Guards! Guards!
| Property6 | Value |
|---|---|
| Author Name | Pratchett, Terry |
| Series | Discworld |
| Book Number | 8 |
| Summary | When a group of thugs are vaporized by what may be a large wading bird, Captain Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork Nightwatch must find the culprit and save the city from certain tyranny. |
| Recommendation | Recommended |
| Date Read | 2025-09-10 |
"The Supreme Grand Master smiled in the depths of his robe. It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don’t need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they’re progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they’ll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing."
First of the Guards series is a special book; we learn so much about the patrician, get to know the city more, Carrot and Colon and Nobby...
This also feels very pertinent for the current year of 2025, especially given the No Kings march from earlier this year and all of the awfulness surrounding the Trump administration.
One thing I love about this book and Pratchett generally is his optimism for average people. The Patrician has a monologue at the end of the book where he tells Vimes that people are evil on average in the boring, mundane, enabling kind of way. But Vimes gets the last laugh when the Patrician offers Vimes and The Rank a broad reward, they barely ask for a raise, confounding everyone in the room.
Also, Vimes felt much dumber in this than I remember from previous reads, since there's so much he talks about and observes and doesn't put together. Maybe it's because he grows as a character over the course of the book.