The Fifth Elephant
Terry Pratchett
Sam Vimes in Uberwald
The Fifth Elephant is the 24th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and the fifth in the City Watch subseries. If you have read the previous 23 novels, you will immediately half-understand what the title alludes to. The Discworld swims through space on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. It does not, however, rest directly on Great A'Tuin's back. (This makes sense to me -- a turtle's back is convex, and a disc-shaped world resting directly on the back of a turtle would have an unsettling tendency to wobble.) Rather it rests on the shoulders of four giant elephants who stand on Great A'Tuin's back.
The title, The Fifth Elephant, obviously suggests that there is or once was a spare elephant. That much a reader will guess immediately. The second half of the allusion is explained in the second paragraph of the novel,
They say that the fifth elephant came screaming and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise mountains.
The location where it crashed is the Discworld nation of Uberwald, and the legendary fifth elephant is the legendary explanation for Uberwald's mineral wealth. So, the second half of the meaning of the title is an allusion to Uberwald. Most of the action takes place there.
There are many nations on the Discworld. Ankh-Morpork (which is a city, but also appears to be effectively a nation de jure) and tiny Lancre are the most important as settings for the novels. We have heard of Uberwald before, but this is the first novel that features extensive action there, I believe. We know of Uberwald because it is where such urban fantasy standards as vampires, werewolves, and dwarves come from. Where they go to, very often, is Ankh-Morpork, and that is where we have seen them until now.
The dwarves are about to crown a new king, and they have invited nations of the Discworld to send representatives to witness the coronation. Patrician Havelock Veterinari, having some reason to expect trouble, accredits Sam Vimes as ambassador of Ankh-Morpork and sends him to Uberwald for this purpose. Sam is not happy. He is by nature and by heredity the most vehement of anti-Monarchists. He also hates vampires and is not really sold on werewolves, although of course he respects Sergeant Angua, an extraordinarily competent werewolf member of the City Watch.
Sam goes to Uberwald, where there is indeed trouble, of the most lethal variety. Several members of the Watch follow him, and Pratchett also details the inactivities of members of the Watch left behind in Ankh-Morpork. This is, in fact a City Watch novel. Most of the named members of the Watch that you've met in previous Discworld novels have parts to play in The Fifth Elephant.
Like all the City Watch novels, The Fifth Elephant is intensely political. Besides conflict of the straightforward armed violence type, there is a lot of political intrigue and a mystery or two. As Discworld novels go, this is a pretty good one. Definitely not one to read out of order, though. Without the context of previous novels, you would have no idea who most of the characters are.