Terry Pratchett]]!! ( )

Polly disguises herself as a young man and joins the army in order to find her brother, who she thinks must have been captured. Gradually she finds out that she's not the only recruit with such an idea...
Pratchett mixes Private Benjamin, Viola from Twelfth Night, and a bit of All Quiet on the Western Front, and serves it up on Discworld. Clever, extremely funny, and quite touching as well. I had a great time with this one, and loved all the little twists, and the guest appearance by Vimes, too. ( )