The Fifth Elephant
By Terry Pratchett.
The Low King of the Dwarves is going to be crowned, and the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork needs to send an ambassador, the Duke of Ankh-Morpork. And who would this high-ranking member of the nobility be? None other than Sam Vimes.
The coronation of the Low King is under threat from other dwarves, vampires and werewolves, but Vimes manages to duck and dive his way through the menacing landscape of Uberwald to work it all out, including the fate of the Scone of Stone.
Meanwhile, the leader of the werewolves is Sergeant Angua’s villainous brother, Wolfgang, whom she goes to confront. Captain Carrot goes in pursuit of her along with Gaspode the Talking Dog.
In turn, this means that Sergeant Colon gets promoted, and is entirely out of his depth, burning paperwork to avoid it and alienating the rest of the Watch until Carrot returns and gives Colon the stick he needs to bring him back to his senses.
The Fifth Elephant fills in some gaps that I’ve encountered from reading other volumes. I thought that Sam Vimes had been elevated in one of the other stories, but that may have been when he became plain Sir Samuel. The book also explains the relationship between Vimes and the Low King which is the subject of one of the Moist von Lipwig books - if I remember correctly. The train one, I believe.
This is a decent late Discworld novel in which Vimes gets to be the hero rather than just the man who gives orders. There are some early hints that the Low King is actually a Low Queen and the b.c. storyline in which female dwarves try to make themselves distinct from the male ones.
The two subplots broke the A-plot up nicely, and there was some good comedic moments as Fred Colon negotiated the world of being an officer, but made a complete mess of it.
As I said above, this was a decent late outing in Discworld.