{"id":4612,"date":"2018-07-11T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4612"},"modified":"2018-07-08T08:00:57","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T15:00:57","slug":"mark-reads-monstrous-regiment-part-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/07\/mark-reads-monstrous-regiment-part-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Monstrous Regiment&#8217;: Part 20"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the twentieth part of <i>Monstrous Regiment<\/i>, the squad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disguises catch up to them, and the Borogravian army stages a last-minute \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in order to punish them. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>THIS WAS NOT WHAT I WAS PREPARED FOR, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. And it speaks to the insidious and vicious nature of what the Borogravian army does here. As Tonker so brilliantly puts it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is stupid!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Tonker. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the middle of a war and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to take the time to hold a trial for a few women who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even done anything wrong?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yep, that is <i>exactly<\/i> what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to do. My initial worry, though, was that Major Clogston wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there to provide fair representation for the group. Until it was revealed that he gets a little strange if he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat, I thought he was sent to the squad as a <i>joke<\/i>, as if he was the army\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sign that they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually care about what these women had done for them. But once Clogston got the whole story, my perception of him and where this book was going changed drastically. I mean, it was easy to be cynical about this; the army wanted to save face. The propaganda that this country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s religion and its men have spread for <i>ages<\/i> is that women are incapable of performing certain jobs, that all skills and talents are split along a rigid gender binary, and thus it is <i>impossible<\/i> that women actually joined the military, successfully captured the leader of the other army, infiltrated the Keep, and then set most of the Borogravian top brass free.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, that definitely didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen.<\/p>\n<p>For the most part, Clogston <i>is<\/i> on the side of these women, and he rather cleverly questions the generals about what these women are apparently accused of, which is&#8230; not really anything? Well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not until there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a surprise appearance from CAPTAIN STRAPPI that this truly becomes chaotic, but right from the start, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is bogus. No one actually cares about rules potentially being broken. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about morality only in as much as its about maintaining the <i>appearance<\/i> of it. Clogston makes a fantastic point:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I should say at this point, sir, that I intend to show that Abominations are routinely committed by all of us. We have got into the habit of ignoring them, in fact, which opens up an interesting debate.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interesting debate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is important <i>and<\/i> familiar! I grew up in the kind of religious household where our morals were selectively enforced. My parents, particularly my mother, were allowed to do certain things that were considered \u00e2\u20ac\u0153abominations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by God. Swearing, violence, lying, manipulation&#8230; it was absolutely one of those Do As I Say, Not As I Do situations. We certainly see that as a greater social force, too, and not just when it comes to religion. Who do we excuse? Ignore? Forgive? Forget? Who is allowed redemption narratives? Who do we view as just being human, thereby they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve earned a few slip-ups here and there?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In the context of <i>Monstrous Regiment<\/i>, it is certainly <i>not<\/i> these women. Strappi <i>really<\/i> hates them and wants to make sure that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re punished for being Abominations Unto Nuggan, but every time Strappi pushes the trial in a new direction, Clogston or the women push it elsewhere. First, they try to turn the suspicion onto Strappi, who makes the mistake of hinting that he had some sort of sedition that he was investigating. Which we all know as Jackrum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strange history that he seems to have inherited from someone else, but the military is always unwilling to <i>actually<\/i> do anything about Jackrum? Apparently he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that good?<\/p>\n<p>No matter. Clogston was an absolute delight here, jumping from one contradiction to another. He nearly catches Strappi in an admission that he let the cavalrymen attack a group of girls; then the generals all admit that Wrigglesworth is perfectly fine, which hints at the contradiction in allowing Wrigglesworth to do \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Abominable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d things, but not others; and then, realizing they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re stuck, the generals instead suggest that Blouse take credit and simply say that <i>women<\/i> helped him, not <i>soldiers<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I gotta respect Blouse on this, too, because not only does he hate this idea\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe literally does not want to live a lie\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to argue with his soldiers about what <i>they<\/i> want. I did appreciate that all the women didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t initially agree with each other about what they wanted to do, and the situation is so precarious that I understand why that was the case. Where did they have to go back <i>to<\/i>? Or whom? And what future would they have if they were just sent home and expected to live a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d life again? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not realistic or fair, especially for Tonker or Lofty. Hell, or for Shufti!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And just when they all reject the terms offered to them, the mystery of Wazzer and the Duchess gets even <i>weirder<\/i>. I still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who is speaking through Wazzer or if that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening. But someone encouraged Polly and Igorina to resist and then told them to <i>duck<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/K-L8GOxV3kA<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the twentieth part of Monstrous Regiment, the squad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disguises catch up to them, and the Borogravian army stages a last-minute \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in order to punish them. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,545,248],"class_list":["post-4612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-monstrous-regiment","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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