So early next morning she softly arose

[sovay]

I am eight pages into Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment* and already I can see that I may have to keep a sharp ballad lookout. Our heroine Polly has cut her hair, dressed in her brother's clothes, and enlisted as a soldier (in the Borogravian Army) under the name Oliver:

"Age?"

"Seventeen come Sunday, sir."

"Yeah, right," said the sergeant.

*I am convalescing on all the Terry Pratchett I've missed in the last several years. Yesterday was The Fifth Elephant, Thief of Time, and Night Watch. Today, I will be out of new Terry Pratchett. I may re-read Going Postal and Thud! anyway.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jb/]

Did you read it before or after September 11?

I read it about 2003, and it was just so on (having been written in the late nineties, I think) that it was eerie. But I remember not so much the novel, which was entertaining, but not stellar, as the way it encapsulated jingoism.