Yuffie's Book Reviews

Monstrous Regiment - by Terry Pratchett

Monstrous Regiment is about a girl, Polly, who disguises herself as a guy in order to join the military so she can find her MIA brother--Mulan set in colonial America (of Discworld). This society is misogynistic and sexist against women, just like colonial America. Or today.

So Polly goes to the Sergent dude to get recruited, and at the same time a bunch of other lads come join up, and their regiment is created. They now must travel to the fort place where they'll get trained before going out to the front lines.

**gonna be a lot of SPOILERS for the ending in this review, so beware**

THE PLOT

So any American (??) history buff could probably tell you that there was a Monstrous Regiment of Women or something back in WWI days (I think it was WWI? Some war). I am not a history buff, okay? >:/

So from that you can all guess that Polly isn't the only girl who decided to genderbend and join the military....

What I disliked about this book was how many coincidences happened. So okay yeah that'd be really interesting if there was maybe one or two other disguised women in Polly's regiment, but ALL of them? It was like one after the another Pratchett kept revealing each person as a woman in disguise. Even the Igor and the troll! I was like *exasperated sigh* It got excessive and not believable. It turned into a parody on itself (in a bad way). I know Pratchett loves his satiring and parody'ing, but he usually pulls it off in a really fun, believable way. I think maybe he took it a little too far with this.

THE CHARACTERS

Polly was interesting and had a lot of funny lines, but since we didn't get too deep into her head and Pratchett kept his camera at a distance, I didn't care about her as much as would've liked. There was quite a bit of emotion and badass moments, but at times she borderlined on mary sue because she always took control and knew everything and knew exactly what to say.

The other characters... They weren't the most lovable. Maladict(a) the vampire was my favorite character because s/he was so witty and confident and cool. But s/he didn't play an enormous role in the story other than a tiny obstacle when she ran out of coffee and started craving human blood again.

I just couldn't connect with Igorina and Jade and all the supporting characters as much as I had in Going Postal. I'm not sure if it's personal taste or if Pratchett did something differently. We didn't get too deep into their psyches, and all our sympathy for them stemmed from how much they'd been beaten or raped, and that feels like contrived sympathy to me. I didn't sympathize for them as people; i sympathized for what happened to them, which doesn't create as powerful an emotional attachment as there could've been.

Polly's motivation throughout was finding her brother, Paul. But we never got to SEE the guy or get to know him at all in the story. Even after she finds him, it's like half a page of talking about her walking into the room where he's at, and that's it. We never got to interact with him. He felt like a ghost of a character the entire story, which was why I was never able to connect with Polly. Her motivation wasn't tangible to me because I hadn't experienced what she's looking for.

Actually, I think that was why I couldn't connect with any of the other characters. We were only TOLD what their goals are and why, but we never got to live them first hand. Shufti tells us she's searching for her boyfriend who upped and left her. But we never got to meet him until the end, and even then it was like 2 seconds before she promptly dumped him. The other two girls kept talking about how they were beaten and abused at the girl's school, but we never saw it. All the backstories were just flat out told to us, so it didn't resonate with me emotionally.

THE WRITING

Pratchett is hilarious, however it seemed like he ran out of juice after the first quarter of the book, because he kept recycling the same jokes over and over again. The socks joke was hilarious the first couple times, but I swear there must have been at least a dozen mentions of it after that, so it got really old really fast. Same for a lot of other jokes.

The prose was dialogue-heavy with not as much narration between them. Sometimes it created a comedic effect, but a lot of it made me confuse who was talking and who's who. There were several characters who were called Sergents and Corporals and I couldn't keep everyone straight, and the lack of action tags and narration in conversations made it worse.

Liking this book is purely a matter of personal taste, and it wasn't my cup of tea. I think Pratchett wrote a bold story with a lot of great satirical jabs at the treatment of women (this was such a GIRL POWER!! book and message). There were definitely some really funny moments, and the first few chapters of the book when Polly joins up were awesome. I think my interest started waning when we found out EVERYONE was a woman in disguise. Some of the action later was really good. There were some great moments to this book! Overall, for me it was okay. I think Going Postal was much stronger on all levels: world building, plot, humor, characterization. If I'd read Monstrous Regiment first, I probably wouldn't have picked up another Pratchett book. It was just okay. Not bad. But it didn't blow my mind.

3.5/4 stars