Review of Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

There are some writers that every once and while you just crave a slice. There are a few on that list for me, and one is certainly Terry Pratchett. You know what you’re going to get, at the same time you don’t know what you’re going to get. You know there will be clever humor of all varieties. You know there will be imagination galore. And you know the Disc will continue to be revealed in all its kooky glory. Last week I had a hankering and went for a slice of Pratchett pie—Feet of Clay (1996) the flavor.

A threat is looming in Ankh-Morpork. First one corpse appears, then another, then another. Each of the bodies bludgeoned in some fashion, the Night’s Watch is called in to investigate—and their detecting skills only become more valuable as further bodies stack up. Captain Vimes hires a new detective, the dwarf Cheery Longbottom, to get to the bottom of things. Meanwhile, a small army of golems has been mysteriously activated, appearing at odd times in Ankh-Morpork and causing trouble. And if all this is not bad enough, someone has poisoned the city’s leader, Lord Vetinari. Are all these events linked in some fashion? The Night’s Watch has their work cut out for them.

Yes, Feet of Clay is a Night’s Watch novel. It features Vimes, Carrot, Nobby, Angua, and the others who are part of that scene. And for many readers, Night’s Watch is their favorite flavor of Disc. I understand why; Pratchett has used the group as an outlet for classic mystery plotting (they are, after all, the police of Ankh-Morpork). While occasionally digging into deeper themes, often using the racial mix of the Watch to said effect, other flavors of the Disc have been typically used to more thematic effect—which is true in this book’s case.

The link clear to some, not obvious to others, the novel’s title plays into the golems. As hinted above, Pratchett uses the quote and the golems to underpin both a race theme and a slavery theme. Dwarves, trolls, humans, vampires, dragons, imps—all compose Ankh-Morporkian “society” (the quotes are because I assume Morporkians would object to being called as such). But golems, the Disc’s robots who labor away tirelessly, have never been given “sentient” status. Pratchett plays with this idea in salient, effective fashion without losing any of the humor relevance.

In the end, Feet of Clay is Pratchett in his prime from a humor and plotting perspective. The story’s pieces all linked together in highly satisfying fashion, comedy remains the glue keeping things intact. And for Pratchett fans who love the Night’s Watch, this is one of the best I’ve read. While I appreciate Pratchett’s theming more in other novels, the manner in which the title is applied in the novel fits well. The golems, well, they are just the clay (?) on top. (Sorry, I know my humor is not close to Pratchett’s.)