Thud!

Thud! – Book and Game
By Terry Pratchett

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

Discworld eh? I used to be a bit of a fan of these fantasy novels – and I confess that I still like the idea of them but had lost track of the series because there are 30+ of them now...
So there I am minding my own business – looking for to satiate one of my compulsions by finding a new strategy war game (am a fan of chess but an even bigger fan of The Viking Game / Hnefatafl)… If you haven’t played it I urge to track down a set / try an online game…
Then it happened – THUD! – hits me like a Troll club to the back of the head!?
Terry Pratchett proves himself to be a bit of a canny bastard by launching a spin off Viking Game clone based on his discworld novel Thud!… And as it turns out the game is decent but the book just OK.
Plotwise it’s all about the ancient battle of Koom Valley, where Dwarfs and the Trolls went to war. Ankh-Morpork Police Commander Samuel Vimes can smell trouble as the anniversary of the battle threatens to tear the city apart in a Dwarf / Troll carnage…
I found it hard to make the trip back to Discworld having not read many of the previous books (one of my ‘even geekier’ mates - who asked not to be named online – has read them all and told me that they were humorous but not laugh-out-loud funny) and that’s kind of how I found Thud!
Alas it wasn’t enough to make me want to read any more Discworld books, but I will be playing Thud! the game for the foreseeable future… Bonus.